She hated that he had a point. “I said I will let you know when?—”
“You have friends, Charlotte. I am one of them. But maybe, in order to curb your recklessness, I need to be more than that.”
Reading his intention, she pressed her hands against his chest to stop him. He flew backward, and for a stunned instant, she thought she had underestimated her own strength. Then she saw Sebastian. He was facing Devlin, who’d collided into a bookshelf, sending volumes crashing to the ground.
Devlin staggered but retained his balance. “Who in blazes are you?”
“Charlotte’s husband,” Sebastian snarled. “Keep your bloody hands off my wife.”
“Was that entirely necessary?” Lottie inquired.
Jack didn’t answer because the question was so stupid, he didn’t think it was worthy of a reply. He glowered, and she rolled her eyes as if he hadn’t found her with another man. A man who’d been about tokissher. Luckily, Devlin was perceptive: realizing who of the three of them did not belong, he’d made a hasty exit. Jack didn’t mourn the bastard’s departure.
Looking not the least bit contrite, Lottie glided over to a rosewood spirits cabinet, the front inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The furnishing was decidedly feminine, which fit the overall theme of her home. Everything from the pink walls to the delicate details shouted who was mistress here, and the fact eased some of Jack’s tension. He liked that his wife enjoyed the house he’d bought her and that she’d turned it into a home.
He contemplated her desk, the front carved with flora and fauna. If he bent her over and tupped her on it, would the carving be too rough against her silky-soft legs? Or would she like being bent to his will and taken from behind?
“Whisky?” she asked.
Relinquishing the provocative image, he nodded, foolishly pleased that she remembered his drink preference.
When she poured two glasses of whisky, he felt his brows rise. Trust Lottie not to drink like an ordinary woman either. She handed him a glass, and he sampled it, savoring the strong, smooth burn. She knew her whisky. He downed his glass, and she poured him another.
“Do stop sulking,” she said. “Devlin is not my lover.”
“Not for want of trying.”
She cast her gaze to the ceiling, where plaster cherubs frolicked in floral fields.
“Given that you made your feelings known the last time by hurling a rock through a window, I thought your next tactic could not be any more troglodytic.” She sipped. “Apparently I was wrong.”
“This isn’t amusing, Charlotte.”
“No, it’s childish.”
“Any more childish than the cold shoulder you gave me over Delaney?”
Immediately, he regretted his tetchy tone. This was how things had always degenerated between him and Lottie. They were both too hotheaded, quick to anger and take offense.
“Touché.”
To his surprise, her lips curved over the rim of her glass. She saluted him, then took another drink of whisky.
He stared at her. “That is all you have to say?”
“You made your point. We are both jealous fools. Is there more to add?”
“I suppose not,” he muttered.
“Then why don’t we sit and discuss our bigger problem.”
He joined her in the sitting area and folded himself into a pink wingchair teeming with flora and fauna. The furnishing was so delicately feminine that he feared his bollocks might shrink in protest. But he couldn’t deny the chair was bloody comfortable.
Lottie, of course, looked like a queen on her blushing throne. Her hair was twisted in a fashionable knot, curls framing her oval face. The skirts of her burgundy carriage dress cascaded gracefully to the ground. Confronted by her magnificence, he felt like the peasant he was. He bridled at the feeling—at the invisible wall that separated them. He wanted to tear it down with his bare hands.
She does not know who you are. If she did…
His hand tightening around the glass, he tossed back the rest of the spirits. The burn beat back the fire inside, the impulse that would incinerate everything if he let it loose.
