“It doesn’t matter. It serves.”
“So it’s no to a kiss.”
“Yes, it’s no.”
“Now I could go either way, but Hannah is a romantic. She’ll expect it.”
“What makes you think my daughter is a romantic?”
“Besides the fact that she’s commented on my noble profile?” He turned his head sideways to emphasize the aquiline shape of his nose. When he turned back, she was shaking her head rather sadly at him. “Forget my profile. I saw what Hannah was reading. Did you?”
“I didn’t notice.”
“It was a Felicity Ravenwood adventure. Something about taming a beast. I only caught a glimpse of the title when she closed the book. The cover told me all I needed to know. Hannah is a dyed-in-the-wool romantic.”
“She was reading about Alice’s adventures the other day.”
“Finding her way, then. It doesn’t mean she won’t expect a kiss.”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“A little. You didn’t stipulate that there couldn’t be kissing.”
“I’m stipulating it now.”
“Too late. There will be kissing.” He said it lightly. There could be no mistaking that he was teasing, and yet what he saw in her face told him that she hadn’t heard it in the vein it was intended. He was put in mind of the first time he’d stepped into her kitchen, when there had been such wariness in her expression that he thought of her as a creature in the wild and himself as a feral beast. She had been so still on that occasion, and she was that still now. “Are you afraid of me?” he asked.
“No.”
Perhaps if she had not said it so quickly, or perhaps if there had been a modest change in her countenance, he might have believed her. “I was teasing, Mrs. Salt. Clay would say I was funnin’ you. I can’t promise that I won’t do it again, only that I won’t do it about this. There will be no kissing.” Whatever breath she had left seemed to be stuck in her throat. “You can breathe now.”
She did, sipping the air as though through a straw.
“Better,” he said. “Take another.”
She nodded and sipped again.
“It would help if you would enlighten me. I don’t knowyour mind, and you obviously don’t know mine. That will come in time, or I hope it will.” When she said nothing, he took a different tack, offering what he thought was the likeliest explanation. “Did you take what I said to mean that I would insist on kissing you?”
“You said there will be kissing. What interpretation am I to take from that except that there will be kissing?”
“You heard the words and took no account of the tone. Did you think I would force you?”
“You said it yourself. I don’t know your mind.”
“Didheforce you?”
Lily was quiet, then, “This is a bad idea. I don’t know what I was thinking. You’re not mad. I am.”
Roen held up a hand as though he could interrupt her thoughts. “Wait. Don’t do this. Think. Perhaps we’re both a little mad, but you know it’s a fair, even good, arrangement. Your children will think so. Hannah and Clay have been trying to find ways that you and I might cross paths. Were you aware?”
Her eyes widened, providing the answer without having to say a word.
“I didn’t think so,” he said, lowering his hand so it rested on his knee. “Your older children have their own ideas about who they judge would suit you. For a while, I was their choice, and I have to tell you I was flattered.”
She shook her head as if she didn’t believe it or didn’t want to.
“It’s true. All of it.”
