“I fear he is quite competent. It is evident the moment one speaks to him.” She shook her head. It would have been so much easier if he were just pretty to look at and nothing to fear.
“Damn,” Vale said, her shoulders rolling forward in a small display of defeat. “Well, that complicates things. But the next question is one I cannot help but think I already know the answer to, though I’ll ask it anyway. Is he distractible?”
Selina flashed to those same dark eyes holding hers for far more than a beat too long. She’d trained herself long ago to instantly recognize a man’s attention. It kept her fed as often as it kept her safe. “Possibly,” she said. “He is…interested.”
“As are you,” Vale said. Said, not asked.
Selina looked at her friend. Despite their long acquaintance, she still wasn’t accustomed to allowing herself to be read so easily. She didn’t like it. If Vale could see, someone else could see. Including Huntington. His job, after all, was to read those around him. She saw him doing it all the time. Even now, his gaze flitted from player to player, and she could all but see him making notes in his head about every person at the party.
“You think?” she asked, forcing herself to be breezy.
“I know you do,” Vale insisted. “It isn’t very often that a man truly lights you, so when it happens it is something of note. You are lit. Like a candle. Like a fire. Like an inferno.”
Selina shifted. She’d been trying to avoid that realization in herself, truth be told. She didn’t want to be lit, and certainly not by a man who was dedicated to hunting her. Not that he would catch her, but it was playing so close to the edge. She didn’t want to fall. Not now when it felt like things were coming together. Where she was almost…safe.
She waved her hand in the hopes she would appear unconcerned. “I wouldn’t go so far.”
Vale shrugged. “Fine, keep your counsel. But what are you going to do?”
Selina dared to look at him again. His attention had shifted away from the field of players and now locked slowly but firmly on her. They held gazes across the grass, his stare never wavering. She forced her own to remain just as still and firm.
And in that moment, it became clear what to do to regain the upper hand on a man who threatened her world in more ways than one.
“I’m going to tell him what I know,” she said with a little smile for her friend.
“What?” Vale gasped, her eyes widening.
Selina laughed at the reaction and reached out to pat Vale’s arm. “Trust me, dearest. I know exactly what I’m doing.”
With that she sauntered off across the field toward her quarry, leaving Vale behind to whatever her reaction was. But even though Selina pretended all the confidence and faith in the world in her new plan, the nerves she wasn’t showing were tearing her apart. She had to tread very carefully with Derrick Huntington. And careful had never been her strong suit.
Derrick watched as Selina strolled her way across the playing field toward him, her bright blue eyes locked on his. She was such a purposeful creature, one who obviously knew the value of every swish of her backside, every lick of her lips. He didn’t judge her for that, of course. He just knew to be wary of the game.
Or he should have been wary. That wasn’t his true reaction. No, in truth his stomach clenched and his cock stirred and he shook his head at the physical reaction that betrayed him. He was always in control. He’d fought very hard to get that way.
And this woman he didn’t even know knocked him right off his axis with hardly more than a puff of breath.
“Mr. Huntington,” she all but purred as she slipped up to him.
“Miss Oliver,” he managed to say past a suddenly bone-dry throat.
She stepped to his side and for a moment made a great show out of watching the games on the field. At present the Duke of Roseford had been knocked from his perch as champion by his own wife. And he seemed all the happier for it, though he teased the duchess mightily. Their chemistry was on display for all to see.
Derrick had to make sure he didn’t reveal himself so obviously. Difficult when he could feel the warmth of Selina beside him, smell that unique vanilla muskiness of her skin and hair.
She leaned her head closer to his and without taking her eyes off the field, she whispered, “I know what you’re doing, Mr. Huntington.”
He drew in a long breath and let it out slowly before he answered, hoping to find prudence in the midst of the chaos this woman caused in his chest. “Do you? Are you in the mood to tell me what you think that is?”
She pivoted slightly and lifted her chin. How he longed to drag his thumb along the line of it, let his fingers rest against her throat, then take his mouth along the same path.
“I know you aren’t here as some mere favor from my brother,” she said. “You’rehere investigating the famous Faceless Fox.”
His eyes went wide and panic washed away attraction as he stared at her. She was not guessing. She knew the truth. It was plain she knew, from her cocksure expression to her even stare. And since he had no idea what she would do next—if she would expose him to the party at large—he had to move and he had to do it now.
He darted his gaze around the yard and found the shadow of the orangery on the side of the house behind them. Close enough that he could get her there quickly, secluded enough to have a conversation, not something that would draw too much attention if he did this right.
He caught her elbow in one swift motion, trying to ignore the frisson of awareness that shot up his arm when he touched her in even this benign way. She sucked in a breath and that didn’t help, because it almost was a sound of pleasure.
