August pulled his shirt overhead.
Oh, God.
Her mouth went dry.
A gentle brush of knuckles under her jaw guided her head up.
“Your head is in the clouds.”
“Sometimes it is better there,” she confided.
From the moment he arrived, carrying her injured sister after a fall last winter, that’s where Meghan lived.
“I would argue all the fun is to be had here on the ground,” he murmured.
August kept up that smooth, rhythmic stroking until her eyes fell shut.
“We aren’t really on the ground.”
The hint of a smile touched his lips.
“Very astute.”
Her heart shifted.
Closer to him than she had ever believed she would be, Meghan discovered it still wasn’t enough.
Creeping up on her tiptoes, she drew herself nearer to study his mouth.
“The Secret Snapdragon smile,” she said, caught between that faraway day and the improbable now.
He had worn it the very day she fell tips over toes in love with him.
Well, at least, that had been when she acknowledged it to herself.
She wanted him to wear this smile forever.
“You were playing in the conservatory,” she said, thinking back on that day.
So many of their meetings had happened in a conservatory.
Maybe that was why Meghan ran to Lord and Lady Rutland’s orangery.
Somewhere deep inside Meghan, she knew August would go there—or that he would be there.
August let her speak.
He let her fill in details of moments he did not even realize—remember?—he shared with Meghan.
“You were ducked beneath the green-painted iron gardening table and looked so ridiculous because there is no way you—”
August slipped a playful hand under the right curve of her buttocks and used it to drag her closer.
“Calling me rotund, are you?”
Meghan laughed and playfully swatted him.
“Would you really like me to pay you pretty compliments? Are you truly in need?”
