Rather than be intimidated by his anger, however, she looked up at him and smiled. “Freshly washed, brushed, and folded.” She shook her head. “You still leave them on the floor, I see.”
Whether it was the intimacy of how much she knew about his personal habits or the intimacy of knowing she had been in his room when he was sleeping, Gregor didn’t know, but he felt the walls closing in on him. Nay,shewas closing in on him, and he didn’t like it. It made him want to lash out as he always did when a woman set her sights on him and tried to corner him. “Stay out of my room, Cate—especially when I’m sleeping.”
How she’d managed to sneak up on him was alarming on many different levels.
Her brows furrowed. “Why?”
“Because it isn’t right, damn it!”
She lifted a brow. “Isn’t right? I’m like a daughter to you—or a sister. Aren’t I?”
The hell she was! She was…
Clever. He stopped, realizing what she was doing: forcing him to acknowledge something he didn’t want to acknowledge.
He couldn’t let her keep doing this to him. It was time to untwist the knots the lass had him all tied up in. She’d grown too bold after what he’d inadvertently revealed the other night. But he’d been playing this game a hell of a lot longer than she had. He smiled slowly. “Aye, you’re right.”
She blinked. “I am?”
“Perhaps not a daughter—I’m not quite that old—but definitely a younger sister.” She looked properly horrified. He shrugged as if it no longer mattered to him. “I was only trying to protect you.”
She swallowed uncertainly. If her closeness weren’t firing every nerve ending in his body, he would surely have enjoyed it.
“Protect me from what?”
He gave her his best roguish grin. “Seeing something that might shock your maidenly sensibilities in the event I have company.”
She sucked in her breath, stricken, the thought obviously never having occurred to her. But if he thought she would so easily be discouraged, he’d underestimated her. The lass was far too stubborn and proud. Nor, as her little brawl at the river had proved, would she back down from a fight, even when the odds were not in her favor. And betting on him was bad odds indeed.
The stricken look slipped away, and the gaze that held his was far more knowing and determined than he would have liked. “There is very little privacy in a castle, Gregor. I’m sure you’ve nothing that I haven’t seen before.” The eyes scanning his chest and reminding him of exactly how much she’d seen were narrowed—and didn’t seem impressed. Though why the hell that grated, he didn’t know. He didn’t want her admiring him or his body. But who the hell was she comparing him to? Admittedly he’d bulked up in the past few years, but it was all muscle—
He stopped. Good God, what was she doing to him?
“Although for the children’s sake,” she added, “I hope you will keep your ‘company’ to a minimum.”
She’d done it again. Put him on the defensive. Making him feel like an arse. Aprofligatearse.
Whom he shared his bed with was his business. He didn’t owe her any explanations. He would bring a woman to his chamber if he wanted to.
But damn it, it would hurt her, and something inside him rebelled at the idea.
Her words, however, reminded him of another problem. Every time he tried to talk to her about “the children,” she kept putting him off. It seemed the only way to be rid of her was to mention that he’d been on his deathbed with an arrow through his neck when Eddie was conceived and patrolling the Western Isles hunting down John of Lorn in the months during Maddie’s conception. “Speaking of the children, have you made arrangements yet for their removal—”
“There they are now,” she said, cutting him off. He could hear her relief at once again being saved from discussing the matter by the arrival of Ete, Lizzie, the scowling black-haired charlatan, the child who had a propensity to release his bladder every time Gregor was near, and the banshee in the guise of a blond-haired poppet. “We had best go, if we do not want Father Roland angry at us for being late.”
She tried to flounce off, but he caught her arm. “We aren’t done with this, Cate.”
She looked up at him, and something about her expression—hell, everything about her expression—made him want to cover her mouth with his. “No.” Her eyes searched his, probing. “No, we’re not.”
He might have been pleased by her agreement, except he knew she wasn’t talking about the children.
He didn’t know what Cate thought she knew about him, but she was wrong. And it was becoming very clear that one way or another, he was going to have to prove it.
Company. The one word had shaken Cate’s confidence to the core. He wouldn’t bring a woman to his room…would he?
With the way Gregor had been fighting acknowledging his attraction to her since the night in the corridor, she suspected he just well might.
Cate was going to have to up her vigilance and her efforts, it seemed, until he was ready to accept that there was something between them.
