He lowered himself to sit, closer this time. She smelled like lavender. He leaned toward her, his mouth only inches from hers. “Can’t we talk about something else? Like how perfectly gorgeous your mouth is.”
Her face looked flushed, but he suspected it was from the wine. He remembered she didn’t embarrass easily.
“Oh, no,” she replied, scooting away from him. “You’re not about to ply me with wine and try to kiss me.”
“I’m not?” He blinked, for that was exactly what he’d been planning.
“No.”
“Care to tell me why I’m not?” he asked, nonplussed. He was never nonplussed.
“Because that is far beneath your skill level.”
“It is?” More blinking. He needed to stop blinking like an idiot.
“A master like you can think of a much better way to seduce a woman than to hand her a glass of wine and sit too close on a settee.”
“I can?” He could?
“Do you doubt your own prowess?”
Cade scratched his head. In all of his years seducing women—he had lost count—he had never encountered one who had so subtly and completely turned the tables on him. Was he truly that obvious? It was time to change tactics. “Are you saying you don’twantto kiss me?”
Her tinkling laughter followed. “Don’t be petulant. It doesn’t suit you.”
Petulant? No one hadevercalled him petulant. “Very well, mademoiselle, why don’t you tell me what you’d like?”
“I’d like for you to answer my question.”
Question? Had she asked him a question? “Which was?”
“I told you I wanted a sister and you said, ‘Careful what you wish for.’ Then I asked why you said that.”
Oh, that. Cade frowned. She still wanted to talk aboutthat? Very well. He studied the liquid in his glass. “The truth is… my brother doesn’t trust me.”
“Have you given him reasons not to?”
This woman had a penchant for asking probing questions. It was as if she knew the exact thing to say to poke a hole through his armor. Cade thought about what Tomlinson had said.“You wouldn’t happen to be the Black Fox, would you?”Cade knew Rafe suspected him. Had known it since the moment Rafe had seen the paper at the club the other day and turned his gaze on Cade with suspicion in his familiar blue eyes.
“Plenty of them,” he whispered.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Name one,” Danielle whispered back. This was a dangerous game, asking Cade Cavendish for his secrets. Her stomach clenched. He wasn’t about to reveal his without dragging out a few of hers. She would have to expose something to this man.
She had a job to do, she reminded herself. Grimaldi wanted to know why the self-proclaimed black sheep of his family was in London. Who was he meeting with, and why? That was the reason she’d been sent to this house, after all. Not to be mesmerized by the man’s crystal-blue eyes and the scent of him, like wood smoke and soap. Nor the way he was tilting his head toward her and watching her lips. Nor the charming dimple in his cheek.Mon dieu,this wasn’t helping.
“I’ve been gone for years,” Cade replied in a deep, smooth voice. “Until I returned to London last year, my brother thought I was dead.”
“Dead?” The word startled her. She sat up a bit straighter. “Why?” She took another sip of wine, trying to make sense of this latest revelation.
Cade reached out and traced the line of her décolletage against her skin with the tip of one finger. “Let’s just say in my line of work, I’m sometimes better off dead.”
“What in the world does that mean?” But her words came out a bit rushed and slurred, given the distraction of his finger tracing her neckline.
“I haven’t always been… on the right side of the law,” he finished, his finger tracing up the vein in her neck to her ear. She closed her eyes. The man knew where to touch a woman. She had never imagined that a simple stroke of her earlobe could feel so… good.
“What have you done?” she whispered.
