“Protein drink,” she said thoughtfully,
then
decided to check the refrigerator first.
Sure enough, there were several plastic pouches labeled “For Rhys.” She took out one of the bags and flipped it over in her hands, looking for directions.
None.
She debated what to do since Sebastian was down at the club, and Rhys probably wouldn’t remember how to prepare it.
The viscous liquid squished around in the plastic pouch looking like chocolate syrup and cherry syrup all mixed together. He probably wouldn’t even drink the stuff anyway. It certainly didn’t look like a health drink; that was for sure.
With a grimace, she headed back to the cupboards and took down a tall drink glass.
She frowned at the pouch. The clear bag had two plastic stoppers at the top, and it didn’t seem to make much difference which one she opened.
After a struggle, she got one of the caps off and poured the syrupy liquid into the glass. She quickly snapped the cap back on and took the remaining concoction back to the fridge.
Picking up her plate in one hand and the drink in the other, she lifted the glass to her nose to sniff the dark liquid. The scent of copper mixed with a sweet, almost rusty smell assaulted her nose.
“
Ick
,” she cringed, but headed to the library with the drink still in hand.
Rhys sat in one of the overstuffed chairs. He rose when she entered the room and took the plate from her, frowning as he set it on the table.
“Is this punishment for having to prepare your own meal?”
It took Jane a moment to realize he was referring to the fact she brought in only one plate.
Her far more appetizing dinner
was
going to make it rather difficult to convince him the slimy beverage was his meal.
“Sebastian said that you…” She supposed it couldn’t hurt to just tell him the truth. “He says you have food allergies, and this is what you usually eat.” She held it out to him.
Rhys peered at the glass, a look halfway between amusement and disbelief on his face. “He did, did he?”
She nodded.
“Are you sure you aren’t trying to poison me because I’ve been such a wretched cad since you arrived?”
“You haven’t been wretched or a cad.”
He smiled, apparently pleased. He accepted the glass, looking at it closely before taking a tentative sip. He swallowed with a thoughtful look,
then
nodded approvingly. “It’s actually not bad.” He took another sip. “It would be better warm.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” She settled onto her sofa to eat her sandwich.
Rhys sat beside her, and although he was a few inches away, his large frame seemed to overwhelm her. His presence enveloped her. Suddenly the turkey sandwich didn’t seem nearly as mouth-watering as he did.
“Is everything to your liking?”
When she simply stared at him, he gestured to the sandwich half, forgotten in her hand.
“Oh,” she said with a self-conscious laugh. “Yes, it’s great.”
“I am more than a little humiliated that I haven’t been better able to see to your needs.”
Her gaze dropped to his lips as he said, “needs.” Was he doing that on purpose?
“My—needs have been met nicely,” she said, avoiding his eyes. But she did catch the faint hint of a smile on his wide, well-formed lips before she determinedly focused on her sandwich.
But all too quickly her meal was gone, and then she was forced to diligently pick the crumbs off her skirt. Then she had to gather everything to be taken back to the kitchen.
Rhys placed a hand over hers as she reached for his empty glass.
“Why are you so nervous?”
She stared up at him, his whiskey-colored eyes luminescent in the firelight. She could get lost in those eyes.
She straightened and carefully extracted her hand from underneath his. “I’m not nervous. I’m just…” She didn’t know what to say. She was just trying not to be so darned attracted to him. She was just trying to act as though she had no idea what it felt like to kiss him, or be held by him, or make love with him.
“Jane, we will wait. You want to wait, and we will. But I cannot act like I’m not attracted to you.”
Her heart fluttered in her chest. “Okay.”
“So come here.” He tugged her hand gently, indicating he wanted her to move closer to him. “I just want to hold you.”
She hesitated, but then slid closer. Rhys nestled her against his side, looping an arm around her shoulder.
She remained stiff for a few moments, feeling as though even this contact was unfair to them.
But Rhys didn’t do anything other than hold her, his large hand motionless on her arm, his thigh pressed tight against hers. Slowly, between the feeling of his strength and his warmth and the soothing crackling of the fire, she relaxed. It felt so nice to be held, and again, she found herself wanting to believe in something that wasn’t real. Maybe she could chalk it up to the lonely life she’d lived up to this point.
“So tell me about your life.”
Jane stiffened slightly. How did these brothers do that? They both had the uncanny ability to read what she was thinking—or at least it sure seemed that way.
“What about it?” She wasn’t sure how much she could share—or even if she wanted to. If he did give her the heave-ho when he got his memory back, she didn’t want him pitying her, too.
“What was your home like?”
“It was a big, old Vic—an old house.”
“Did your father do a lot of entertaining?”
Before she thought better of it, she laughed.
“No, not hardly.
My house would not be the type of place that people would come to for a party. And my father was a bit—eccentric.”
“Really?
How so?”
She shifted slightly so she could see Rhys. He watched her with those peculiar eyes, interest and curiosity adding to their glitter.
“Well…” She didn’t know what he already believed about his American fiancée. Did he think she was a lady?
Or a commoner?
Probably not a commoner if he was a viscount.
She sighed. This was too hard. This was the reason she couldn’t have close contact with him, because she found that she did want to share with him. She wanted him to understand her.
Maybe it was because they had been intimate physically, so it only seemed natural to be intimate emotionally, too. Or maybe it was because no one had ever really asked her about her father and her life. Not without the usual morbid curiosity.
“When my mother passed away, my father went kind of— mad.” She glanced at him to make sure that didn’t conflict with his preconceived beliefs of her.
He waited for her to continue, no judgment in his beautiful features.
She stared at the flickering flames of the fire and did continue. “He talked to my mother and generally acted as though she never died. And he wasn’t really very—attentive to me after that.” Then she quickly added, “He was kind and he did love me, but it was as if part of him was gone. He was absentminded and often in a world of his own, which was hard.”
The usual guilt filled her, guilt over the resentment she’d felt toward her father. Guilt over the fact that she still wished he had put her, his living child, first over a memory.
She blinked, realizing that Rhys hadn’t responded. Reluctantly she peeked up at him, but instead of the pity she was sure she would see, he frowned.
“It must have been very difficult,” he stated, a hard edge to his voice. “You were a little girl—only ten. You needed your father.”
Yes, she had.
“What did you do? How did you live?” he asked. His fingers stroked her arm, rubbing gently up and down over the cotton of her blouse as if he thought she was cold.
She shivered, even though she wasn’t. “I grew up very quickly. As any kid would, I guess.”
“
Elizabeth
has had to grow up quickly, too, but she lost both her parents at once. You had a father.”
She didn’t say anything, although she did feel a measure of comfort from his soothing touch and his quiet indignation. He understood and defended feelings that she’d begun to think were unreasonable and selfish of her. After all, her father had been mad with grief, and his fantasy world had allowed him a measure of peace.
How ironic that the only person who’d ever understood her anguish was living in a fantasy world himself.
“What was your life like? Tell me.”
She didn’t want to tell him everything. About the loneliness and awkwardness of being the crazy mortician’s introverted daughter. So she simply said, “I was generally busy running the house, and helping my father with his business.”
“Which was?” he asked.
She hesitated. “He was a mortician.”
His hand stilled on her arm. She stared at the fire, avoiding his eyes. Indignation would be replaced by revulsion now.
“He was a mortician?” His voice did sound aghast.
She nodded.
“Did your father do his work right there?
In your home?”
She nodded again. “It was a little strange, but since that was all I knew—”
“The man wasn’t fit to be a father,” he said flatly. “Making you help with a business
like
that—making you live with it.”
She blinked, surprised at his anger. “Well, I only ran the business end. Meeting with the families, helping them make the arrangements, helping run the funerals.”
“You were surrounded by death. It must have been horrible—frightening.”
She considered that. Yes, she had always been surrounded by death, and it had been difficult, and at times depressing, but she couldn’t recall a time when death hadn’t affected her life. Death had stolen her
mother,
and her father long before he actually died. Death had made her different.
Made her an oddity.
But it had also been the only constant in her world.
“Death is easy for me,” she finally said. “It’s living that’s scary.”
Rhys frowned.
Death easy?
He didn’t understand that. Losing his parents had been one of the most difficult experiences of his life. And losing Eliz…
No, he hadn’t lost
Elizabeth
. What was he thinking? Why would he even make that mistake? Jane’s confession had his mind whirring—jumbled.
“Death is easy?” He just couldn’t wrap his mind around that idea.
“No, that isn’t the right word. Death, the funeral
parlor
, that
was what I knew. It’s only now—when I’m trying to make a new life for myself—that I realize how very little I know about living.”
He stared at her. She regarded him with huge, solemn eyes. How could she think she didn’t know about life? She exuded vitality. Life danced in her green eyes and sparkled in her smile. Life scented her skin, fresh and dynamic. He tasted life on her lips when he kissed her.
Before he thought better of it, he captured those lips. His mouth clung to hers, tasting her. She responded immediately, her arms twining about his neck, her lips clinging to his.
Suddenly, he could more than taste her life, her vitality. He could sense her heart beating, the blood coursing through her veins. Her energy surrounded him.
His mouth became more insistent against hers, forcing her lips open, devouring her.
She whimpered at his forceful onslaught, but she responded, giving him what he wanted.
He caught her around the waist and pulled her onto his lap, so he had easier access to her mouth, to her warm, pulsing energy.
Jane’s hands tangled in his hair, stroked his face. She seemed to be trying to calm him, even as she gave to him what he demanded. But gradually, he regained control of his desire, of his need.
He lifted his head and stared down at her where she lounged on him, her head in the crook of his arm.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice lower and gruffer than he intended. “I’m afraid when it comes to
you,
I often seem to lose my self-control.”
Her eyes glittered with the same passion he felt raging inside him, and it seemed at odds with the heavy sigh she breathed out. “I lose control, too.”
He smiled. “I guess we will just have to get married soon.”
She smiled in return, but Rhys couldn’t miss the uneasiness that had replaced the desire in her eyes.
He repositioned her so she was no longer lying back, but against his chest, her head nestled under his chin. “Janie, you don’t have to be worried. You will have the life you always wanted. You will be surrounded by my family and our love and our laughter.”
But even as he made the assurance, something faint and undefined
niggled
his mind.
A distant sensation that there was an important thing that he’d forgotten.
But he simply couldn’t figure it out—the memory was just beyond his reach.
He didn’t want to remember it anyway. He didn’t need to; he had Jane and that was all that mattered.
Although, he couldn’t help but notice that Jane didn’t respond to his promise. Did she doubt him? Should she?