Read Online Dangerous to Love by Rexanne Becnel - Free Book Online Page A

he has intimidated you.
    Even though he did. Even though he scared the wits out of her, with his brooding eyes and intense manner—
    She bolted from the bed. He would not get the best of her. No indeed. She stopped an arm’s length from the door. “Who is it?”
    “You know very well who it is, Miss Drysdale. You need not pretend otherwise.”
    It occurred absurdly to Lucy that she needed to light a lamp—several lamps—for Ivan Thornton’s voice was far too silky and seductive to be allowed free rein in the dark.
    She stepped nearer the door. “Go away. I am not about to come out there in my wrapper. Nor am I likely to let you in,” she said, clutching her hands and pressing them to her bosom.
    “What if I let myself in?”
    She gasped. “You would not!”
    “You have not known me long enough to know what I will or will not do, Miss Drysdale. Lucy,” he added after a brief pause.
    “I haven’t given you leave to address me so familiarly,” she stated, though not nearly so forcefully as she would have liked. “Go away from here before I … before I call out to your grandmother.”
    He laughed, low and husky, and Lucy could picture most disturbingly his face: eyes glittering, teeth flashing, lips curved in a way far too elemental for her comfort.
    “Surely you are aware that she is no threat whatsoever to me.”
    “And surely you know I will not come out nor let you in. So why are you at my door?” she demanded in exasperation.
    She heard a movement, as if he’d shifted and now leaned upon the door. “You seemed so interested in my activities outside. I thought I’d answer any questions you might have.”
    Questions indeed . Oh, but the man had no shame whatsoever! She sternly overlooked the fact that she was fair to bursting with questions.
    “I awakened to a strange noise in a strange house. If I interrupted your … your … whatever it was you were doing, I apologize. Now will you please go away?”
    For long seconds there was no response. Lucy took the final step to the door and laid her ear cautiously against the crack between door and frame.
    “Good night, Lucy,” he whispered, right in her ear it seemed. Like a terrified hare, her heart began a maddened thumping, as if his warm breath had caressed her ear and his lips had moved within her hair.
    She did not dare respond. Instead she stumbled backward until her calves came up against a slipper chair and she sat down hard upon it.
    Good night, Lucy.
    He was gone. She knew it though she’d not heard a sound of his departure. She felt it, she decided, in that secret part of her heart that was still a girl’s.
    In that secret part of her heart that was still silly and foolish and terribly, terribly naïve, she amended.
    She remained there, in the gold and cream striped chair, for a long while. The sun broke the hold of darkness and slowly brightened the heavy drapes. The pretty room came into a sharper focus—the mahogany bedroom suite, the gilt-framed floral paintings. But still she sat there, contemplating the weeks and months to come.
    Perhaps she should speak to Lady Westcott about taking another house for the duration of their stay in town. For one thing, she did not think she could survive living under the same roof as the violently attractive and unpredictable Lord Westcott. In addition, placing young Lady Valerie in constant proximity to the very man she was most expressly not to become linked with, was not very wise.
    Unless what the dowager countess wanted and what she said she wanted were two different things entirely.
    Was the old woman wily enough to believe that her wayward grandson would seriously pursue only that which he was denied—or rather she whom he was denied?
    Lucy sat in the chair a while longer contemplating that thought until she heard an upstairs maid moving about in the hall, and a street sweeper whistling somewhere in the street below her window. She stood up then, feeling more exhausted than she had when she’d