Read Online The Millionaire Rogue by Jessica Peterson - Free Book Online Page A

calling
me
the devil.”
    Sophia smiled, doing her best to ignore the heat that pulsed through her at Hope’s touch. “I think he means it as a compliment, Mr. Hope.”
    â€œMr. Hope?” He cocked his head to the side, eyes sparking with mischief. “Sounds like a stodgy fellow, old and boring, doesn’t he?”
    â€œThomas.” Sophia’s smile grew. “I suppose having shared a closet and a kiss, we are to be friends now.”
    â€œFriends, yes.” Mr. Hope slid his palms down the length of her forearms to clasp her hands. He looked down at her fingers and ran his thumb along the edge of her palm.
    That touch.
    A shiver of anticipation sparked up her spine.
    â€œI hope you’ll forgive me—” He paused, as if deciding what to say next. At last he looked up. His eyes, very blue, seemed to glow in the darkness, earnest with an edge of daring. He scoffed. “There’s no decent way to phrase this, I’m afraid. And what I’m about to say—I mean it as a compliment, I do, so I hope you will take no offense. But you are not at all what—whom—I expected. Where has Sophia been hiding all these years? Under Miss Blaise’s bed?”
    It was Sophia’s turn to scoff. She looked down at their clasped hands, trying in vain to ignore the skittish pounding of her pulse. After a moment she looked up and smiled. “And what of Thomas? Does Mr. Hope stash him in the brandy board of his study?”
    â€œNowhere else to keep a scoundrel like Thomas. The fellow’s liable to drink me out of house and home before summer’s out. He’s got dashedly expensive taste, you know.”
    Sophia nodded at the box on the seat beside Hope. “So I’m learning.”
    â€œBut Sophia,” Thomas said, leaning closer. “Sophia, I rather like.”
    Again she looked down at their hands, only to realize that she, too, leaned close to Thomas, so close the tops of their heads nearly touched. “Me, too. But I’m afraid the
ton
would disagree. And my mother—I daresay Sophia would send her into a fit of apoplexy. I can hear her now: ‘The
horror,
oh, the
horror
! How my daughter doth deceive me! Jesus, I am ready, take me now!’
    â€œNo,” she sighed. “Sophia will not do. She may be an adventurer—”
    â€œAnd quite the actress, might I add.”
    Sophia grinned, a bittersweet thing that faded as quickly as it appeared. “Flatterer. Any debutante worth her salt knows how to make a scene. I’ve yet to master the swoon, but I can wail with the best of them.”
    He lightly squeezed her hands, imploring her to meet his eyes. They were narrowed, his head cocked to the side in curiosity. He was looking at her in that way again, his handsome face glowing with unabashed interest. Sophia didn’t know what she’d done, exactly, to garner such attention; there had been none of the batting eyelashes or forced laughter or meaningless flattery she usually employed at Almack’s.
    Not that such things had proven effective in snaring suitors, anyway.
    But still. Sophia did nothing to earn Hope’s attention, save tear through the night at his side with giddy abandon.
    And any debutante worth her salt knew giddy abandon was not the sort of sentiment that attracted a well-connected viscount or duke’s son.
    â€œBesides.” Sophia made to drop Thomas’s hands, but he held her fast. “No man in his right mind would risk life and limb on an attachment to an adventurer and an actress.”
    â€œThe
horror
!” Thomas grinned, shaking his head. “No, Sophia, I must disagree. Men and their right minds aside—really, are we even in possession of such things?—some of us prefer adventurers far and away to debutantes.”
    Sophia looked away, face burning even before she said the words. “Not the sort of gentleman I hope to marry. That I need to marry.”
    Hope