Read Online The Scoundrel's Lover by Jess Michaels - Free Book Online

her maid stays behind.”
    “Why?” Abbot asked, his eyes widening.
    Marcus gave a half-smile. “If she insists on seeing a wolf, I would like to remind her that she is a sheep. Perhaps that will stop her from coming here.”
    Abbot nodded and left the room, but as soon as he was gone, Marcus all but collapsed back into the chair. He might bluster a good game, but his heart had already begun to pound erratically in his chest at the mere idea that Annabelle was in such close proximity. She shouldn’t be. And he hoped he could frighten her off.
    And yet he wanted her here. With him. In his office. With no one else around to ruin the atmosphere.
    He heard them on the stair and got back to his feet. The door opened and Abbot motioned her inside. “May I get you anything else?” he asked.
    Marcus stared at Annabelle and didn’t look away as he said, “No.”
    The door shut and he drank the look of her in. Her green and yellow striped day dress only accentuated the slender lines of her body. It was expensive—but of course it would be—and fitted to perfection. It fastened in the front. How long would it take to remove it?
    “Why are you here?” he asked, his voice rough.
    She had been watching him intently, but his question seemed to break the spell between them because she finally blinked. “I-I—” she stammered.
    With a curse beneath her breath that he was surprised a lady knew, she hurried past him and stood at his window where he had brooded not a few moments ago. Her back was to him, but he saw her taking a few long breaths, as if to calm herself. Were her nerves because of whatever she’d come here to say or because of him?
    “It is different here in the day,” she mused, almost as if to herself.
    He held his gaze on her back, stunned that she had just voiced exactly his musings before she stepped into his club for the second time.
    “Yes,” he said, his voice still stiff and formal. “And I must ask again, why are you here?”
    She faced him, and he saw the determination on her face and the light of strength in her eyes. He couldn’t deny how much he admired them both, even before she explained herself.
    “I have been pondering Crispin a great deal,” she began.
    “Have you?”
    “Yes. I believe he may have been here again last night,” she explained.
    Marcus’s eyes widened. “Please do not tell me you snuck into my club again last night.”
    Her brow knitted. “I have never snuck into your club at all, sir!”
    He let out his breath in frustration. “You know what I mean. Did you come here last night, Annabelle?”
    “No! I was at a ball last night. I surmised this was where Crispin might have gone from clues he gave my mother.” She broke her gaze from his at last. “I did consider coming here—”
    “Miss Flynn—”
    “—but I did not do it,” she finished. “I know my sneaking out frightened Rafe, and I would not do that to my mother, at least not without a good deal of planning ahead of time so there would be no chance she might find out. She was in enough of a state as it was, thanks to Crispin. I am the closest thing to a respectable child as she has. I couldn’t create worry over me.”
    She sucked in a breath as she finished that statement. Her face was flush with emotion and her eyes lit up with even more.
    “Will you sit down?” he offered, wanting in some strange way to calm her.
    She seemed to ponder the merits of accepting his offer for a moment as she looked around his austere office. “Your guests, your members, they do not…they do not take their fun here , do they?”
    Marcus lifted his brows. “No. This is my private office. There is no entertaining done here.”
    Of course, through a door just behind her was a bedroom where he could easily change that. But he shoved the thought aside to gather with the other inappropriate things this woman brought out in him.
    She touched one of the wooden chairs across from his desk, gliding her fingers across the surface