Rebecca Hagan Lee (31 page)

Diamond squirmed in James’s embrace and he opened his eyes and looked down at her. “Are you uncomfortable, sweetheart? I don’t blame you,” he told her, “I don’t like the feel of it, either.” James shifted her slight weight higher in his arm and balanced the bottle against his stomach for a moment as he nudged his shirt out of the way. His stomach muscles rippled in reaction as the smooth glass bottle came in contact with his skin while he repositioned Diamond in his arm so that her tiny face rested against his warm flesh instead of the stiff and scratchy fabric of his shirt.

Elizabeth felt as if her heart was bumping against her rib cage. Her mouth went dry and she seemed to have trouble regulating her breathing. Her flesh began to tingle in anticipation and her body grew warm and moist and uncomfortable in the most intimate of places. She didn’t think she’d made a sound, but she must have, because James suddenly looked up and saw her. “Good evening,” he said softly. “Or good morning.” He stared at Elizabeth for what seemed like an eternity before he asked, “Did she wake you?”

There seemed no point in politely pretending she hadn’t. Elizabeth nodded.

“I heard her crying.”

James frowned. “I was afraid of that.”

“What was wrong with her?”

“She was hungry.” He shrugged his shoulders. “That’s the way it is with babies,” he said. “There’s no warning. One minute they’re sleeping soundly and the next minute they’re crying loud enough to wake the neighborhood. By the time I got from the balcony to the nursery and got her bottle warmed, she was really frustrated and upset.”

“What were you doing on the balcony?”

Watching over you, James almost said as he mentally cursed his slip of the tongue. “I sit on the balcony to smoke,” he said.

“This late at night?” Elizabeth pushed her hair out of her eyes. “When do you sleep?” Then before he could answer, she asked, “What time is it anyway?”

“I couldn’t sleep.” James smiled at her and Elizabeth noticed the network of fine lines at the corners of his blue eyes. “That’s why I was still out on the balcony. And it’s a little after three. I heard the clock downstairs chime a little while ago.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” Elizabeth admitted. “I was dead to the world until Diamond started crying.”

“Uh-oh.” James clucked his tongue against his teeth and shook his head as if to he meant to commiserate with her. “That’s a bad sign. It means you’ve got it.”

“Got what?” She thought he was teasing her, but she couldn’t be sure.

“Maternal instinct,” he answered in a solemn tone of voice.

“That’s bad?” Now she knew he was teasing. No one would ever think having a governess with maternal instinct was bad.

“It depends on how you look at it,” James explained. “It’s good for me because as your employer, I’m delighted to know I won’t have to worry any longer about your not hearing the baby cry or the other girls call out should they need you at night. But it may not be so good for you.” He shook his head as if he fully understood her new dilemma. “Because once you have children and discover you have maternal instinct, you never quite sleep as soundly again. You never quite feel you can relax your guard until the children are grown and able to take care of themselves.”

Elizabeth shivered at the daunting prospect of never having another moment’s peace where your children were concerned. “Is that how you feel?”

He nodded. “Every day of my life.”

She smiled at him. The responsibility she’d accepted as governess was an awesome one, but somehow the idea of caring for the Treasures didn’t seem quite as daunting knowing that James was equally committed to sharing the
responsibility with her. Parenting didn’t seem quite so overwhelming when two people were committed to the task. “You know,” she said softly, “I should be doing that.”

“Doing what?” He looked up at her, genuinely surprised.

“Feeding the baby.”

Her quiet words evoked an image in his mind that rocked James to the core. Elizabeth feeding the baby—their baby. Elizabeth lying propped upon a mound of pillows in the center of his bed with him beside her watching as she opened her nightgown to share a plump breast with a beautiful dark-haired infant. He envisioned her lovely pear-shaped breast so engorged with milk that the aureole surrounding her pink nipple was twice its normal size. As he listened to the sucking sounds Diamond made as she pulled on the nipple of her bottle, James imagined her tiny bow-shaped mouth greedily suckling Elizabeth’s lovely full breasts instead. And he vividly imagined himself sucking them long after the baby was satisfied. “Yes, you probably should be,” he agreed at last. “But I don’t mind.”

“I really should be doing it,” Elizabeth insisted. “It’s what you’re paying me for.”

James grinned. “I haven’t paid you yet. Besides,” he said, pulling the empty bottle from the baby’s mouth and setting it on the floor beside the rocking chair. “She’s already finished her bottle and I’m too comfortable to move.” He gently turned Diamond onto her stomach, across his knees, and began to pat her back. He wasn’t too comfortable to move. He was too
uncomfortable
to move. He was rock hard behind the front of his trousers and not about to stand up in front of Elizabeth and reveal the results of his erotic imagination. “You look tired. Why don’t you go back to bed?”

“I
was
tired,” Elizabeth told him. “So tired that the last thing I remember is Pasamonte throwing stones at the don and Sancho Panza.”

James raised a questioning eyebrow in her direction.

“I was listening to you read
Don Quixote
to the Treasures
while I was dressing for dinner.” She stopped abruptly and widened her eyes in horror as she remembered. “Dinner.” Elizabeth stared at James, willing him to understand. “I’m terribly sorry. I don’t know what else to say. I forgot about our dinner.” She moved farther into the room. “How was it?”

“Lonely.”

The atmosphere seemed to thicken around them. Finding it hard to breathe normally or to think rationally when she was standing in front of the half-dressed man of her dreams wearing only a satin dressing gown, Elizabeth glanced down at her waist, then picked at a loose thread on the sash that encircled it. She pulled at the thread until it came away in her hands, unraveling the hem at the end of her dressing gown sash. Realizing what she’d done, Elizabeth tried to cover her attack of nervous energy and repair the damage done to her clothing by twisting the end of the sash into a tight little roll. “I meant the food,” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I didn’t eat.”

“Then you’ve broken one of your own cardinal rules.”

She moved with such grace. James couldn’t stop looking at her, watching her. He couldn’t help but feast on the way her satin dressing gown molded itself to her breasts and hips and thighs, the way the flicker of light from the stove seemed to reflect on the satin covering the slightly convex mound below her waist. “Which are?” He sounded as if he’d never heard of them.

“They’re your rules,” she replied. “You should know what they are.”

“Refresh my memory,” James answered in his deep, husky voice.

Elizabeth frowned at him.

“Humor me.”

“All right,” she recited. “Rule number one: Never leave the Treasures alone. Rule number two: Never leave the balcony door open. And rule number three: Never, ever, miss breakfast, lunch, or dinner.”

James closed his eyes. Those were rules he insisted his
staff abide by. He supposed they could be called cardinal rules. And if breaking them meant punishment, he was already destined for purgatory. Because he hadn’t just broken one cardinal rule. Tonight, he’d broken all three. And he was in serious danger of breaking cardinal rule number four: never seduce your daughters’ governess—or allow your daughters’ governess to seduce you. James’s breath caught in his throat as Elizabeth moved closer, then glanced around the room, searching for some place to sit. He lifted his feet from the seat of the chair he was using as a footstool and pushed it toward her. Elizabeth lowered herself onto the tiny chair as James reached out with his foot, hooked another one by its bottom rung and pulled it to him.

“You’re quite adept at that,” Elizabeth commented.

“I’ve usually got my hands full,” he told her. “I’ve been forced to learn to make good use of my other body parts.”

“I’ll bet,” Elizabeth blurted out, staring not at James’s stockinged feet, but at the ripple of his muscles below the thick wedge of hair on his chest. She didn’t realize she’d spoken the comment aloud until she heard the deep rumble of his laughter.

Elizabeth blushed red from her neck to the roots of her hair.

“Making comments like that can get you into trouble,” he warned.

She lifted her chin a notch higher and defiantly flipped a section of her long hair back over her shoulder. Elizabeth felt as if she were walking on the edge of a precipice. One wrong move and she could go tumbling over the rim, and yet, she couldn’t back off the path. She was compelled to disregard the danger, to dance along the rim of the precipice, and to continue the thrilling journey into uncharted territory. “Can it?”

“Aye.” All traces of the crisp, proper British businessman vanished. James’s one-word answer was pure Scots seduction.

Elizabeth wet her suddenly dry lips with the tip of her tongue.

Her unconscious signal made James tense even more. And he was already wound as tightly as a clock. His body ached, practically screaming with the need for physical relief despite the fact that he’d been running all day long on less than four hours of sleep and was currently sitting in a rocking chair burping his three-day-old daughter after her early-morning bottle. “Doing that can get you into even bigger trouble.”

Elizabeth looked up at him from her seat on the chair beside his feet. “I think it’s too late for the warning. I think I’m in big trouble already,” she whispered softly, fervently. “What should I do?”

James stared down into her extraordinary blue-green eyes and read the hot desire and the confusion mirrored in them. “Run,” he whispered. “Save yourself while you can.”

Elizabeth pushed herself to her feet. “Is that what you want?”

James’s jaw tightened and he looked at her, willing her to understand. No, it wasn’t what he wanted. Or what he needed. But it was the best thing for her. Elizabeth needed to understand that, needed to understand the noble sacrifice he was trying to make on her behalf. He patted Diamond one last time and listened as she let out a satisfied burp, then James lifted the baby from her place on his lap and held her out to Elizabeth. “What I want,” he said bluntly, “is for you to do what you’re paid to do. Take Diamond and put her to bed and—”

Elizabeth had the baby in her arms before he finished speaking.

James breathed a sigh of relief as she disappeared into the Treasures’ bedroom. He stood quietly for a few moments, contemplating his next move. They were safe. At least for the moment. It was time for him to disappear. He turned and started toward the door, then came up short when Elizabeth blocked his path.

“And?” she asked softly, provocatively, deliberately moistening her lips with the tip of his tongue.

James stared blankly at her.

“You said you wanted me to put Diamond to bed and …”

James’s whole body vibrated with the effort he was making to restrain himself. Every nerve he possessed hummed with tension, and he clamped down on his natural inclination to sweep Elizabeth off her feet and carry her to his bed. He gritted his teeth. “Oh, hell.”

Elizabeth’s face fell. Tears welled up in her eyes and threatened to spill over her bottom lashes.

James stared at the glimmer of tears and the stricken expression on her face and all of his good intentions evaporated. “And,” he whispered as he reached for her and pulled her up against him. “Kiss me good night.”

THE FIRST BRUSH
of his lips against hers set Elizabeth’s heart racing and her nerve endings jangling. She leaned into him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and tilted her head back to better accommodate him. James cupped one of her firm plump breasts in his hand as he teased the seam of her lips with his tongue, tasting, probing until she parted her lips and allowed his tongue to slip through.

Elizabeth shivered as James used his tongue to woo her. He deepened his kiss. Elizabeth tasted him, feeling the roughness of his tongue as he raked the warm recesses of her mouth and taught her tongue how to answer his demands. She lost herself in his kiss—lost herself in the warmth of him, the scent of him, the feel of his hard body pressed to hers. If kissing was an art, James was the master of it and she, his most avid and ardent student, willingly learning everything he wanted to teach her.

Elizabeth burrowed her fingers into the thick hair at the nape of his neck and held on—wanting more of him, needing more of him.

Suddenly James broke the kiss. His breathing was heavy and irregular and his heart seemed to beat at a much faster rate than normal as he backed up a few steps to put some
distance between them. James stared down at Elizabeth. Christ, but she was beautiful! Her lips were red and swollen from his kisses, the expression in her blue-green eyes slightly dazed, dreamy-eyed, and sensual. She looked as thoroughly kissed and as well loved as a new bride—even the creamy skin of her cheeks was suffused with color and slightly abraded by his unshaven jaw.

“Damn me,” he muttered as he reached out with his index finger and gently traced a line along her cheekbone. He opened his mouth as if to say something more, then closed it and quietly walked away, leaving Elizabeth alone and quivering with emotion in the playroom of the nursery, and wondering how she had managed, in the space of four days and two kisses, to fall head over heels in love with him.