Page 32 of West End Earl
“Ophelia, wake up.” Not so much as a flicker of a copper-tipped eyelash. How long had it been since she answered to her name? “Adam,” he tried, louder this time.
It hit him in that heartbeat between her sleep and awareness that if she didn’t share this attraction he was navigating, their friendship could get extremely awkward, very fast. He could have misread everything this morning.
Damn, he needed to get a grip on himself. Crossing his arms over his chest, he nudged the toe of her boot. “If you need to sleep, there’s a perfectly comfortable bed right over there, and nightshirts in the dressing room.”
Ophelia grunted as she came awake, and he refused to be charmed by the sound.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
She blinked, rubbing a palm over her face. “Landlady evicted me. I went home and the place had been tossed. I don’t know how they got in, but they destroyed everything. Well”—she smiled weakly—“almost everything.”
A cacophony of emotions exploded in Cal’s chest, then crept up his throat. Closing his eyes for a second, he tried to make sense of them all.
Fear. “I told you there was a threat. What if you’d been there when they got in?”
Anger. Thrusting fingers through the long strands of his hair, he shoved the mass off his face and paced a step or two, only to whirl around and return to where he’d started. She didn’t have much to begin with. How dare they destroy her things?
Then, blast it all, satisfaction slithered through to rear its ugly head. “You can move in here, obviously. I’ve been asking you to for a while.” Cal gestured around the room. “Whatever you need. It’s yours for as long as you want to stay.”
Puppy, damn her stubborn hide, shook her head. “Thank you for the offer, but no. I came to say goodbye, collect my wages, and tender my resignation.”
The words hit him like ice from a champagne bucket. “Resignation? Now you’re talking nonsense.”
She lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. “My uncle found me. That’s obvious. I only need to make it to the end of the year. I’ll slip off to a small village somewhere. Make it harder for him to track me this time.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Cal snapped. “If he’s found you once, he’ll find you again.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. I feel so very safe now.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ll take on another name. Only come to London to collect my allowance.”
That was a small comfort. At least she had some sort of plan.
“But you’re going to leave? Just like that? Casually end our friendship and quit your job? Toss a wave over your shoulder, then go live under an assumed identity?” Cal added a dramatic hand flip in case the point wasn’t clear. A part of his brain stood removed from the situation, wondering what exactly he was doing. Reminding him that he looked ridiculous. That part of his brain grew quieter with each pounding heartbeat as the emotions he’d been grappling with since her attack spilled over.
In response, Puppy thumped her head against the padded chair back. “It isn’t like that. You’re adding connotations to this. Am I quitting? Yes. Because it’s rather hard to deal with my duties here if I’m not living in London. And if I stay, I’ll wind up dead. Although, if you’d like me to be anactualsteward to that forest you refuse to let me do a damn thing with, then by all means, keep paying me a ridiculous wage to oversee a copse of trees in the middle of bloody nowhere. But we both know I’m not a steward, and I can’t carry out my duties long-distance. This doesn’t have to be the end of our friendship. I can visit when I collect my allowance.”
Just like Cal’s mother visited in between lovers. Mother would be home long enough to reignite hope that perhaps this time she’d stay. In all fairness, her departure usually coincided with his father finding a distraction with another married woman or a servant and starting the whole brutal process over again. Always in competition, those two. Seeing who could hurt the other worse, flouncing off in a fit of theatrics with zero regard for how their abandonment affected Emma and Cal, who wondered each time if their parent would ever return. Cal wouldn’t let his heart wander into that kind of unstable territory again.
“I don’t want you to go.” The words tore out of him.
“There’s no reason for me to stay,” she said.
“Ouch.” Cal recoiled, rubbing his chest. “Warn a gent next time you take a swipe, will you?”
“Don’t take it like that,” Puppy huffed. “I don’t see any reason to stay in London. You’ve welcomed me into your life, and I appreciate that. I do. I appreciate your”—she stumbled—“friendship. More than you know.” Her voice softened. “But I don’t have anything in London besides you.”
Maybe it was the late hour. Or the wine at dinner and the brandy after. Or that feeling of someone else he cared for leaving him behind, but he didn’t bother to temper his reply. “Aren’t I enough?” Honesty sounded an awful lot like begging, but there it was. “I can keep you safe. Hire guards to protect you—”
She lurched from the chair to stand so close their chests nearly touched. It took every bit of his self-control to not close that gap. He wanted to feel her. And yet her expression gave no indication of physical desire. Frankly, the woman looked like she’d happily wring his neck. At least she was talking to him and not marching out the door.
“I’ve been evicted because my landlady doesn’t want these problems at her door. What makes you think I’d bring them here and expect you to handle them?”
“Because handling problems is what I do.” His voice rose with the tension roiling inside him.
“I won’t be another one of your problems,” Puppy said, matching his volume.
The space between their bodies disappeared, and he breathed in her sandalwood heat until she filled his head. When he spoke, it was quieter, which only made the crack in his voice that much more obvious. “You could never be a problem.”
She melted against him when he cupped her jaw, brushing the corner of her mouth with his thumb. God, her lips were so pink and plump, andright there.
