Page 80 of A Rogue's Rules for Seduction
Finn collected himself first. “Ah. Dom. Glad to find you here and not washed out to sea or shivering with a fatal case of ague.”
“Hale as a cargo ship,” he said with forced cheer. “Everything’s fine. Nothing to concern yourself with. You can return to the house and I’ll be along momentarily.”
As he spoke, Kieran tried to peer around Dom, and Dom kept shifting, placing himself between his friend and the cabin’s interior.
“Where’s Willa?” Kieran demanded without preamble.
“She’s fine.”
“Dom?” Willa’s voice floated out. And then, to his utter horror, she appeared beside him, the blanket wrapped around her. It was plain that she wasn’t wearing anything beneath. She looked bleary, her hair mussed, as if she’d spent all of yesterday and into the early hours of the morning having athletic, enthusiastic sex. Which she had.
With him.
Finn coughed, and Kieran made a choked noise, and those sounds seemed to stir Willa from her grogginess. Her eyes opened wider and when shecaught sight of her two brothers goggling at her, her face and whatever part of her body wasn’t covered by the blanket turned pink.
“Oh, my God,” she gasped.
Dom held up his hands. “It isn’t—”
“I’ll just... excuse myself.” She turned away and moved deeper into the cabin.
“Give us a minute,” Dom said to the brothers. “We’ll join you when we’re ready.”
“But—”
Dom shut the door in the Ransome brothers’ faces. He turned to Willa as she pulled on her clothes. “Let me help with that.”
“I can manage.”
Tautness gripped his spine and spread through his body. Of course she’d be distant when her family had just burst in on her, finding her wearing only a blanket. He and Willa dressed in silence, then left the cabin to find her brothers standing on the grass sloping away from the small structure.
Kieran and Finn looked damned pleased with themselves.
“For all your protestations,” Kieran said with a smug smile, “our maneuverings couldn’t have had a better outcome.”
“A weddingdoesseem to be in your future,” Finn added.
Dom searched Willa’s face for a sign, anythingthat might show whether or not she liked that idea. Yet she kept her expression unreadable.
“We ought to head back,” Celeste offered cautiously.
“Let’s go,” Dom said. He didn’t want to leave the haven of the cabin, but talking to Willa was imperative, and he couldn’t do that here, with her brothers and their wives as an audience.
He walked quickly as they all made their way back to Longbridge’s house. The sooner he and Willa could get some privacy, the sooner they’d shake off this choking net of tension that trapped them both. All the while, though, her brothers, Celeste, and Tabitha kept up a flow of chitchat, purposefully filling the tense air with words.
Finally, they reached the manor.
“Everyone’s eager for your return,” Kieran explained, heading toward the stone terrace at the back of the house. “Longbridge has planned a party to welcome you back.”
Willa pressed her lips together in a thin, pale line.
“Tell him we’re both exhausted,” Dom said, “and the party’s going to have to go on without us.”
Without waiting for Kieran’s response, Dom wrapped an arm around Willa’s shoulders and guided her to one of the side entrances. They took the servants’ stairs, but instead of leading Willa toher room, he went up, higher, until they reached the very top floor of the house.
“Where are we?” she asked as he pulled her out into a dark, narrow hallway.
“Don’t worry—I know where we’re going.” Well,he did know in one way, but in another... he was lost.
