Page 74 of Pride: The Rogue
Sheis sorry?I’m a complete bastard.
A winter wind gusted. “How awful you should carry so much,” Livian murmured. “When surviving required that of you.”
He tensed. Just what she’d been apologizing for hit him.
Unnerved, Latimer grunted.
“My bonnet.”
He gave her a confused look. “What?”
Livian pointed, and he followed that gesture.
An enormous, wide-brimmed straw—and thoroughly soaked—hat dangled forlornly at the end of a branch a foot below them. Covered in leaves and brush as it was, he’d failed to see it until now.
A fast-familiar annoyance where this woman was concerned, flared to life. “That’swhy you’re out here on your own?” he gritted out. “For a bloody hat?”
“Au contraire,” she said again and lifted a finger and wagged it at him. “This is not just any bonnet. My nephew gave it to me as a birthday gift. Last night, I lost it in the storm. I had to retrieve it.”
“I’m sure your nephew would rather have his foolhardy aunt alive than lying on a muddy road with a broken neck she got trying to rescue that hat,” he said deadpan.
“Ah, yes, but I wasn’t fetching it for Alex, but because of what the gift means to me.”
That quiet admission froze him on the spot.
Would the woman you’re headed to meet and soon marry have ever had any sentimentality over a gift some child gave her?
Having met the duchess a handful of times, he could say with absolute certainty she wouldn’t have given two shites one way or the other. Nay, she’d have had a milliner make her a dozen more—and finer quality ones, at that.
“Lachlan?” Livian’s halting voice snapped him out of those irrelevant ruminations.
Latimer propelled himself down to the lower limb. In a handful of seconds, he’d managed to free an article so cherished she’d gone out on life and—figuratively and literally—limb.
Livian clapped happily. “Huzzah, Lachlan! You’ve done it!” She hopped up with a speed that sent his heart plummeting.
“Will you have a care, sweetheart?” he hissed.
Latimer gave the article a deft toss. He managed to land the coveted piece with accurate precision upon the top of the carriage.
Then, he reached up and hauled Livian down and into his arms. The instant her body melded to his, fire blazed to life within him. Battling back his desire, Latimer wrapped one arm about Livian’s waist, anchoring her against his chest.
With painstaking care, he eased them down the tree until, at last, their feet touched the ground.
Neither he nor Livian, however, made any attempt to move. They remained that way; she with her arms folded about his neck.
And for the hell of him, Latimer couldn’t take his gaze from her mouth or chase away the memory of the sweet taste of her upon his lips.
Livian’s lashes fluttered, and she edged her neck back.
Latimer smiled smugly. “Remembering my kiss, are you, darlin?” he asked, filled with all-pleased, male satisfaction.
“It wasn’t just yours,” she said, breathless. “It was our kiss.”
A fresh surge of blood rushed to his shaft and sent Latimer into a full, agonizingly painful, cock-stand.
God, with her feisty spirit, strength, and confidence, she was breathtaking, and Latimer found himself compelled by Livian Lovelace. He hungered for her, this slip of an innocent woman, in ways that were nothing less than perilous—to his sanity, body,and most important of all, to the business he had planned with the Dynevor and the duchess.
Disconcerted, Latimer set Livian away from him and hitched himself onto the base of the carriage door. He fetched her hat.
