Page 12 of Scoundrel for Sale
He groaned and rubbed the heel of his hand against an eye. “Is there any way you’d let me hang onto it? Just as a loan?” He looked at her then, and his green eyes were beseeching. “My uncle’s creditors are on the cusp of seizing the contents of the house, and in particular, my Great-aunt Matilda’s wedding ring. If I can come up with five hundred pounds, they’ve agreed to delay a month.”
Her jaw all but fell to the floor. “Do you mean to tell me that the reason you entered that bachelor auction was so your Great-aunt Matilda could keep her wedding ring?”
“Yes.”
“The same Great-aunt Matilda who shipped you off to Eton when you were seven years old and wouldn’t even let you come home for Christmas?”
“The very one.”
She gaped at him. That he would go to such lengths to help the woman who had cast him out was incomprehensible. “Why, Gabe? Why would you put yourself in such a position for someone who treated you so callously?”
He fell silent. “I know you probably think I’m an irredeemable cad. Goodness knows everyone else does. But that’s not how I see myself. And even if she doesn’t much deserve my help, I don’t want to be the type of person who laughs at the troubles of a seventy-seven-year-old woman who’s just lost everyone she loves.”
Abbie noted Gabe’s clenched fist, his drawn brow, and the way he spat out the word cad. She had clearly found a sore spot. “No, Gabe. I’ve never thought you were a cad, and I’m sorry if I gave that impression. I only meant that not one person in a hundred would bother to help your great-aunt after what she did. What you’re doing is exceptional.”
Gabe shrugged and looked away. Abbie regarded him in the candlelight. The fact that he was helping his great-aunt, who could not have deserved it less, just went to show that Gabe was the wonderful, caring man she’d come to know through his letters, not the cold stranger who’d pushed her into a marriage she didn’t want four years ago. She’d been right about him all along.
And she was determined to have him.
At least for tonight. If that was all she could ever have of Gabe, at least she would have this one night to look back on when she was old and gray and alone.
And to be sure, he was still eyeing her as if she were a rabid dog.
But if the large bulge pressing against the falls of his trousers was any indication, he wasn’t entirely indifferent to her.
Slowly, cautiously, she took a step forward. He took a corresponding step back. She took another step forward, causing him to retreat. They did it again, and again.
“Abbie,” he grumbled.
“Why are we doing this?” she asked brightly.
He bumped into a chair along the wall and was forced to stop. “D-doing what?”
“This dance. The Don’t-Touch-Abbie dance.”
He swallowed thickly, which drew her eyes down to his throat and the open vee of white linen framing his golden chest. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She raised a hand and feigned poking him in the shoulder. He dodged to the side, so she repeated the motion on the opposite shoulder. This time he reversed course so sharply he tripped over the chair and had to grab its back for purchase.
He glared at her. “Damn it, Abbie.”
“Now that we’ve established that you’re avoiding me—”
“We’ve established—ugh”—he ducked to the side again, narrowly avoiding her teasing finger and winding up all the way in the corner—“nothing.”
“—you may as well tell me why.”
He crossed his arms. “I confess nothing.”
“Fine!” She waved a hand. “Stand there as long as you like. You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on.”
He leaned forward, his eyes full of challenge. “Maybe I’ll just leave.”
Slowly, sensuously, she leaned forward, too. He recoiled, which she’d been expecting, but she kept going, purposefully placing her hands on the wall on either side of his broad shoulders, trapping him in the corner. She dropped her gaze to his lips. “Go right ahead.”
Of course, there was no escaping without touching her, and Abbie marked the moment he realized his predicament. “Please just let me go.” The consternation on his face was real, and it tore at her heart to see it.
“I will gladly let you go if that’s what you really want. I hope you know, Gabe, that I would never force you to make love to me if you do not want to, in spite of the fact that you put yourself up for sale to the highest bidder tonight.”
