With Seduction in Mind
Page 26
Once again, she started for the door, and this time, she had no intention of letting him stop her, no matter what he said.
“I had a cocaine habit.”
Daisy froze. Slowly, she turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. “What?” she whispered in shock.
He set the manuscript back on the table. “It all started in Paris. Why, I don’t know,” he added with a shrug. “I was bored, I suppose. Like everything else, I thought it would give me a new experience, something to write about. And then, in Italy, I discovered how to write under the drug’s influence, and it was like a godsend. Writing had always been hard for me, you see, and though I wanted to do it, and I was compelled to do it, and I made a great deal of money doing it, I had always wished there was a way to make it easier.”
Daisy set her jaw and folded her arms. “Is any of this supposed to matter to me?”
If he noticed the hardness of her voice, he ignored it. “My father hated that I was a writer, and he could never understand why I cared about that more than I cared about Avermore. By the time I moved to Italy, I was earning enough to support the family estate. Being able to mete out a quarterly allowance to my father was sweet, but as I said, writing was never easy for me—not until I discovered cocaine. I learned that if I took the drug when I wrote, I could produce masses of work without any effort. Not very good work, you understand, but plenty of it. For the first time in my life, writing was easy. It was fun. I could write all day long, carouse all night long. I thought I’d found nirvana.” He paused, and it seemed an eternity before he spoke again. “That nirvana lasted about three or four years. And then my life started falling apart.”
Now she knew what he’d been referring to that day at the summerhouse—cocaine was his weakness. It was just like her father’s brandy. Remembering the vulnerable thirteen-year-old girl who’d been so bitterly disillusioned was enough to keep her from softening, and Daisy turned her back on him. She started toward the door, but she got only as far as trying to open it.
“Don’t go.” Sebastian’s voice spoke from right behind her, his hand flattening against the door to keep it closed. “Please, Daisy, don’t go yet. Just let me finish what I have to say.”
She didn’t want to. She bit her lip, staring at the gold-and-white-painted panels of the door. She didn’t want to hear this, she didn’t want to know these things, she didn’t want to understand or forgive. She wanted to leave, and yet, when his hand slid away from the door, she couldn’t seem to make herself open it and walk out.
She stood there, hand on the knob, wavering, listening as he continued the story.
“Cocaine became more important than anything else,” he went on behind her. “I stopped caring about the quality of my writing, and the critics began to shred me, but I didn’t care. I spent lavishly, but my income began falling. I went into debt.” The words were tumbling out of him as if he knew she was about to bolt and he wanted to explain everything first.
“Daisy, you asked me once why people ruin their lives for these things, and even though it happened to me, I can’t give you an answer. Drugs blunt one’s moral sense, I suppose. That’s the only explanation I can offer.”
“So the scandal sheets were right about you.” She turned around to face him, wanting to use that fact against him, flay him with his past, but she couldn’t. Despite everything, she still loved him, and she couldn’t say cruel things to hurt him.
“Yes,” he answered. “Wild parties, drink, reckless gambling—if it was a vice, I tried it. Nearly everything you’ve heard about me or read about me is true. But the cocaine—that was a secret. No one knows about that. No one except you, my friend St. Cyres, a British doctor living in Italy, and a few monks in Switzerland.”
“Doctor? So you sought a cure?” Even as she asked, Daisy wanted to kick herself in the head. He was an addict. An addict was like a drunk. He would never be cured.
“I had to do something,” he said. “One day, I took too much, and it nearly killed me. When I woke up, the doctor that had been sent for told me that if I continued to take cocaine, it would kill me, and having just come away a hair’s breadth from death, I knew I had to stop. The doctor recommended a discreet place in the Swiss Alps for me to wean myself away from it—a monastery, of all places.” He tried to smile. “Me, in a monastery. Can you imagine?”
She started to smile back, then stopped herself. “Go on,” she said in a hard voice, closing her eyes. “Finish this, so I can leave.”
“I spent three years there, overcoming my addiction. I’ve never told anyone about this, not even Mathilda, but your father drank, and I thought you had the right to know I have a similar weakness.”
She forced herself to look into his eyes. When she did, the tenderness she saw there was almost her undoing. Hope began rising inside her—foolish, foolish hope. She could feel her old optimism coming back, cracking the new protective veneer she’d worked so hard to develop. “Do you still take the drug?”
“No, Daisy. I haven’t taken it for three years. But it’s only fair for me to tell you that the craving for it will always be with me. Once something like that happens to you, you can’t go back. It’s like losing your innocence,” he murmured and reached out, his fingertips lightly brushing across her cheekbone.
She stiffened, pulling back from his touch, and he let his hand fall. “Once you’ve taken that step,” he went on, “you’re changed forever. But I swear to you, I won’t ever take cocaine again.”
“You might.” Remembering her father, she tried to force hope back down, squash it before it could take hold.
“You have every right not to trust me, Daisy, but I know as surely as I know anything in life, that I will never take cocaine again. You see, that day in Italy when I took too much, I knew I was dying—I could feel it happening to me.” He stirred, flattening his hand against his chest. “I felt as if I was being pulled in two directions at once—up and down—by two opposing forces.”
“Heaven and hell?”
“I think so. I knew—don’t ask me how, but I knew I was supposed to choose, surrender to one or to the other. But I refused to make that choice. I fought, Daisy, I fought hard for my life, but when I woke up, it was hard to understand why. Without cocaine, I couldn’t seem to write anymore. I tried, but every time I sat down at my typewriter, I craved the drug so much, writing was unbearable. So I stopped altogether. I thought I’d never write again. My life had no purpose.” He paused. “And then you came.”
Daisy felt another crack in her armor at the tenderness in his voice. “I have to go.”
She expected him to argue. He didn’t.
“All right,” he said quietly and stepped back. Disappointment stabbed at her, but she couldn’t let him see that. She started to turn and reach for the doorknob, but his voice once again gave her pause. “I have one more thing to give you.”
She glanced over her shoulder, watching as he turned away and walked to the sofa. He picked up the manuscript. As he came toward her with it in his hands, she shook her head. “Don’t give it to me. I’m not helping you anymore.”
He halted in front of her. “Daisy, writing had always been the most important thing in my life. The rest—the cocaine, the wild living—all that was only because I had become convinced I needed those things in order to write. They were the crutches, the tricks, if you will, that I used to convince myself I could do it. When I gave up cocaine, I gave up writing, sure I’d never be able to do it without the drug. But then, as I said, you came. You forced me to write. You pestered me and coerced me and bullied me into it.”
She felt compelled to dispute that point. “I did not bully you!”
“Oh, yes, you did. And seduced me,” he added, smiling, “and refused to give up on me when I’d long ago given up on myself. Somehow, with your optimism and your tenacity and your luscious incentives—” He broke off long enough to lean down and plant a kiss on her lips. “I began to believe that I could write again. But until you left
, I still thought I needed outside forces to help me. I thought you were my latest drug, my crutch, my trick. When Mathilda found out about us and insisted you be sent home, it felt like I was giving up cocaine and writing all over again. I thought I needed you too much to let you go. But when you called me an addict, I knew I had to prove to myself that I could survive without any drugs, write without any help. When you left, I dredged up a strength I never thought I had, and I finished the book. I had to prove to myself at last that I don’t need crutches of any kind in order to do it.”
“Of course you could do it,” she whispered. “It was always inside you. You didn’t need cocaine. You didn’t need crutches. You don’t—” Her voice cracked. “You don’t need me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I need you more than you could possibly imagine. That’s why I’ve dedicated this book to you.”
“To me?”
“Yes, petal, to you.”
“But…but you don’t dedicate your books to anyone. That’s just sappy sentiment, you said.”
“Yes, well, for this book, I’m making an exception.” He turned the manuscript around so she could read the first page.
To Daisy, my inspiration, my love,
my reason for living.
A sob tore from her throat.
“I know,” he said cheerfully, nodding as if in agreement. “It’s sappy, and it’s sentimental. But I like it. And besides, it’s the truth. For the first time, I’m grateful I fought so hard for my life. Because now I have a reason for living it.” The manuscript was tossed aside, hitting the floor with a thud, and he caught her hands in his. “I love you, petal.”
She found her voice. “You told Mathilda you didn’t. I heard you.”
“I didn’t realize it, not until you were gone. Hell, I stopped believing in love so long ago, I couldn’t even remember what it felt like. I thought you were just my latest addiction. But now I realize you are not that at all.” His arms slid around her. “You are my love. You are my life. And I want you to marry me, and come back to Avermore with me, and write your books right across from where I write mine, so that whenever I’m working, I can look up and see your sweet, freckled face. And I’ll help you any way I can to write yours.”
“You won’t give me the sack for speaking my mind?”
“No. And you won’t ever have to worry about having your sister find you another job. All we’ll have to worry about is making our deadlines. Publishers are sticklers for that sort of thing, you know.” He kissed her nose. “And I want us to make love and have children and argue and kiss our way through each other’s books for the rest of our lives. What do you think?”
Daisy looked up at him, her heart overflowing with joy. She loved this man, and what he’d just described sounded to her like heaven on earth.
“Well?” he asked when she didn’t speak. “Is this love story going to have a happy ending?”
“I thought you didn’t believe in happy endings. You never write them.”
“Nonsense,” he scoffed and nodded to the manuscript on the floor. “I just finished writing a book with a happy ending.”
“You did?”
“Yes, I did. And I think I’m becoming addicted to them.” He put his hands on her waist. “You haven’t answered my question, by the way. Is our love story going to end happily or not?”
“Yes!” she cried, laughing. “Yes, yes, yes!”
“Thank God,” he muttered. “There’s nothing worse than reading a wonderful love story, only to reach the end and discover there’s no happy ending. I hate it when that happens.”
“Me, too.” She slid her hands up his chest and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Oh, Sebastian, I love you so!”
“And I love you, my darling Daisy.”
With those words, Sebastian Grant, the Earl of Avermore, swept Miss Daisy Merrick, girl-bachelor, off her feet and into his strong, manly arms, giving her a most passionate kiss.
THE END
P.S. Yes, they lived happily ever after.
About the Author
LAURA LEE GUHRKE spent seven years in advertising, had a successful catering business, and managed a construction company before she decided writing novels was more fun. The New York Times bestselling author of numerous historical romances, Laura has received many literary awards, including romance fiction’s highest honor, the RITA® Award, and her books routinely appear on the USA Today Bestseller list. When she’s not tapping away at her keyboard, Laura spends her time relearning how to ski, mastering the wakeboard grab, and trying to actually hit a golf ball, much to the amusement of her friends. She loves hearing from readers, and you may write to her by visiting her website, www.lauraleeguhrke.com.
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By Laura Lee Guhrke
WITH SEDUCTION IN MIND
SECRET DESIRES OF A GENTLEMAN
THE WICKED WAYS OF A DUKE
AND THEN HE KISSED HER
SHE’S NO PRINCESS
THE MARRIAGE BED
HIS EVERY KISS
GUILTY PLEASURES
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
WITH SEDUCTION IN MIND. Copyright © 2009 by Laura Lee Guhrke. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition July 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-190367-0
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About the Publisher
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
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