by Erica Ridley
One kiss. Nothing more. One kiss, and that would be the end. They would put out this impossible spark between them. One kiss, nothing more.
He stroked her cheek, hoping she could not see the battle within. He needed to concentrate on his business. Not on women. Not even on her. He could not risk allowing himself to be vulnerable.
And yet the harder he tried to push her from his mind, the more she filled his every waking thought. Now here she was, in his arms. Gazing up at him. Waiting for him to kiss her.
There was no sense fighting Fate.
He lowered his head until their breath mingled, giving her every opportunity to push away… Or pull him close.
“I’m the investor,” she blurted out just before his lips grazed hers.
Max jerked his head backwards. “What?”
“The investor. I am Basil Q. Jones. Your investor.” Her cheeks were bright red.
“My investor?” Max repeated blankly.
“And landlord,” she continued with a grimace. “I suppose that’s the most pressing of the issues. I did receive your offer. I’m considering it.”
“Landlord?” Max frowned, his thoughts spinning.
“I meant to tell you.” She winced and shook her head. “Actually, no, I was never going to tell you. But then I liked you, and I thought you liked me, and then I wanted to kiss you, and when I thought you were going to kiss me… I couldn’t not tell you. You needed to know who you would be kissing.”
“I was going to kiss Basil Q. Jones?” His stomach bottomed. She was not who he thought she was after all. She had tricked him.
Bryony nodded. “Exactly. I’m sorry. Not about being Basil, but about finding out like this. If it’s all the same to you, I would very much like to continue both relationships. Business and personal.”
The pieces clicked into place with horrifying precision. “You invested in my business under an assumed name, purchased the property we stand on out from under me despite my invested interest, donned a male costume in order to disguise your identity and trespass in my office—”
“Not trespassing,” she pointed out with an embarrassed flash of a smile. “Landlord, remember? I own this place.”
“It is not all the same to me,” Max bit out in fury. He stalked past her and flung open the office door before he could say something they both would regret. “Get out.”
“You do realize,” she began.
“I do realize,” he agreed. “Now, anyway. You have never been honest with me, not once. Not the disguise, not your name, not even your reason for being here.”
“I never meant to meet you,” she said in a rush. “I knew you were closed on Tuesdays, which is why I chose that day to—”
“Legally but unethically enter this building to rifle through my private belongings,” he finished, his disgust in her rivaled only by his disgust in himself. He had allowed himself to be deceived because he had wanted to believe she was different.
“It sounds bad,” she admitted.
“It is bad,” he corrected, keeping his voice as cold and businesslike as possible. There was nothing else between them. Not now. “The subterfuge was unnecessary. I send you monthly reports. If there was anything else you needed to know—”
Max’s fingers shook. She hadn’t been trying to discover his club’s weaknesses. She’d been looking for his. And she’d found them.
A harsh laugh escaped his throat as he replayed their various encounters in his mind.
Her cheeks paled.
“Were you laughing on the inside when I handed you my journals?” Of course she was. “No wonder it was easy for you to make quick judgments. You had seen all the details before. Knew my business as well as I did before you even walked in the door.”
She bit her lip. “It wasn’t like that. I mean, yes, I have committed all of your monthly reports to memory. But that isn’t why I’m here. My suggestions for improvement and future opportunities for analysis were both spontaneous and sincere.”
“Sincerely trying to line your own pockets,” he said flatly.
She winced. “Our contract is up in a little over a month. You won’t owe me a percentage after that.”
“But you will still own the deed.” The completed contract was immaterial. Keeping him beholden was where the money was. He could do sums as well as she could. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To learn how much you can squeeze from me in rents before I break?”
“No,” she hedged. “Although, objectively speaking, that would be the wisest business decision in this circumstance.”
He glared at her.
“I said no,” she said quickly. “And I meant it. I did sneak in to see what I could learn that you weren’t telling me. You’re right about that. But it was never my intention to treat you unfairly.”
“Wasn’t it?” He advanced on her, his cold voice sharp enough to cut glass. “You were just going to fairly sneak into my office when you knew that I was away, and fairly snoop through my journals and any other private documentation you could find, in order to fairly respond to an offer that is already double any reasonable market value?”
Her lip trembled. She looked miserable.
He didn’t care.
“Please don’t push me away,” she begged. “We did not meet under the best of circumstances, I admit. What I witnessed the first night showed me who you truly were. I didn’t return because of my investment in the Cloven Hoof. The reason I keep coming back… is you.”
“I can’t push you away,” he reminded her, his voice cold. “You own the deed and a stake in my business. But what I can do is ask you politely to get the bloody hell out of my sight.”
She flinched.
At first, he thought she would run.
He should’ve known better. She wasn’t the sort to back down from danger—or confrontation.
“I do own the deed and a temporary stake in the business,” she agreed, her eyes flashing. “I came here to see if selling the land to you was the proper decision, and I have not yet made up my mind. That I have enjoyed our time together does not signify. I will not make a decision on the sale of the deed until our contract is through. If you want to influence the outcome, you will allow me to watch over you here until I’ve made my decision.”
“And if I say no?” he growled.
She lifted her chin. “Then I suppose we have nothing left to discuss.”
Meaning if he kept her out of his club… She would keep the property out of spite. Untenable.
Nor was he willing to let her toy with him on a string for a month and still not sell him the property at the end of the contract.
He crossed his arms. “I will agree to tolerate your presence until our contract is through if you put into writing that you will absolutely sell me the property at a to-be-determined price.”
“No deal,” she said and turned toward the door.
He grabbed her wrist and spun her to face him. “Damn it, woman.”
The shadowed look in her brown eyes was closer to sorrow than victory.
“One month,” she said softly. “I’ll put in writing that I will give you a final answer at the end of the month, but I cannot yet commit to what that answer will be.”
He dropped her arm in disgust and turned his back in her direction. “Be careful out there, Basil. Some unsavory character may rob you blind.”
Chapter 10
Max glared across his small dining room table at his sister.
“She does not sound like an interesting woman,” he corrected Frances firmly. “She sounds like a holy terror. A viper, waiting for her chance to strike. One part Medusa, one part siren.”
“Lovely voice, horrid visage?” Frances asked innocently, clearly trying not to laugh. “Please clarify in what sense seeing her turns you hard as stone?”
“I meant in the ‘dangerous woman’ sense,” he growled, ignoring her ribald jest. “The sort of woman who drives men to their deaths. Ruins their lives.”
This time
, Frances did laugh. “You have never met your match, much less a woman capable of besting you. Either you are exaggerating, dear brother, or she is exactly what you need.”
“She lied to me,” he said flatly.
“Lies are bad,” Frances agreed. “Would you have let her in to your club if she’d been completely honest from the start?”
Max snorted. “Of course not.”
“Well, there you go.” Frances spooned a lump of sugar into her tea.
He stared at her. “Your argument is that all deception is rendered immaterial if the owner of a gentleman’s club finds himself in the obvious predicament of not wanting to allow a woman into his gentleman’s club?”
Frances lifted her tea to her lips. “Yes.”
“You are no help,” he told her. “You are worse than no help.”
“Did you want help?” She arched a brow. “I never thought you needed help.”
He ignored her. “Change the subject. Let me see the new waistcoat.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You say that as if there were some approval process through which your new garments must pass. I sewed them, you will wear them. I will not settle for anything less.”
“Let me see them,” he repeated.
“Why did you want them?” Frances asked instead.
“No reason,” Max said quickly. “Keep them. I don’t need them.”
“Ohhh, for her,” his sister sing-songed in the most irritating manner possible.
“Not for her,” Max insisted. “I just happened to be in the haberdasher—”
“As one does,” Frances interrupted. “Especially when one lives on the opposite side of town and possesses no affinity toward fashion.”
“—admiring the rows of fabric—”
“As one does,” Frances murmured again. “Especially when one is the owner of a gaming hell famous for being swathed in shadow and darkness.”
“—and the haberdasher talked me into it against my will,” Max concluded.
“No one has ever talked you into anything in all your life,” Frances pointed out with a knowing look. “You bought waistcoats because you meant to, and you let Bryony into your life. You rolled the dice.”
Max shook his head. “I thought she was someone else.”
“False.” Frances sipped her tea. “You had absolutely no idea who she was.”
“I certainly didn’t think she owned the land and property housing my club.”
“Because she’s a woman?” Frances asked. “And women can’t own things?”
Max ignored this. “And I certainly didn’t think she would use the deed as leverage to manipulate me into dancing to her tune.”
“Because she’s a woman?” Frances asked again. “And women cannot be as merciless, cunning, and ruthless as men?”
“Ha! So you admit she is merciless, cunning, and ruthless.” Max crossed his arms in satisfaction. “You see why I cannot like her.”
She gave an unladylike shrug. “It seems like you have a lot in common.”
His heart thumped, aghast. “You are not trying to matchmake, are you? Why is everyone trying to matchmake me?”
Frances selected a biscuit. “Where there’s smoke, there’s hellfire. You did meet at the Cloven Hoof.”
“She’s mercenary,” he reminded her. “She tried to profit from me.”
“She is successfully profiting from you,” Frances pointed out. “And you, her. Your club would not exist if she had not taken a chance when no one else would.”
“And it will never be what I need it to be if I cannot own my property,” he said with a frustrated sigh.
His sister’s calculating expression turned serious. “You didn’t tell me it was personal.”
“The Cloven Hoof is our future, Fran.” He let out a deep breath. “At least, it was meant to be. Every shilling I’ve earned is now tied up in a connected investment that will only bear fruit if I can get my hands on the deed.”
Frances considered his words. “Can you steal it?”
“Out of the question,” he said flatly.
“Can you marry her for it?”
He nearly laughed. “Even further out of the question.”
“Have you offered enough money for it?” she asked.
“More than twice what it’s worth, and still she toys with me.”
Frances raised her eyebrows. “What exactly did she say?”
He ground his teeth. “That she would give me a final decision at the end of a month’s time, and not a moment before.”
“A month of learning more about the business in order to make an informed decision about how best her money should be spent?” his sister asked adroitly.
He slanted her a look. “Frances—”
“All I’m saying,” she interrupted, “is that it doesn’t seem like she’s toying with you. You may not like her actions or her choices, but she’s given you a deadline and an explanation that make sense. You just don’t like being on the receiving end of someone else’s grand scheme.”
“Who does?” he asked darkly.
Frances reached for another biscuit.
She deserved so much more. So much better. Max wished he had been there for her from the beginning.
The day she had gained employment as a maid-of-all-work, they’d known it would be grueling hours for very little pay, but at least she would be safe and warm and dry and fed.
Except, the master of the house tried to make her into his whore. When she’d fled, sobbing, arriving on Max’s doorstep with no references and no self-respect, believing she had somehow brought the assault on herself, Max had lost control.
He flew straight to the home of the supposed “gentleman” and demanded an audience. When he was not granted one, he muscled his way inside and demanded to meet at dawn in order to defend his sister’s honor with a loaded pistol.
Her employer had laughed in Max’s face. Dueling was a gentleman’s privilege, not a dockworker’s. There were no charges that would stick. Not with the word of a slut against her master. The so-called gentleman immediately had Max thrown out on his ear and reported to the constable for nuisance.
By then, their mother was too ill to work. Max swore on her deathbed that he would protect his sister from such monsters in the future, and swore to himself to enact revenge on one cruel bastard in particular.
That he suspected Bryony to be of the same world—a world that considered people like his family, like his sister, to be as inferior as insects—was a detail he had refrained from sharing with Frances.
He much preferred to see her smiling and teasing than for her to think they were once again being trodden on beneath the heel of someone else’s boot.
A sharp knock rapped upon the door.
Max and his sister met eyes in surprise. She was the only visitor he had ever had. No one else had any clue where he lived.
Perhaps it was a lost traveler. Or a neighbor.
He rose from the table and went to answer the door.
A well-dressed footman held out a folded missive, sealed with expensive wax.
“Mr. Gideon?”
Max accepted the letter in silence.
The elegant footman immediately vanished back to his master.
“Who is it?” Frances called. “Is something amiss?”
“I don’t know.”
He broke the seal and unfolded the letter.
* * *
Meet me at the row of trees opposite Gunter’s. We need to talk.
Basil
* * *
Max crumpled up the paper and hurled it across the room into the fire.
“That looked like good paper,” his sister protested. “We could have used it for something.”
“I’d rather be warm,” he growled. Just seeing her handwriting gave him shivers.
Frances’s eyes lit up. “Was it her?”
“Indeed,” he agreed with a sour voice. “She sent for me like a servant.”
Frances tilted her head. “Sent you whe
re?”
“Gunter’s Tea Shop,” Max admitted grudgingly.
Frances immediately reached for the new waistcoats. “Wear the green one.”
Max shook his head. A dragon’s underbelly was too vulnerable. With Bryony, he would need to be strong. As sudden and unpredictable as a thunderstorm. “I’ll wear the blue.”
As soon as he was straightened and buttoned and coiffed, Frances all but pushed him out the door.
“Tell her I want to meet her,” she called as he flagged down a hackney.
“Never,” he called back as he climbed inside.
The drive to Gunter’s only gave him more time to fume.
He didn’t know Bryony’s surname, and she knew everything about him. Even his home direction. The power imbalance was entirely in her favor and he didn’t like it one bit.
When the hack let him out, it took a moment to espy her amongst all the fashionable folk lining the street outside.
He had become so used to seeing her in shirtsleeves and trousers that at first he forgot to even look at the fine ladies in flamboyant bonnets and expensive walking gowns.
When their gazes met, Bryony’s eyes laughed at him as if she had anticipated his confusion.
That wasn’t all he felt.
Her long, slender legs were hidden beneath the frothy folds of a buttery yellow gown. Her bosom, unfettered by bindings, was highlighted by a jaunty band of glass and sequins that dazzled as it caught the sunlight. Her hair was not hidden beneath a crooked beaver hat, but piled atop her head in a profusion of artfully placed curls that made her look like a goddess.
Or Medusa.
He stalked over to her. “Where is your chaperone?”
She gestured over her shoulder at a maid far more interested in consuming flavored ices than paying any attention to her mistress.
“First things first.” Bryony gestured to two heaping bowls on a small stool. “I didn’t know which flavor you might like, so I chose the two most popular in the hopes that one would do. Do you prefer jasmine or violet?”
“Neither,” he growled. His stomach gurgled in protest. “Why did you summon me here?”