by Maya Rodale
Not after the years of what they had suffered.
Was a kiss—and what might come after—another way of obtaining what he wanted from her? She could see how he could play it: make her want, make her desire, propose marriage, and what is hers becomes his.
It was entirely possible.
This was the man who had made her love and then took money to disappear. This was a man who had never hidden his intent to own her store.
Her gaze dropped to his mouth and she saw it was set in a half hint of a smile, the smile of a millionaire rogue intent on seduction, and who was accustomed to getting what he wanted.
And the slow burn began in her core and roared through the rest of her like a forest fire. It had been so damned long since she’d had a good, really good kiss. Years. A lifetime even.
She hadn’t forgotten how good it had once been.
She was done playing it safe.
Beatrice was no longer some eager-to-please debutante, wearing white and doing what was expected. Tonight she wore red. She spoke up instead of biting her tongue. And, she impulsively decided, kissed a man if she wanted to. Even if it was a terrible idea.
A kiss would complicate things. Of course. That was half the fun of it.
“What’s stopping you, Dalton?”
“Besides the crowds of people just downstairs? The ball in full swing?”
“It’s just like old times. My debut party. Remember?”
“I wasn’t invited to that one.”
“But you snuck up to my room after. And look at us now. Competitors in a compromising position.”
He was so close that she could feel his body against hers and the rise and fall of his chest with each slow and steady breath. She breathed him in. Pressed one palm on his chest to steady herself, but she felt how wildly his heart was beating.
There was no hiding how much this was affecting him, too. His obvious desire for her made her own wanting more intense.
So Beatrice slid her hands on his chest, then grabbed a fistful of his black satin lapel and kissed him. His mouth claimed hers, or hers claimed his. They kissed, with the pent-up longing of sixteen years of hurt and yearning, anger and desire. It was slow and tentative and hesitant for exactly one second.
Two strong forces colliding and surrendering upon impact.
All at once, it was just like old times, better than she remembered and everything she ever wanted.
The strong planes of his chest, hot to the touch, heart pounding underneath the layers of wool and whatever. She’d been so cold for so long and so she didn’t give a thought to burning alive by the pressure of his body against hers.
This. She survived and crawled through hellfire and agonies for this and it was worth it. Dalton’s fingers sank into her hair, holding her as he drank her in. Like he’d been dying for her the whole time they’d been apart.
She kissed him back and thought, Same.
She kissed him back and thought, What a waste. All those years of cold and longing when they could have had this. But any thoughts of what if and why not and what had she been thinking vanished like items on sale. In a frenzied rush. Here one moment and just gone the next.
Dalton’s hands slid down, tugging the sleeves of her dress down in a slow caress of his bare palms against her bare skin, then skimming over her breasts, and she thought, Stay, and then they finally settled on her waist and held her against him. She felt his arousal for her. The promise of it. The warning of it.
He wasn’t here to play.
Neither was she.
Beatrice wrapped her arms around his neck and let her head fall back as they kissed and kissed and the world was reduced to nothing but him and her and this long-overdue kiss tasting of desire and regrets and no promises whatsoever, but this was definitely not enough.
“I thought I remembered.” She gasped. Breathing. What was breathing and how did one do it?
“This is better.”
“You remember.”
“Kissing you, Beatrice, is not something a man forgets.”
“Stop. I might swoon.” He pressed a kiss against the soft skin of her neck, his fingers urging the strap of her gown off its perch on her shoulder. “Truly. I might faint.”
“No. You won’t. Because you don’t want to miss a thing. And I’m only just getting started.”
Oh, hell yes, this was going to complicate everything.
Chapter Twenty
Dalton’s Department Store
The next day
“Do you think we can get an automobile up here?” Dalton asked Connor, whose immediate expression was not one of enthusiasm for Dalton’s latest mad idea. “Up here” was the roof of the department store.
It offered an impressive, bird’s-eye view of the line wrapped around the block—for Goodwin’s.
Dalton was not surprised at Beatrice’s obvious success; he saw the store, he understood what she was building, and he knew women. He knew how they would show up in droves for what she was selling—and what she was selling wasn’t just gloves.
It was a damned shame he hadn’t anticipated this and done it first. But he’d been distracted by ideas of revenge and seeing Goodwin’s suffer, not making Dalton’s even better. He sure as hell wasn’t going to sit back and let her remake Goodwin’s into a bigger, better, more successful department store, either. Not without some competition.
The ruthless, competitive streak that had made him a millionaire didn’t just end because she made a brilliant move in their battle.
Not even if she kissed him like he was the only man in the world she wanted.
“Why do we need an automobile on the roof?” Connor asked. “They’re just noisy, smoky death traps. And they go on roads not roofs.”
“The noisy, smoky death traps of the future, yes,” Dalton corrected, stepping back from the ledge and prowling around the expanse of roof. Presently, automobiles were an unreliable novelty that only the richest of the rich would consider having and only then as a toy. “We’ll put it on display. We’ll let people get up close. Touch it. Experience it. It will get everyone talking about the hot new thing of the future and Dalton’s.”
“The roof though?”
“They put on entire theatrical productions on the roof of the Casino, so why can’t I put an automobile on the roof of my store?” Dalton was getting excited now. “Can’t you just see it, Connor? One of those gleaming black automobiles parked up here, so one could get the sense of this new, dangerous creature out in the wild. To help them imagine the wind in their hair, the sun on their faces. It’s perfect—customers will have to go through the entire store to get to it. I bet they’ll buy something on the way in. And out.”
Dalton grinned, imaging the spectacle. And all the souvenirs and carefully curated and stunningly displayed merchandise. He imagined the sales, the profits, the rush of people crowded into the space because of his vision. He imagined Beatrice watching the lines around his store from her office window.
Connor turned from looking out at the city to his friend.
“I haven’t seen you on fire like this since you launched this store. I’m going to conclude it’s her.”
“It’s not her. But it’s her. Completely. But only somewhat.”
“We need drinks for this,” Connor muttered, pushing his fingers through his hair.
“Perhaps we should serve refreshments up here, as well . . .” Dalton continued. Honestly, the possibilities were endless. He was rich and not afraid of risk—so why not?
Connor dropped his face into his hands.
“She’s competition, Connor. Serious competition. We need to win. She has bicycles. Ergo, we have a car. Bigger, better, stronger, faster.”
“Are you still drunk from the party? She doesn’t just have bicycles, she has what bicycles represent. She has that reading room.”
“It’s a smart statement she’s making, I’ll grant you that. But at the end of the day, it’s a room. With chairs. And books. She’s not even selling anythi
ng in there! We could do the same, though, and make it a membership or subscription service. We charge money just to breathe air and sit in our chairs. Brilliant!” Dalton was off and running now, the ideas spinning. God, he hadn’t felt this excited for a store display in ages. He could almost kiss her he was so thankful for the spark of inspiration. Or cutthroat competition—one of the two. “I know! We’ll launch the Dalton’s Membership with exclusive access and benefits. Anyone with a membership will always turn to Dalton’s first.”
“Now that might be an idea. The car on display I’m not so sure of. It’s not like you’re going to take orders for them and run them down to the factory.”
“Why not?”
“You sell things, Dalton. Things that a woman can pick out that morning, have delivered that afternoon, and wear out that evening. And then you send the bills to their fathers and husbands and slowly and steadily siphon your fortune from theirs.”
“I don’t just sell things,” Dalton said, really warming to his topic now. “I sell spectacle. Promise. Exclusivity. The future. What better than an automobile? The promise of freedom, of sights unseen, of adventure waiting to happen. And yes, totally possibly completely lethal. Ruinous. Dangerous. But that’s half the fun of it.”
Like her. She was spectacle and promise. She was adventure waiting to happen, she was dangerous, she was possibly the death of him and his ambitions but . . . he’d had one hell of a time kissing her last night. Years of pent-up passions and frustrations and longings for her finally had their moment.
It was a moment he couldn’t stop thinking about. Couldn’t stop wanting more of. Which was why he had to avoid her. He couldn’t concentrate otherwise. He couldn’t compete if he couldn’t concentrate.
“This is about your plans for revenge, isn’t it?” Connor asked.
Dalton motioned for Connor to join him at the edge. He pointed to the spectacle.
“Look at that.”
They both took a long look, from the vantage point of the roof, where no one could see them looking. They saw a gleaming, restored storefront wrapped up in a line of women, and some men, stretching around the block. Officers had arrived on horseback to help manage the energy of the crowds.
And there was a steady flow of people exiting with distinctive Goodwin’s bags on their arms, in a world where practically all purchases were delivered discreetly.
Women don’t want to be reminded of their desires or their indulgences.
Unless they did? Unless they refused to feel shame about it? Dalton saw in an instant what she had achieved: all those distinctive bags, all those conversation points, all those moments where a friend would recommend Goodwin’s to another friend. All those women owning what they wanted.
He was going to need more than a car on display.
“Ah. I see.” Connor nodded. “Revenge would be nice but survival will be better. You’re going up against a girl, Dalton. You better not miss or then what will everyone say?”
“So you see that I need the automobile. Dangerous, powerful, adventurous, the way of the future.”
What Wes Dalton wanted, Wes Dalton got.
25 West Tenth Street
One week later
In a drawing room down the street from the great stores of Dalton’s and Goodwin’s, a group of select ladies were laughing at Wes Dalton. That great merchant prince of Manhattan, that forever most eligible bachelor women sought after, had made one great mistake. His latest display was a sensation—and a possibly fatal misstep all the same.
“An automobile!”
The Ladies of Liberty laughed uproariously. They had seen the advertisements in the newspapers, and a few had braved the crowds of men to go see it themselves. They’d also heard the men in their lives discussing it earnestly, at length.
“Shh. We are supposed to be impressed with his big, powerful, hulking . . . machinery,” Ava said with a strained seriousness that devolved into giggles and blushes.
They were not talking about the car. Or were they?
“The display of the automobile shows that he does not understand what we have created,” Beatrice said. “And as such, what he is truly competing with.”
The automobile was a spectacle that drew massive crowds; she saw the lines around the block from her corner office. At first, she felt panicked. But upon closer look, she noticed something: those waiting in line were mostly men with the occasional woman accompanying them. When she strolled around the sales floor in Goodwin’s, she heard her female customers chattering about the serene space her store provided, the escape from all those men who wanted to stand around and talk about horsepower and throbbing engines and combustion and whatnot.
There was no sign at Goodwin’s that said Ladies Only but the space had that effect of welcoming women and warding off men.
So no, she was not threatened by the power of his automobile, the thrust of his horsepower engine, or the long lines of men.
“So you’re not worried about the competition, Beatrice?”
“In a case of compacts versus cars, I think I know what our clientele wants,” she said with a smile.
“Compacts, I’m delighted to say,” Daisy replied. Her Dr. Swan’s product line of night creams and lip paints was flying off the shelves. It so happened the department store was the perfect venue for her oh so scandalous product—women could go into Goodwin’s to purchase something else and just happen to sample the product with assistance from specially trained salesgirls and carry it out in a Goodwin’s bag, with no one any wiser.
“Confirmed,” Beatrice said proudly. “Everything is flying off the shelves. The relaunch of the store is a smashing success. It’s been running Margaret and myself ragged, so I haven’t had a moment to look at that automobile but I do hear women glad to find a respite from the men and the crowds in our ladies-only reading room.”
“I love the reading room,” sighed one woman. “It’s the only space where I can sit down for a moment without anyone crawling on me and asking me for something.”
“Well, I would be interested in the automobile if they let ladies drive it,” Harriet said. “I wouldn’t mind having such power under my command. I don’t believe for a second that the fairer sex cannot handle it.”
“That’s what they say now,” Adeline replied. “Give it time. Ladies will be driving all over the world.”
Beatrice sipped her tea and listened to her friends talk about driving and power and escape and the wind in their hair. It was the feeling she had when riding her bicycle to work each morning and home each night. It was the feeling that she could go anywhere in the world that she wanted.
Such a glorious feeling, that.
And if she could go anywhere in the world?
Why she would come right here, in the company of these women where she at once felt safer and yet more daring, all at once.
But she also had a hankering to wander a few blocks east, toward Broadway.
To Dalton’s.
Because they had kissed. A hot, take-no-prisoners kiss.
It had been sixteen years since she’d had a kiss that made her want to throw caution to the wind and indulge in all sorts of wickedness. Her desire had been asleep all these years and that kiss had woken it up. It was roaring back to life, making demands.
Then Dalton had proceeded to ignore her.
There was no note, no personal call, no hello on the street.
Which was maddening because he was right there on Broadway in his marble palace and she was right there across the street, also on Broadway in her own castle of commerce. It would have been easy enough to make their paths cross, if one should be so inclined.
One had to conclude that he was avoiding her. Or was an utter, absolute cad.
This was a problem because she wanted to kiss him again. And she could, if she wanted. If he was amenable. He had felt very . . . amenable.
True fact.
Thank God she had other things on her mind so thoughts of kissing him didn’t occupy her e
very waking hour. Important things, like the status of a shipment of cashmere shawls, or disputes between shopgirls in different departments, or dreaming up a new spectacle that would rival his automobile and keep people talking about her store, not his.
That kiss though. It had awoken a sleeping dragon inside of her. And now that dragon was hungry.
And he had disappeared, which made her consider that he was not trying to seduce her to destroy her. Which only made her want him more.
But Dalton was too busy with his car. With a big, hulking, powerful machine. Well, if he were really interested in powerful forces then he should be so lucky as to feel the constant thrum of desire she was feeling now. She had spent her youth keeping her wanton feelings (mostly) in check. She had . . . survived . . . her marriage. And now no forces of shame or scandal could compel her to keep her feelings to herself.
She wanted him. The man she had once loved and who knew how to make her burn.
“Beatrice?”
She blinked to attention at the sound of her name.
The conversation had already moved on to other things, such as the series of lectures that Harriet was organizing for the store on things like domestic hygiene, literature, scientific cooking, and public speaking. All topics which drew women into the store in droves. But Beatrice had been left behind.
“Apologies. I am distracted.”
“Is it the car?” Harriet asked with a smirk, knowing full well it was not the car.
“Yes. It is the car. I feel like I ought to see it. For professional purposes,” Beatrice replied, which was a lie that everyone understood the truth of but was kind enough not to say. The man himself was far more compelling than any hunk of metal.
“If you go now you can catch a glimpse of the car before closing time,” Ava said with that smile she got when she sensed an opportunity for matchmaking.
Beatrice decided she would go. She would go flirt with danger, risk a little scandal, seek her share of pleasure. Just because she could.