He couldn’t look at her without wanting to warm her.
Hold her.
Guard her.
More.
“Piers,” he said. “Piers would be the sort to carve your initials in the wall, right alongside his.”
She settled on the floor. “I doubt it. He’s spent years declining to write his name beside mine in a wedding register.”
“That’s different.” He sat beside her.
“Rafe, I wish you’d stop denying the obvious. He doesn’t love me.”
“Of course he does. Or he will. Love has a way of creeping up on a man. I’d venture to say love has to creep up on a man. If men ever saw it coming, we’d only run away.”
“Love’s never caught you.”
“Well, that’s me.” He gave her shoulder a teasing nudge. “I’ve spent years honing these reflexes. Love can take all the swings it likes, but I’ve always managed to dodge the blow.”
“So far,” she added meaningfully.
“So far.”
They listened to the rain for a moment.
The truth was, Rafe doubted love would ever catch him. He lost interest in things too easily. He’d always been this way. His studies, tasks, clubs . . . friends and lovers, too. Fighting kept his body and wits engaged because the challenge changed with every bout. It was the one pursuit that had managed to capture and hold his fascination.
He glimpsed a faint wash of pink on Clio’s cheek.
Well, perhaps it was one of two.
“What if it’s the opposite?” Clio asked. “What if Piers returns, sees me, and what hits him isn’t love but the realization that he feels nothing for me? That he never has and never will.”
“Impossible.”
“It’s not impossible. He must have changed in his time away. I’ve changed, too. I’ve grown older, and I’ve grown . . . Well, I’ve just grown.” Her voice went quiet. “I’ve gained a full stone since he saw me last.”
In all the best places, he wanted to say.
But he couldn’t say that. He considered it rather heroic that he only dropped his gaze to her breasts for a moment and not ten.
“Clio, you’re still—” Damn. “Still” was not the word he wanted there. “You’ve always been—”
“Just stop. Please don’t try to flatter me. It’s so unconvincing. Especially when it’s clear you don’t like me.”
That’s right, he didn’t like her. He didn’t like her so much, he’d just risked plummeting to his doom to catch her when she stumbled.
“In eight years, you haven’t answered one of my notes,” she said. “You’ve never repaid any of my calls. Until you showed up here, you hadn’t accepted a single one of my invitations. And I made several.”
He exhaled slowly. Goddamn him. Yes, she had.
Rafe had assumed she made the effort out of duty. Why else would a gentlewoman treat her betrothed’s estranged, disreputable brother in such fashion? All those holiday greetings, birthday wishes, invitations to family dinners . . . They had to be mere obligation, he’d reasoned. At best, they came from an essential sweetness in her character. Troubling her with unwanted replies seemed a poor way to repay the gesture.
But the gesture had meant something. He’d saved those notes and calling cards. Every last one. He didn’t pull them out and fondle them, or sniff them, or anything so stupid. But he’d kept them.
She made him feel more a part of the Brandon family than his own family ever had.
He didn’t know how to put that in words. Much less pen it in a note. When it came to feelings this strong, he only dealt in actions.
“You have it wrong,” he forced himself to say. “I don’t dislike you.”
“Oh, truly?”
“Truly.”
“Then do me a favor, Rafe.”
“Anything.”
God, yes. Please. Enough with this trial by prattle. Give me something to do.
She turned to face him. “Look me in the eyes and tell me, honestly, just how eager you are to call me your sister-in-law.”
Bloody hell.
He cast a wistful glance at the stone floor below. Was it too late to plummet to his doom and make it look like an accident?
He could manage the first of her requests. He looked her in the eyes—her lovely eyes, the same blue as a cloudless sky—for a very long time. Without saying anything.
Outside, the rain beat down like a rebuke. His blood thundered in his ears.
“You can’t say it,” she whispered. “Can you?”
“Honestly? No, I can’t.”
Hurt flickered over her features. He wanted to punch a hole straight through the wall.
“Well, then. Good. Now that we know where we stand with each other, we can stop pret—”
Damn him. Damn him and his impulsive, reckless soul.
His hands were out before he could stop them. Reaching for her, pulling her close, turning her face to his.
Skimming a touch over her soft, trembling lips.
And holding her still for his kiss.
When his lips first touched hers, Clio was certain there’d been some mistake.
That could be the only explanation.
Obviously, Rafe had meant to put his wide, sensuous lips somewhere else—and she, being clumsy, had gotten her face in the way. How very embarrassing. How very her.
But . . . Then again, his big, warm hands did seem to be holding her face.