“Goddamn it, Lizzie—it wasn’t like that—”
“Maybe on your side—”
“I have never treated you as an inferior!”
“You’ve got to be kidding. How did you think I was going to feel when you told me you were in love with me and then I read about your engagement in the society pages the next morning?” She threw up her hands. “Do you have any idea what that was like for me? I am a smart woman. I have my own farm that I’m paying for with my own money. I’ve got a master’s from Cornell.” She pounded on her chest. “I take care of myself. And still …” Her eyes shot away from his. “You still got me.”
“I didn’t put that announcement out.”
“Well, it was a great picture of the two of you.”
“It was not my fault.”
“Bullshit! Are you trying to tell me there was a gun to your head when you married Chantal?”
“You wouldn’t speak to me! And she was pregnant—I didn’t want my kid to be born a bastard. I figured it was the only way to be a man in the situation.”
“Oh, you were a man, all right. That was how she ended up carrying your baby.”
Lane cursed and dropped his head. God, he’d wasted so much time wishing he could do things over with Lizzie—starting way before they’d gotten together, when he’d been having casual sex with Chantal and had believed her when she’d told him she was on the pill.
But everyone knew how that had turned out.
And the pregnancy hadn’t been the only surprise Chantal had had in store for him. The second one had been even more devastating.
“So can we be done here?” Lizzie asked as she moved on to the next bowl. “This is really none of my business.”
“Why didn’t I stay here with her?” He leaned forward. “You’ve got this all figured out, so why didn’t I stay here with her—why’ve I been gone for almost two years? And if I wanted a child with her, why didn’t she get pregnant again after she lost the first one?”
Lizzie shook her head and stared at him. “What part of ‘not my business’ are you failing to comprehend?”
And that was when he went for her.
As with their first kiss in the garden, in the darkness, in the summer heat, he rode an out-of-control emotion as he took her mouth, the instinct nothing that he was going to fight: One moment they were arguing, the next he’d lunged across the distance, grabbed her by the nape and was kissing her hard.
And just as before, she kissed him back.
It wasn’t passion on her side, though. He was pretty damn sure that for her, the meeting of mouths was nothing but an extension of their conflict, the verbal argument going nonverbal.
Lane didn’t care. He’d take her any way he could get her.
TEN
It was, of course, a perfectly stupid idea.
But as Lizzie kissed Lane back, it was as if she were funneling two years of anger, frustration, and pain directly into him. And damn him to hell, he tasted of bourbon and desperation and raw sex—and she liked it.
She missed it.
And didn’t that just make her more mad. She wanted to say that this was horrible. Against her will. A violation.
None of that was true. She was the one who thrust her tongue into his mouth, and she was the one whose fingers bit into his shoulders, and she was the one, God help her, who brought their bodies up close together.
So that she felt his erection.
His body hadn’t changed in the time they’d been apart, all hard muscle and long limbs. And he kissed the same as he had before, rough and hungry in spite of the fact that he’d been raised a gentleman. And the heat was just as hot.
And then, to make things even worse? Memories of them being together, skin to skin, straining, rocking, egged her on, burying all the hurt and sense of betrayal under an avalanche of erotic recollections.
For a split second, she realized that she was going to have sex with him then and there.
Yeah. ’Cuz that would show him she meant business.
Real Gloria Steinem moment.
Instead, something got knocked over on the table and a clatter broke the silence; then a splash draped her hip and upper thigh in a shock of cold water. Jumping up, she shoved him away with such force, he tripped and fell back, landing on the tile floor.
With a slash of her forearm, she wiped her mouth off. “What the hell are you doing!”
Dumb question. More like what was she doing.
He was up on his feet a heartbeat later. “I’ve wanted to kiss you since I came back.”
“The feeling is not mutual—”
“Bullshit.” He reached for his glass and took a swig. “You still want me—”
“Get out!”
“You’re kicking me out of my own conservatory?”
“Either you leave or I do,” she snapped, “and these flowers are not going to get into those bowls themselves. Unless you want half your tables empty at your Derby party?”
“I don’t care what they look like. Or about the damn party. Or any of this—” As he waved his hand around, it might have been more convincing if he hadn’t had a ration of his family’s bourbon in that glass of his. “I’ve left this behind, Lizzie. I’m really done with it.”
Motrin. That’s what she needed.
Less being around him, more pain relief in a bottle.
“I give up,” she muttered. “You win. I’ll go.”