Your Scandalous Ways by Loretta Chase

him.”
    â€œIt’s unwise to let men believe one wants them,” she said. “They only presume.”
    The scornful glance she threw him was as easy to read as a tavern sign.
    He told himself to ignore it. He couldn’t. “You mean me. I’m presumptuous, you’ve decided.”
    â€œYou seem to be under the misapprehension that I’ve been languishing for your company,” she said. “Let me quiet your anxieties. Last night my mind was disordered by shock and my reason overcome by gratitude. Such is not the case tonight. You lost your one and only opportunity with me.”
    â€œThat is not why I removed you from the theater,” he said.
    â€œIt wasn’t because of Giulietta,” she said. “That was a thin excuse if ever I heard one—as thin as the one you gave Lurenze.”
    He’d no reason to feel embarrassed, James told himself. He lived on thin excuses.
    But as easily as he might find it to lie to everyone else, he was unable to lie to himself. He couldn’t pretend he didn’t recognize the real reason he’d dragged her away. That she recognized it, too, made the heat race up his neck. He felt like a fool. No, it was worse than that: He, a professional, had let himself turn into the impetuous boy he’d been a lifetime ago.
    Meanwhile she remained unmoved, her silken cheek still upon her hand, her green gaze shifting lazily from the scene outside to him.
    â€œAnd you were toying with Lurenze in hopes of making me do exactly what I did,” he said.
    To his surprise, she smiled. “It worked, did it not? Men are so easy. They’re so competitive.”
    James made himself smile, too. “So true. We’ll fight over anything, even if we don’t really want it.”
    â€œIf you’re trying to crush my vanity, you must do better than that,” she said. “Pray recollect that I am a divorcée, Cordier. I’ve been insulted and slandered by experts.”
    He felt a sharp inner twinge. It couldn’t be his conscience, since he’d left his in France ten years ago. It was…irritation. “Pray recollect that I’m not a coddled royal of one and twenty, Mrs. Bonnard, but a man of one and thirty who’s seen something of the world. You are not the first woman who’s tried to drive me to distraction.”
    â€œI haven’t begun to try,” she said. “When I do—if I do—you’ll know it.”
    â€œYou tried your damnedest last night.”
    Her sleek eyebrows went up. “You think that was an effort?”
    â€œI know a lure when I see one.”
    â€œAll I offered was a mild yes,” she said. “Very mild. Only the first notch above a no. Were I to make an effort—and no great one, either—you’d never withstand it.”
    James recalled the siren laughter. He felt a prickle of uneasiness but he shook it off. “You have a high opinion of yourself. But the king’s ransom in pearls you’re wearing is not proof that you are irresistible, only that some men are weaker than others.”
    Some man had been weak, indeed. He shiftedhis gaze from her haughty countenance to the top and drop pearl earrings, then down to the two pearl necklaces circling her throat. From the upper, shorter one dangled pear-shaped drops of graduated size, the largest at the center. It pointed to the space between her breasts, whose rapid rise and fall told him she was not so indifferent as she pretended. The low-cut gown, of silk the color of sea foam, reminded one of the pearls’ watery origins. The pearl and diamond bracelets at her slim wrists glimmered against the butter-soft gloves.
    The jewels alone constituted a cruelly arousing sight for a man who was a thief at heart. It was maddening that he couldn’t simply steal them and have done with her.
    â€œYou don’t think I could bring you to your knees,” came her voice, cool and taunting.