The Blood of a Baron - K.J. Jackson Page 0,26

stepped to the side by the low symmetrical hedges that held a variety of roses. The darkness of night couldn’t hide the fact that Wes’s gardener maintained a well-groomed landscape. Knee-high boxwoods lined square after square of roses, foxglove, bellflowers and violets. Curious that she didn’t see lavender anywhere. A waft caught her nose—peony. She searched to her left to find a square of crimson peonies in full bloom.

Music reached her ears and her eyes were drawn upward to the rear of the opposite townhouse. Above the mews, she caught glimpses of bright silk in a multitude of colors flashing in front of the open doors to the balcony. Dancing. Dancing with such abandon and glee she could almost taste the laughter from up above on her own lips.

“Are you coming, Laney?”

She jumped, forgetting for the shortest of moments that she was standing in the garden with Wes. Him, of all people.

Laney turned to him just as his look drifted upward from her to fix on the ballroom in the distance.

Her gaze swung to the dancers once more.

The strains of a waltz washed over them as they both stood silent, heartbeat after heartbeat, watching what once had been their lives.

Fun, friends, laughter.

Love.

A different time. Different place. Different them.

“Dance with me, Laney.”

Her look jerked to him. “What?”

Wes took a step toward her, his boots crunching on the gravel of the wide pathway. “Dance with me. We are in a truce. We have music. It’s all we ever needed.”

No. Her head screamed the word, while her mouth did nothing to actually form sound.

No, she didn’t want to dance, didn’t want to give him a second of time in which he thought to lift her only so he could crush her.

She had to remember what his goal was. To see pain in her eyes, to watch her crumble under his cruelty.

So, no, she didn’t want to dance.

He extended his palm to her, his eyes hooded under the shadows of the night. But she could feel it—the heat as he looked at her. “Dance with me.”

Her hand lifted to his, drawn to the warmth of his touch, to the moment when his fingers would collapse around hers, just as they had at her townhouse.

Come with me, Laney. It is safe. His hand whispered to her.

When she knew quite well it wasn’t.

Her fingers twitched and, before she could control her own blasted body, she set the box onto the ground and her hand was in his, her feet shuffling forward as his right hand drifted down, sliding about her waist.

He gently started forward and it took her ten steps before her feet found the rhythm of the music from above, before they moved in lockstep with him.

And she was back. Back in time. Back seven years when it was only her and Wes and music and their bodies moving in unison and no one else in the world.

The scent of peonies mixed with the heat of Wes—spice and wood and salt—making her head light with every swirl he swung her through.

Her eyes lifted to his face to find he was staring down at her, his dark eyes intense as they met her look. No words, but she could see the hunger in his gaze. How he wanted to devour her. This very particular look had always sent her knees shaking, her limbs grasping for the strength that had suddenly left them.

Her look shifted to the right, to their entwined hands, his swallowing hers.

Damn him.

Damn him for making her feel. For jabbing awake all that she had been determined to leave dead in the past. For complicating the hate she had for him. The hate he had for her.

There had been a very specific line drawn in the ground between them and he continued to step over it, to grind away at that line with the heel of his boot.

“Why are you crying, Laney?”

Her look jerked up to him. “Crying? I’m not crying.” Her fingers left his shoulder and touched her cheeks only to feel wet droplets trailing down her skin. Her gaze dropped to the loose white cravat he had dangling about his neck as she scrubbed them away.

“Laney?”

She inhaled a deep breath and shrugged, her voice not nearly as solid as she’d like it. “It makes me think of that night.”

“Which night?” He didn’t halt his steps, their legs moving in rhythm of their own accord.

“The night before…” She forced her gaze up to him, overriding how much she wanted to rip herself from