An Heiress to Remember (The Gilded Age Girls Club #3) - Maya Rodale Page 0,66
to wear his exclusive color and declare herself as his to all the world. Instead of making love, she had done this . . . this demonstration of her independence.
“I see what you did there—” Dalton said.
“I’m glad that you think I did something. I’d be insulted if you didn’t.”
He noticed that she was humming with the energy of one who persevered in the face of an obstacle with no expectation of triumph and who was surprised and delighted to find she’d won.
“What are we doing, Beatrice?” Dalton asked quietly, and she turned to give her full attention. His heart started to beat hard when her eyes met his.
“Rivals by day, lovers by night. Right?”
“That’s what we were doing. Past tense.”
“It got complicated, didn’t it?”
“Can we go somewhere more quiet and private to talk?”
She nodded and motioned for him to follow and he did. She lead him away to the stairs, up to the fifth floor, in housewares, which was empty. Everyone was on the other floors.
A savvy salesgirl took one look at them and made herself busy on the far side of the floor, dusting an array of Tiffany lamps.
Beatrice leaned against a chest of drawers. It was on display in a staged bedroom, recently revamped. It did not escape his notice that the twin bed display had been replaced with a full-size one.
What did that mean? God, what was happening to him that he was now trying to read a woman’s intentions in the arrangement of furniture on display?
“Talk to me, Dalton.”
There was still something palpable between them, a smoldering-passion kind of something. He saw her hands reaching for him, then dropping to hide in the folds of her floral-printed not pink skirts. She wanted him, but wouldn’t indulge.
“Tell me what you have against pink silk,” he said. “Tell me why you are so intent on crushing it. After all, you have to admit it’s so pretty.”
“I have nothing against pink silk. I’m quite fond of it, especially Dalton’s Wild Rose. But not if it’s trying to ruin me. Not if I’m supposed to wear it as a sign of my submission to my competitor and/or lover.”
“It’s not possible for you and pink silk to peacefully exist in the same world at the same time?”
“You tell me.” She lifted one brow. “And I know we’re not talking about pink silk.”
“We’re not talking about pink silk.”
“You’re the one with a lifelong ambition to conquer. To deliberately devalue me so you can get me for a lower price. To have me. And I won’t let you.”
Dalton wanted to protest, to tell her she had it all wrong. But until very, very recently he had wanted to conquer, to run the store into the ground so he could buy it for a song, so he could be so powerful and her so vulnerable that he could have a chance with her. So he could have her parading around town in his exclusive pink silk, not so that everyone would know that she had given herself to him, but so he would know.
But when he thought about it, when he felt about it, that wasn’t what he wanted at all. He wanted to love her and be loved by her. He didn’t care what she wore—or didn’t wear.
“Do you think actively working to ruin the source of my freedom and joy is going to get you the girl?”
Dalton lived in the world. He read the news and novels, saw the plays, grew upon the same stories, that a man needed a fortune at any cost if he was ever going to get the girl. Get. To have and to hold. But a woman wasn’t a thing to have or hold, to possess or hold captive.
And oh, fuck, at last he felt like a duke. Her duke.
Having her but not really having her at all.
It wasn’t what he wanted.
Dalton stepped aside. Giving them both a little breathing room.
“Did you know, Beatrice, that you weren’t the only one wandering around a big empty house for sixteen years?”
Her eyes lifted up to his, searching, wanting to know more.
“Did you know that you weren’t the only one yearning to be touched?” Dalton asked quietly so only she could hear because ruthless, powerful, millionaire tycoons such as himself didn’t admit to such things. He knew such men kept such soft words bottled up inside, never to say them aloud, especially to a woman, in her territory.