One Night with a Duke (12 Dukes of Christmas #10) - Erica Ridley Page 0,6

banter, pretty words designed to weaken a woman’s defenses, but a simple statement of fact.

He assumed this was her shop. A Black woman. He’d assumed the pieces were her handiwork. Complimented them. Thought her talented. Believed her intricate creations to be far more remarkable and noteworthy than the fact that Angelica owned and designed them. Her chest filled with hope.

He made everything she’d worked for all these years seem possible.

Despite his claim to the contrary, Angelica was uncomfortably aware that she was the least eye-catching thing in the room.

All her time and energy was devoted to her shop. Which meant everything else in her life was as plain and simple as possible, so she needn’t waste precious time dithering. The pale-pink day dress she wore was identical to six others in her wardrobe. She could grab any item without thinking and it would all match because she’d designed her living quarters to be as easy as possible. She saved her brain for things that mattered. Her shop was her world. Her looks should be irrelevant.

A maxim she’d repeated to herself for seven long years, only for today—today!—for it to finally feel true.

Angelica looked like a business owner. She looked like a jeweler. Like a skilled artisan. She looked like she belonged here, in this space. In the shop she’d carved out of blood, sweat, tears, and pure unadulterated stubbornness.

All by herself.

Mostly by herself. In any case, she was on her own now. Independent and proud of it.

“Tell me about all the pieces,” commanded the distractingly handsome Scotsman. “Start at the beginning. Which was the first one you made? The first one you sold? Why that one? When did you open the shop? Are most of your clients tourists? Who was the first customer? Are you charging enough for your work? Which stones are your favorites to work with? Is gold better than silver? How do you come up with such compelling designs?”

Angelica stared at him.

Usually she didn’t know what to say, but he’d given her too much to respond to. Asked better questions in one minute than all her other customers combined.

She didn’t have time to explain how she became a jeweler, what her first piece was, why a bejeweled vinaigrette bottle had been the first item she’d sold. Much less give the hours-long—months-long?—explanation of which materials she preferred for which purposes and why, and the mechanics behind each design. He would have to apprentice her for a year.

“Och aye, I like this one,” he breathed, seemingly unperturbed by her lack of answers. “May I touch?”

She nodded jerkily. The piece was a deceptively simple pendant; an orb within an orb, the interior world turning independently of the delicate golden cage that bound it.

Even though Mr. MacLean had asked permission to touch, received permission, wanted to touch, he brought his knuckle ever so close to the side of the tiny globe-within-a-globe and did not make contact.

Angelica was two yards away and could feel that light presence as though his knuckle was not next to her gold pendant, but rather beside her cheek. Close enough to feel his warmth, yet not quite touching. Close enough to lean into, were she to dip her head. Close enough to smell, to taste.

But it was not her he was looking at with such fascination. It was not even the gold pendant. Already he had moved to the next sparkling object, and the next, and the next. At this rate, he would lay eyes on every piece faster than she would have been able to rattle off their names.

When he reached the final piece, he stood just across the counter from Angelica. He could reach out and not-quite-touch her the way he’d not-quite-touched her gold pendant.

The thought made her want to wrench open the wooden door behind her, fling herself into her private adjoining cottage, and shut the door tight behind her.

She wouldn’t, of course. She couldn’t. Her shop didn’t close for hours, and she needed every scrap of success she could find.

“I’ll take them,” the Scot announced.

She blinked at him. “Take what?”

“Whichever ones you want to sell me,” he replied, as though it was obvious. As though people wandered in off the street every day willing to pay exorbitant prices for expensive jewelry they didn’t bother to pick out for themselves.

He hadn’t even asked about cost.

“What would you do with fifteen hair combs?” she managed.

“Is that what you’d sell me?” He appeared delighted by this absurdity. “I’d wear them, all at once, just to say