Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Graham
Anna climbed the stairs, and I followed behind her. She’d borne enough hardship tonight for ten people, so I tried to be a gentleman and not watch the sway of her hips by candlelight, nor the curve of her neck, but dash it all, I’d have to walk blind. Today had been unlike any other day of my life.
The Pavilion, the promenading, the prawns. Even Morton’s excursion. It had all felt like a dream.
Anna made it so. Her sharp wit and audacity, how she pushed forward despite her heartache and fears, how she’d forgiven me my part with her father so quickly and so fully. And her laugh, that musical sound—it filled me up and shattered me all at once.
I’d made the biggest mistake of my life pretending not to love this woman.
I hadn’t the slightest idea I’d been living a half-life. But now it was like a missing piece had returned and the part of me I’d locked away was now free. Alive.
Her father would come tomorrow. He and I had always kept business and family separate, and the mere thought of crossing that line sparked fear like lightning through me. But something had to be said. I’d stand beside Anna if she needed me to. I’d speak for her if she let me.
The Brighton investment could hang for all I cared. If Anna would take me as I was, we could live like this, by the sea, forever. If only she’d have me. If only she felt as I did.
Was I imagining things, or were her steps slowing the closer she got to the top of the stairs? Her hand glided along the banister, then—
She stopped on the top stair, slowly turning to face me, her silhouette lit by candles hung on either side of the wall. She was mesmerizing.
I froze a step below her; our heights made us nearly even. My heart hammered in my chest. I dared not move as I waited for her words.
She licked her lips, and a moment’s hesitation flashed across her face. The candlelight glowed and crackled all around us.
My fingers itched to touch her, but I couldn’t. Not yet. I could only watch as she lifted her hand and pressed it to my chest, her own rising and falling with measured breaths.
This had to be a dream. I’d drowned in the sea. Her attention, her focused touch was paradise.
Then her eyes fell to my mouth. She bit her bottom lip, and my stomach clenched, my entire body ignited.
“Graham,” she whispered.
We needed a chaperone. Someone to keep her safe, to have her best interests in mind, because the more she looked at me with that longing in her eyes, the less I worried about later and the more I wanted now.
“Anna—” I started. My voice came out pained, with all the longing I felt but dared not speak.
She smoothed her fingertips over my lapels, then up and over my shoulders.
I couldn’t breathe. My arms were frozen.
Do not move. Do not touch her. Don’t do anything that might make her stop.
But how was a man to stay silent when the only woman who’d ever made him feel alive was showing him, clearly, that she was feeling it too?
I lifted my shaking hand to her hair and wrapped one of those silky brown curls around my finger.
She held my gaze as she lifted her hand to mine, pressing her cheek softly into my palm.
This cannot be real.And yet it was. Anna. Everything I wanted.
The greatest risk.
But was it a risk? I was good at calculations, at determining whether or not I’d lose, and there were always consequences, but she was leaning closer. Her free hand moved up my shoulder to my neck, her eyes measuring something in mine, and my frozen limbs were thawing, melting.
A risk, perhaps, but one with consequences I would willingly face.
“I want to kiss you, Graham,” she whispered, and my breath hitched, my stomach flipping over itself.
“You’re tired,” I breathed. One last chance for her to change her mind and retreat.
Her fingers played with the hair at the nape of my neck. “On the contrary, you have me wide awake. I have never thought more clearly in my life.”
My shaking fingers brushed the soft fabric of her bodice, and I was wholly encompassed by the feeling of her body in my hands. But I had to think this through. I had to be sure she knew what she was doing.
“Anna, you are not ignorant. You can see that my life is vastly different from yours. I will never have what your father has in money or connections or holdings.”
“I do not care,” she breathed. Her perfect little nose bumped mine. “I love—”
“I love you, Anna. I want nothing as badly as I want you.”
She kissed me firmly then, so sure, so intently that I forgot to breathe. Her lips were soft—softer than I’d ever imagined—and so warm as they pressed against mine once, then again.
Anna.
A rush so strong jolted me to my senses, and I took her fully in my arms. Took her lips with mine and breathed her in. My thumb grazed her jaw as I tasted her lips—sweet like honey and salty from the sea—and she tasted mine. We were two candles burning, she and I, melting together, growing brighter with confidence by the second. She grasped my lapel, her other hand tightening around my neck, both of us untethering, unafraid to show our hands for once and beg.
I wanted more of her, all of her. Recklessly, eagerly, with a fiery urgency I’d never before felt. Her lips, her hands, her body pressed up against mine. I moved up a step, standing even with her, then angled her back and pressed her up against the wall, so I could—
“Graham?” A door squeaked as it opened.
In a breath, Anna pushed me back, eyes wide and set upon mine, like she couldn’t believe what we’d just done. She was flushed, chest heaving, frozen.
It took a full ten seconds for me to come to my senses.
Tabs sniffed. “Graham?”
I cleared my throat, swallowing hard, and forced myself to take a half step back from the wall, my eyes never leaving Anna’s.
“I’m coming,” I called to the darkness. “Get back in your bed.”
Somehow, by the grace and goodness of the Almighty, I heard the rustling of her blankets as she plopped back down on her bed.
Anna sidestepped. “Heavens, I forgot where we were. I should not have—I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“I’m not. Not at all.” I needed to say something right, something perfect to get her to stay.
“I lost myself for a moment.” She retreated a few steps, fingers touching her swollen lips.
I moved to follow her, palms raised in surrender, mind whirling. She’d kissed me. She’d kissed me, and nothing else in the world mattered. “We should have lost ourselves ages ago.”
She placed a hand on the wall, retreated another step.
Wait,I silently begged her. Don’t run.
Her eyes were full of the same fear I felt, like a cornered rabbit, its only options to run or be caught in a net. But hers was a net I desperately wanted to be caught in.
Cautiously, I took a half step nearer. Just close enough to reach out and graze my fingers along her jaw. “Don’t leave me.”
She lifted a hand to hold my wrist, neither pushing me away nor pulling me close, just holding me there. “You are just saying this to please me. My father, your investment—”
“I do not want the investment.” I shook my head, struck with how freeing a string of words could feel, suddenly desperate. “You have the power to tell me no. Your father gave it to you. Anna, tell me not to invest in Brighton, and I’ll prove it to you.”
I moved closer, wrapping my other arm around her waist. “I love you,” I whispered again. “I want nothing more than to be tied to you.”
She raised her chin, looking up at me. “Just me?”
I took her lips with mine. “Only you.”
She laughed against my kiss. “Very well, then. You cannot have your investment.”
“Balderdash.” I feigned a disappointed groan, nuzzling into her neck. “How about a trade? I’ll have you, instead.”
Tabs started to cry. “Graham!”
Slowly, Anna traced her hands down my chest. “Go. We’ll speak more tomorrow,” she whispered, then pressed her lips to mine.
“Tomorrow, then,” I said as she turned in a flash, a flurry of skirts past Tabs’s room, then closed the door to her own.