Rake Most Likely To Seduce. Bronwyn Scott
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knife flashed in his hand from some secret place on his person and she knew she was right to have gone on the defensive. Good lord, he’d been armed all along! What sort of man carried a weapon to a party? She’d traded drowning in the canal for being stabbed by a madman in hotel room, who was laughing.
The Englishman held out his arms in a gesture of peace, apparently having found great humour in the situation. ‘Put down the ewer, Gianna. The knife is for the laces. They’re in knots. I’m afraid there’s no saving them. Now, turn around and let me at them. Your bath is ready and you’re shaking.’
Hot embarrassment crept up her cheeks. She’d completely overreacted. But what else was she to think? It was easier to turn around than to let him see her blush. She’d let herself look foolish. ‘You find this funny?’ she scolded. She felt the slice of a sure blade through the sodden laces of her corset, felt the tight garment slide away, felt her body breathe, set free.
His hands closed over the caps of her shoulders, warm and firm against her chilled skin. ‘I think it’s funny that you believe I would go to all the trouble of dragging you out of the canal just to stab you a half hour later in my room.’ His fingers flexed gently against her skin, his mouth close to her ear. ‘What holds no humour for me is why a beautiful woman would have reason to think a man would do that.’
His body was just inches from hers. She could feel the heat of him through his wet clothes, feel the strength of him—it was there in the low rumble of his words, in the remembrance of the arm that had brought her to the water’s surface. This was a very different man than the count. She’d known it at the palazzo, but had not fully understood what it meant until now.
Where the count thrived on cruelty and force, this man did not. However, that mere discrepancy did not make him a saint. She had to be careful not to ascribe heroic attributes to him just because he’d dragged her out of the canal and hadn’t ravished her yet. He was still a gambler and he was a still a rogue—a rogue who was growing more appealing by the moment.
A shiver of a different sort swept through Gianna. She knew danger when she encountered it and it was standing right behind her. It wasn’t the knife in his hand that made him dangerous, it was his manners, his temptations.
He stepped back, releasing her. ‘Take your bath.’
Gianna turned to face him. He’d saved her tonight. He’d looked after her. How long had it been since anyone had done that? He was a complete stranger, someone who didn’t have to do any of those things and yet he had. She didn’t even know his name. She stretched a hand out. ‘You have my thanks, ah...?’ She waited for him to fill in the space left by her words.
A small smile twitched on his lips as he took her hand. ‘Are you asking me my name? It’s Nolan Gray.’
‘I’m trying to thank you, Mr Gray.’ She couldn’t resist a smile of her own, something warm unfurling in her stomach. She imagined he rather regularly had that effect on women. Once more she counselled caution. She didn’t want to like him. She just needed him to get through the next four weeks.
* * *
He just had to get through the night. He had a naked woman in his tub and no idea what to do with her, a most novel situation to be sure. Usually he knew exactly what to do with a naked woman in the tub, out of the tub, on the bed, off the bed, against the wall, out on the balcony with the moon overhead. He had to stop, this was starting to sound like an erotic prepositional exercise or bad poetry. Too bad his tutors had not aspired to such creative lengths—he might have done better in school.
Nolan stripped out of his clothes at last, glad to be rid of the damp and stench of the canal. He towelled dry his hair and slipped into his banyan, feeling warmer, cleaner already, but that raised another point of concern. What was she going to wear? Her gown was beyond use, wet and ruined. It was past midnight. There were no shops open and he didn’t know any shopkeepers to rouse. But he did know a friend... Brennan. Nolan grinned and hurried next door.
Brennan answered, half-dressed and less than half-sober. ‘Do you still have that nightgown, Bren? The one you just ordered.’
‘The one I ordered for my special lady,’ Brennan drawled his correction.
‘I need it, Bren.’ Nolan leaned against the doorjamb, his voice low. If Brennan was home this time of night he wasn’t alone and he didn’t want his business broadcast to all and sundry. ‘I have a situation.’
‘I have a situation, too, as it were.’ Brennan directed his eyes downward meaningfully where his robe gaped.
‘Please, she fell in the canal and has nothing to sleep in.’
Brennan raised a brow. ‘And that’s a problem how? I thought you screwed naked.’
‘Normally I do.’ Nolan stopped. What was he doing? He did not have to justify that to Brennan. Nolan rolled his eyes. One of the consequences of living in his friends’ pockets was that they knew everything about him, personal habits and all. He had no privacy left even when he had separate rooms. Nolan pushed a hand through his hair, striving for clarity. ‘It’s complicated, Bren. I won her in a card game, she fell out of the gondola, she’s in the tub right now.’ Striving and failing. Nolan blew out a breath. He could see the explanation didn’t help. He was flubbing this up miserably in his haste to get back to the room.
Brennan waved him off with a hand. ‘Enough, you’re making my head hurt. You can have the damn nightgown if you’ll just stop with all these details.’ Brennan retreated into the dark of his room and came back, a silky white item in one hand. ‘Just to be clear, I won’t want it back when you’re done.’
‘Thanks, I owe you one.’
Brennan laughed. ‘One nightgown, to be precise. I will want it replaced. Now, go to bed.’
Bed was an interesting proposition indeed given there was only the one in his suite and he’d not planned on sharing it with the lovely, mercurial Gianna. He’d also not planned on having her in his room, let alone his bed. Nolan stepped into the steamy bathing room, calling out his approach from the dressing screen that shielded the tub from any intruders. ‘Are you decent? I found you something to wear.’
He heard the water slosh, her voice momentarily flustered. ‘Toss it over the screen, I’ll be out in a minute.’
‘There’s no need to rush,’ Nolan called back, trying to sound cheerful. No need at all. He was still trying to figure out what to do with her, but before he could do that, he had to figure out what to make of her.
He draped the silky material over the screen. The evening hadn’t gone quite as anticipated. He was supposed to have won money, not a woman. But he’d had a plan for that, too. That woman was supposed to have embraced her freedom and left him at the pier. It was a nice, expedient option that should have satisfied them both. In the main room, Nolan poured himself a drink and went out on the balcony to think and to wait. He’d had one plan, but apparently, she’d had another, and that was cause for wonder.
Nolan leaned on the railing, his gaze going out across the dark waters as he sipped at the brandy, letting his thoughts come fast and logical: Was Gianna Minotti a fraud? Was she for real? Was she a little of both, part fact, part fiction? Perhaps of more immediate concern, what did she want badly enough to turn down her freedom and accompany an unknown man to a hotel room, an act that had obviously inspired at least a little fear in her?
There was a delicate cough behind him. He turned, preparing himself for the sight of Gianna Minotti in whatever passed for Brennan’s taste in nightwear. There would be no reason to overreact. This wasn’t his first woman in a nightgown or his first woman anything—he was way beyond firsts when it came to what happened in a bedroom.
His preparation was not enough. Thankfully, years of rote response came to his aid. ‘Will it suffice?’ The words came out of his mouth with little effort from him because the rest of him seemed tongue-tied. The pale-blue dress with its heavy adornments had not done her justice. It had, in fact,