I closed my eyes and breathed in the quiet air, trying my hardest to fall into a sweet drunken oblivion. At most this was an inconvenience, a minor hiccup in my life that would hopefully affect me only in the slightest of ways. I had my own life apart from my mother and I intended to keep myself out of her silly little play at being the mother of a noble.
* * *
***
* * *
I was startled from the gentle twilight between waking and sleep by a harsh knock on my door—no, my office door… I was still in my office! I’d almost forgotten where I was, my brain still addled by the copious amounts of wine I’d imbibed before.
How long have I been asleep? I wondered. I glanced over at my desktop only to find that it was somewhere close to two in the morning.
Another knock on my door brought me closer to the surface of reality, and I began to wonder who in the world would be at my business at this late hour. And for that matter, how had they gotten past the door by the front desk? If it was some kind of burglar then I doubted they’d have the courtesy of knocking.
“We’re not open,” I called out to whoever was intruding upon my quiet and somewhat sad round of lonesome drinking. “You’ll have to come back another time, I’m afraid.”
I strained to listen for whoever might be out there, expecting a reply but only silence followed. I’d almost begun to think that they’d simply left, surprised that one of England’s upper class had been satisfied to have been turned away so easily. However I was soon proven that none of my wishes were going to be honored.
I heard the sounds of the lock scraping and clicking, and within a moment I saw my door start to swing slowly inward, the scant light pouring in from the waiting room outside. To say that I was furious would have been an understatement. Someone had just walked into my own office without my permission, much less a word of greeting. But something in the back of my head told me that I should be more than annoyed, I should be panicking. Who had just done all this? Was I going to be murdered? The alcohol pumping through my blood made those important questions seem so very trivial as I looked at the masculine silhouette highlighted against the open doorway.
“I told you that we are closed!” I said, standing shakily from my chair. “Please leave! Come back during normal business hours.”
The man laughed, a cocky chuckle that brought thoughts to my head that I’d seldom had since I was only a teenager. A shiver ran down my spine. I recognized that laugh, having heard it so many times when I was younger, but it was the face I was having trouble placing. Where did I know that laugh from?
And then it hit me all at once like a ton of bricks, practically smacking me right in my forehead as I saw that gorgeous face as clear as the last day I’d laid eyes upon it. It couldn’t be him, not after all of this time, not after the fight that he’d had with his father—my father… Well, stepfather, anyway.
“Tristan?” I asked, squinting my eyes against the light beyond the door.
“You do remember,” he said, stepping farther into the dark room and closing the door behind him. I was thankful for the darkness, the beginnings of my hangover already starting to rear their head. “And here I thought that you’d forgotten me, after all of this time.”
Forgotten? Forgotten?
I was lucky that after several years of my stepbrother’s absence, my thoughts of him had become limited to only once or twice a day.
Good Lord—forgotten him. As if I could ever forget my first real crush. As if I could forget how badly I’d wanted him, even when I told myself that I didn’t. How he’d made me tremble in the kitchen of our old house, my breath thick in my throat, his voice husky in my ear.
Come on, love. Don’t you want to piss your mother off?
“How am I supposed to forget my stepbrother after the exit that you made?” I asked, trying to keep my mouth from hanging agape. Tristan’s sudden rush to join the military was something that none of us had expected—me most of all. And the night that the two of us had nearly... I fumbled for something to discuss other than that time we’d nearly fucked. “That fight you had with your father was legendary. I think there are old women still scandalized by it to this very day.”
Lord Wolfe was in a rage like I had never seen before in my entire life, bellowing at the top of his lungs, spittle flying from his mouth as Tristan and he stared one another down face to face. Not that fighting between the two of them was uncommon. In fact I almost thought that they both too a certain pleasure in angering the other, seeing how far they could go to push one another into another argument…. I wasn’t sure how Tristan could have stood for that all of his life.