She waved a hand. "I did some research on my phone while you were in your meeting. I figured I could work while you were there, since this is what you hired me for."
"What did you find out?"
"Well." Violet put her coffee cup down in a nearby holder and lifted her phone, dragging her thumb across the screen. He was fascinated by that small action, by her dainty fingers as they moved across the face of her smartphone, typing. "I started with 'Ozymandias,' of course, since that was on my note. But the more I read about fallen empires and tragic pasts, the more I wonder if it's some sort of veiled daughter-shaming. Knowing my father, that could be part of the reason he gave me the poem." She cast him a sidelong look. "Which pissed me off, so I tried a different route. So I focused on 'Glirastes.' It didn't take much to find out what the connection was."
Anticipation unfurled in his belly. "And what is it?"
Her eyes sparkled as she grinned up at him. "A dormouse lover."
"A what?" She giggled at his expression, and he was fascinated by the sound, by the way she smiled. God, her happiness alone was making his dick hard as a rock. He longed to touch her, to feel that soft skin under his fingers. Instead, he only gripped his coffee cup harder.
"A dormouse lover," she repeated, still smiling. "It seems that Shelley's nickname for his wife was 'dormouse,' and so he picked 'Glirastes' as pen name for an inside joke. It means dormouse lover."
"It's an interesting tidbit, but why would your father point that out?"
"Well." Violet tilted her head and began to scroll through her phone again. "Remember that my letter had certain parts of words written in a bolder hand than the others. If I take all the bolded letters, it spells out 'thirteen steps underneath.'"
"Yes, but underneath what? Where do we start looking?"
She held up a finger again. "I'm getting there. So, 'dormouse' was apparently a nickname that Percy gave to Mary during their time in a city called Marlow, which is on the Thames River. And Marlow is best known for an old suspension bridge. This bridge." She pulled up a picture on her cell phone and held it out to him.
Jonathan took it from her. For a moment he was distracted by the warmth left from her grip, and he had to force himself to focus on the photo of the bridge. "You think it's here?"
"It's as good a place to start as any," she told him. "But 'Ozymandias' was first published under the name 'Glirastes,' and Glirastes came in to play because of the time they spent in Marlow. I figure we can check under the bridge. I mean, if it's thirteen steps under a house, I'd rather not tear up anyone's basement without trying all of our options first."
He looked over at her, so lovely in the shadows of the car. "Our options?" That tiny change in her thinking stuck out at him. For so long, she hadn't wanted to be part of this chase. She'd all but planted her feet every time he suggested anything.
And now Violet was researching on her own time? Talking about searching together?
She leaned over and nudged him with her elbow, the gesture similar to one that Reese had given him earlier. Except this time he reacted completely different. Violet's soft body next to his played havoc with his senses, the faint scent of her perfume filling his nostrils, and his body immediately responded to her touch, his c**k hardening.
"I figure we're in this together," she told him. "Whatever my father wants us to find out, he wants us to find it out together."
"Together," he agreed. He liked the sound of that.
-
Violet fidgeted and shifted in her chair, trying to get comfortable. Despite the late hour and the relative poshness of the leather chaises in the private jet, she couldn't relax. Maybe it was the three cups of coffee she'd gulped down while sitting in the limo. Maybe it was the fact that they were on their way to London for the next part of the scavenger hunt, and she was feeling excited despite herself.
She suspected it was all those things, but throw in a very sexy, intense Jonathan Lyons sitting across from her? Sleep was impossible. He was wearing another blazer over a T-shirt and jeans, and the effect was overtly masculine and confidently casual at the same time.
Sad to say, she was still affected by his presence. Their sexual relationship was ten years in the past, but the way her ni**les seemed to react, you'd think it was just yesterday that he'd had his mouth on them. Of course, she couldn't blame her ni**les-not when the rest of her body wasn't playing fair, either. There was an ache between her legs that wouldn't go away, and her skin prickled with awareness whenever he drew close enough for her to smell his aftershave.
Her mind was the most traitorous of all, because every time Violet closed her eyes, she saw Jonathan's body moving over hers. It wasn't the nineteen-year-old Jonathan, either. It was the man seated across from her, hard with muscle, eyes world-weary and intense all at once. He'd been sexy as a college boy, but he was utterly devastating as an adult man.