Taking a deep breath, she took hold of her emotions and forced her expression into simpering sweetness. “Whah, mistah, ah don’t know why yer so suspicious of a little ol’ gal like me.” The man turned slowly around and regarded Hope as though she’d just sprouted another head. She batted her dark lashes and smiled coyly. “Ah assure you, sir, ah mean ya no harm.”
The trace of a grin tugged at sensuous lips as his assessing gaze raked her full length, twice. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Rotten Yankee,” she muttered under her breath. Crossing her arms over her chest, she tapped out an aggravated rhythm with her toe. “How the hell do you expect me to leave when you’ve bolted the door and won’t let me out through the window?”
“Locked the door,” he corrected, slipping his hand into the front pocket of his trousers and extracting a key. He swung it teasingly beneath her nose. “Ah don’t know where y’all are from,” he said with a heavily satirical, and dreadfully bad, southern accent, “but ‘round here, we’all call ‘em locks.”
She made a grab for the key but his lightning-quick reflexes easily snatched it away. She watched glumly as he tucked it back in his pocket, a cocky smile curling his lips.
“As for leaving,” he shrugged. “You got in here all by yourself—you can leave the same way.”
“The door wasn’t locked when I came in,” she reminded him, her gaze spitting fire as it settled on his smug countenance.
“It is now,” he countered, just as coldly. “You’re a smart girl. Figure it out.”
If she thought it would have done any good, Hope would have lunged for his throat the second he turned his back on her and returned to his chair. There was nothing hurried in the way he lifted his feet and crossed his ankles atop the ivory comforter. Was his position supposed to be a mockery of her first true look at him, she wondered? Probably. The only difference was, where before his arms had rested on the wooded armrests, they were now crossed over the sinewy chest. From his viewpoint, she had ample opportunity to scrutinize each well-defined muscle that bulged from shoulder to elbow. The sight did nothing to bolster her rapidly dwindling confidence.
All right, she thought with a sigh of annoyance. If playing the rat’s silly little game was what it took to get her out of this damn room, then fine, she would play it. But she would settle for nothing less than winning.
The lines were drawn, the battlefield mapped. If she wanted to leave, she was going to have to do it alone. No help would be offered from her stone-faced adversary.
The only two options that presented themselves were the obvious: the door and the window. The latter was forbidden, while the former was locked—not bolted, locked. That, however, was not an insurmountable obstacle. Every lock had a key, and this one’s just happened to rest in a certain pocket. With the man sitting in that particular position, lifting the key off of him without his being aware of what she was doing was impossible, no doubt the reason he had chosen it.
Perhaps if she tried reasoning with him, or tried desperately pleading her case? No, she’d tried that already and it hadn’t worked. The fool hadn’t believed a word she’d said.
She scowled. Wait a minute. Hadn’t her mother once told her that even the hardest of hearts could be swayed by the sight of a woman’s tears? Yes, she had. But then, her mother had never met this particular man. A harder heart Hope doubted she’d find. Sighing, she closed her eyes and sent up a silent prayer. For once, please God, let Mother be right about something!
She decided to give the man one more chance before trying anything so desperate. “Sure you won’t change your mind and unlock the door?” she asked sweetly as the man leaned over and plucked up his bottle of gin.
“Yup.”
Okay, the matter was settled. Crying it was. Now, how did one go about forcing oneself into a fit of tears? Crying was not a weakness she liked to see displayed, in herself or others. Even now, it was hard to recall the last time she had allowed herself to indulge in self-pity of any kind. Or was it?
The memory came on her slowly, like the curling vapors of an early morning mist rolling over the water and onto the coast. Slowly, she walked over to the window and leaned against the wooden frame, the man behind her completely superseded by the memories clouding her mind.
They were unclear, fuzzy, fragmented in no discernible order. There was dark, then light. The face of her father, strained with fear as she had never seen it before. She saw her brother through the grimy glass, ten years old and fighting to rub the sleep from his eyes. There was smoke, everywhere there was smoke. She could smell the cloying odor now as surely as if it floated in the air. And pain. Gasping aloud, Hope flinched. Never would she forget the searing pain.
She hugged her arms tightly around her stomach. The tears streaming down her cheeks, the sobs shaking her body, were as genuine as the horrid piano music drifting up through the cracks in the floorboards.
The chair scraped against the floor. Muffled footsteps slowly approached from behind. She ignored the sounds as she sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. The large hand that suddenly draped over her shoulder was not so easily ignored. The warmth of his palm penetrated the wool of her cloak and melted through the rosy muslin gown. It caressed the flesh beneath and made it tingle in a way no other touch had ever done.
“Whatever you’re pulling, sunshine, I warn you it won’t work.” The ominous tone was touched with a trace of sympathy the man would rather not have felt.
She stiffened and jerked away. “Don’t touch me, you bastard,” she hissed, and with a quick sidestep slipped past him. Angrily, she wiped at the tears that streamed down her cheeks with balled fists, and inwardly flung a string of curses a mile long at the man behind her. It was his fault that she had been forced to dredge up memories better left forgotten; memories better left buried in the tiny cemetery in Clairmont, where the ashen remains of her mother’s body lay. Of course, it never once occurred to Hope that it had been her idea to bring on those tears in the first place. No, far better to lay the blame on a stranger’s doorstep rather than her own.
A sarcastic chuckle echoed through the air behind her as the man dragged his fingers through his hair. “Please, spare the theatrics. I’ve seen acting jobs in a bordello better than the one you just tried to pull off.”
“You’re despicable,” she spat.
“Hmmm,” the man breathed, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with her statement. “I’ve been called worse.”
“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.” Swallowing the lump in her throat, she willed her painful memories back into the shady corner of her mind where they belonged. Many years of practice made the task surprisingly simple.
His brows rose mockingly high, crinkling his sun-kissed forehead. “Do I detect a note of sarcasm? You know, if you’re tired of my company there is a way to leave. Just tell me who sent you to my room tonight and why. Then I’ll be more than happy to unlock the door. In fact, I’ll even escort you downstairs myself.”
His voice had grown soft, cajoling. The change in timbre served to make her all the more leery. “Are we back to that again?” she asked with weary annoyance. “Lord, but I’ve never met a man as suspicious as you. How many times to I have to tell you? No-one-sent-me-here-I-stum
bled-into-the-wrong-room!”