instead of the one in his head? His brain knew better; he just had to send that same message to his body and quell the early stirrings of his arousal.
Lockhart was watching intently and Greer knew Mercedes wasn’t going to go easy on him. There was no need to. He was up to any challenge Mercedes might present. Greer bent to survey the table at cue level. No straight shot presented itself, Mercedes would be happy about that. He would be forced to select a skill from their lesson right from the start. Greer aimed his cue to hit the ball slightly off centre, using a slicing shot to send it to the pocket while sending the cue ball on ahead to safety, away from the hazard.
‘No, wait.’ Mercedes interrupted his concentration. ‘You’re still aiming too low. A slice shot is to be off-centre, not high or low. The shot you want to take will put your cue ball in the pocket too.’
‘It’s fine,’ Greer said with a tight smile, not wanting to be taken to task in front of Lockhart. He was a man, for heaven’s sake, not a sixteen-year-old schoolboy. He knew what he was doing.
Mercedes shrugged and let him take the shot, raising her eyebrows in an ‘I told you so’ gesture when his ball followed the other into the pocket. He blew out his breath. She briskly gathered up the two balls and set them back on the table. ‘Try again. This time, let me show you.’
She stood close, wrapping her hands over his, positioning the cue. He was not unaware of her body pressed to his, the light floral scent of her soap or the womanly curve of her where her hips cradled his buttocks. The arousal that had sparked earlier was in danger of being fully achieved. This time the shot went in. She put the balls back into place one more time. ‘Now, try it again on your own.’ Greer lined the shot up carefully, thinking there might be something else he’d be trying alone if she kept this up. This time he sank the shot and the game was fully engaged.
By the second round, Greer was certain there was more than one game being played out. Mercedes was shooting out of her head. He’d never seen anyone make the shots she made, and he’d most definitely not seen her display this level of skill, which was saying something.
He’d thought her formidable before. Now, there wasn’t even a word in his vocabulary to adequately describe her talent. Phenomenal, stupendous—easy word choices, but inadequate. What did she think she was doing? But there was no time to contemplate hidden agendas. Greer played harder, his shirt sleeves rolled up, his jacket off. The intensity increased. He plied his skill tirelessly with slices, stop shots that careened on the lip of the pocket, bank shots that circumvented barriers to direct shots, but nothing would stop Mercedes.
Greer lost all three games, honourably and by mere inches to be sure, but in the end he’d simply been outplayed. When the last ball fell, Mercedes threw a triumphant smile in her father’s direction. Greer expected to see Lockhart grinning at his daughter’s success—perhaps he even expected a little scolding directed his way over having lost. But the scold that came was for Mercedes and it was not what Greer had expected at all.
Lockhart rose, fury on his face. He strode towards Mercedes and yanked the cue stick from her hand. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? Parading yourself like that? No man wants a woman who plays better than himself or even a woman who plays, for that matter, let alone one who has any skill at it. Act like a lady.’
Mercedes had a fury of her own. ‘Act like a lady? What happened to “you’ve always understood the game”? You were happy enough to have me act any way I pleased as long as you could use it.’
Greer felt like an interloper. This was private, family business being aired in the midst of an inn. His family would not have dared to display their conflicts so openly. Then again, his family preferred to keep those sorts of things tucked away and ignored, pretending they didn’t exist, like their financial deficiencies.
‘You are not playing in Bath. That’s final.’ Lockhart’s voice was terse, a tic jumping in his cheek.
‘I’m better than any man,’ Mercedes replied. ‘Why are you so afraid?’
‘It’s not seemly. You’ve been raised to be a lady in bearing, if not in name. Is this how you repay me? Is this what your fancy dresses and fine education are to come to?’
Mercedes would not back down. ‘You did that for yourself. You wanted that for me. You never once asked what I wanted. Why show me billiards at all if you never expected me to excel?’ Mercedes’s eyes glittered with wet, as of yet unspilled, emotion. Greer’s heart went out to her in that moment. How brave she was. He’d been taught a man bore the decisions of the world stoically and without complaint. Never mind that he’d thought many of the same things Mercedes gave voice to now.
‘That is enough, Mercedes.’ Lockhart had gone rigid. ‘If you don’t like my decision, you are welcome to go home and await our return there.’
Mercedes shot him a look full of blazing discontent and stormed out of the inn, the door slamming behind her. She was nothing if not magnificent in her anger. Lockhart turned to Greer, his hands held out in a gesture of reconciliation. ‘I am sorry, Barrington.’ He sighed. ‘She’s emotional in spite of her pretensions to the opposite.’ Lockhart gave a quiet chuckle. ‘She’s a woman, no? What can we expect? You have sisters. You know how it is.’
‘Yes, two of them,’ Greer said tightly. He didn’t want to be corralled into taking sides against Mercedes, but neither did he want to offend Lockhart. Lockhart could send him packing as easily as he could Mercedes, and the ride had really just begun with the first big test looming in Bath if he embraced it.
‘Two sisters—then you’re used to their high-strung tendencies.’ Lockhart made a shooing gesture with his hand. ‘Go and talk to her. I don’t like her on the streets alone, but I’m the last person she’ll want to see. Maybe she’ll listen to you.’ He gave a fatherly sigh of defeat. ‘The world is what it is; she can’t change that, no matter how much she rails against it.’
Greer was more than glad to go after Mercedes. He didn’t doubt she was safe, armed as she was with the knife in her bodice and her temper. No man with any intelligence would fail to read the signs of an angry woman. He could do with some air himself, some time to sort through what had just happened.
The more he thought about it, the more he couldn’t help feeling that Lockhart, the consummate showman, had turned even a personal quarrel with his daughter to his advantage. If he was willing to do that with an issue of a private nature, what else would he stoop to use or who? Was there any sacred line in the sand?
That didn’t make Mercedes the innocent party here by any stretch. It did occur to him as he walked down the street, replaying the quarrel in his mind, that she might have been using him to make her father angry, that he was a tool for flaunting her own independence in all ways. The realisation took the bubble off the wine. He didn’t want their kisses, their passion, to be part of some other game she played. He didn’t want to be another ‘Mr Reed’ to her, someone she used for other ends. It was time to confront her on that issue.
Mercedes saw Greer approaching out of the corner of her eye. She flipped open the little watch she carried. ‘Ten minutes. Very good. I win,’ she said without turning from the window.
‘I’m sorry, did we wager on something?’ Greer said coolly. He had his own issues to settle with her. She’d used him in there.
‘I wagered with myself that my father would send you after me within ten minutes. He wouldn’t dare come himself. He did send you, didn’t he?’
‘I was concerned for you.’ Greer’s
