You already know about the opera thing, but my second greatest passion is port wine. My sign is Leo. And,” he finally concluded, “I don’t like pina coladas or getting caught in the rain, either.”
By the time he finished, Della’s irritation at him was an almost palpable thing. He’d sensed it growing as he’d spoken, until he’d halfway expected her to cover her ears with her hands and start humming, then say something like, “La la la la la. I can’t hear you. I have my fingers in my ears and I’m humming. La la la la la.”
Instead, she’d spent the time nervously breaking her pastry into little pieces and dropping them onto her plate. Now that he was finished, she shifted her gaze from his to those little broken pieces and said, “I really wish you hadn’t told me those things.”
“Why not?”
“Because every time I discover something else about you, it makes you that much more difficult to forget.”
Something stirred to life inside him at her words, but he couldn’t say exactly what that something was. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation, but neither was it exactly agreeable. It was just … different. Something he’d never felt before. Something it would take some time to explore.
“That’s interesting,” he told her. “Because I don’t know one tenth that much about you, and I know you’re going to be impossible to forget.”
Still studying the broken pastry, she made a face, as if she hadn’t realized what a mess she’d made of it. She placed the plate on the mattress on top of the pad of paper with the information he’d written down, though he was pretty sure she’d given it a quick glance before covering it. With any luck, she had a photographic memory. With even more luck, he’d notice later that the slip of paper had moved from the bed into her purse.
Her purse, he thought. Women’s purses were notorious for storing information—probably more than a computer’s hard drive. Not that Marcus could vouch for such a thing. He’d never had the inclination to search a woman’s purse before. It was actually a pretty despicable thing for a man to even consider doing.
He couldn’t wait to get into Della’s.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you a few things about myself.”
Finally, they were getting somewhere. Just where, exactly, he wasn’t sure he could say. But it was farther down the road than they’d been a few minutes ago. He wished he could see farther still, to find out if the road was a long and winding one with hills and valleys and magnificent vistas, or if it ended abruptly in a dead end where a bridge had washed out, and where there were burning flares and warning sirens and pylons strung with yellow tape that read Caution!
Then again, did he really care? It wasn’t as if anything as minor as cataclysmic disaster had ever stopped him from going after what he wanted before. And he did want Della. He wanted her a lot.
Five
Della tried not to notice how Marcus seemed to have moved closer to her during their exchange. She couldn’t help noting other things, however. Such as how love-tousled his dark hair was and how the shadow of beard covered the lower half of his face, both qualities evoking an air of danger about him. Or maybe it was just that she realized now how very dangerous he was. How dangerous her behavior last night had been. How dangerous it was to still be with him this morning with no way to get home. Not only because she was at greater risk of Geoffrey discovering her absence, but also because she was beginning to feel things for Marcus that she had no business feeling. Things that would make it more difficult to leave him when the time came.
She never, ever, should have allowed herself to succumb to her desires last night. Hadn’t she learned the hard way how doing that led to trouble? The last time she’d yielded so easily to a man, her life had been left in a shambles. And Egan had been nowhere near as compelling or unforgettable as Marcus.
“I’m originally from the East Coast,” she said, hoping that small snippet of information—even if it was a hugely broad one that could mean anything—would appease him.
She should have known better.
“Where on the east coast?” he asked.
She frowned at him and repeated stubbornly, “The east coast.”
“North or south?”
“That’s all I’m giving you, Marcus. Don’t push or that’s the only thing you’ll learn about me.”
He opened his mouth to say more, then shut it again. He was probably recalling how she’d told him she came from someplace hot, and he was assuming it was the latter. But he was clearly not happy about having to acquiesce to her demand.
She wasn’t sure whether or not to confess anything about her family, mostly because she hadn’t seen any of them for years. Even when they’d all lived under one roof, they hadn’t really been much of a family. It was a sad thing to admit, but Della really didn’t have feelings for any of them one way or another. Still, if Marcus wanted information, maybe that would be the kind to give him because it wouldn’t cost her anything emotionally. It would also potentially be misleading, since most people stayed in touch with their blood relations, so he might think she hadn’t traveled too far from her own.
“I have an older brother,” she admitted. “And a younger brother, as well.” The first had taken off when he was sixteen and Della was fourteen, and she hadn’t seen him since. The other, last time she’d heard—which had been about ten years ago—had joined a gang. At the tender age of fifteen. No telling where he was now, either.
On the few occasions when Della thought about her brothers, she tried to convince herself that they’d been motivated by the same things she had, and in the same way. She told herself they’d gotten out of the old neighborhood and found better lives, just as she had. Sometimes she even believed herself. But more often, she feared they had screwed up everything in their lives, too, the same way she had.
“Nieces and nephews?” Marcus asked.
She only shook her head in response to that. To her, the gesture meant I don’t know. To Marcus, let it mean whatever he wanted it to.
“Any injuries sustained as a child?” he asked, referring to his own.
She supposed she could tell him about the time she cut her foot on a broken beer bottle in a vacant lot during a game of stickball and had to get stitches, but that didn’t quite compare to skiing and riding accidents. So she only said, “None worth mentioning.”
“Schooling?” he asked.
The School of Hard Knocks, she wanted to say. It was either that, or her infamously crime-ridden high school or disgracefully underachieving elementary school. But neither of those would be the answer he was looking for.
Della knew he was looking for specific answers. He wanted her to be a specific kind of woman. The kind of woman who came from the same society he did and who lived and moved there as easily as he. She wasn’t sure if he was the sort of blue blood who would turn his nose up in disgust at her if he knew her true origins, but he would, without question, be disappointed. She was glamorous to him. He’d made that clear. She was intriguing. A woman of mystery and erotica. The last thing he wanted to hear her say was that she’d grown up in a slum, had no formal education, had clawed and fought to win every scrap she ever had, and had taught herself
