‘Is that what you want?’ His eyes bored into hers. ‘Is the old man too soft for your liking?’
‘Oh!’ Carly tried to put distance between them but Dare grabbed her elbow and swung her around.
‘You’re disgusting!’
‘You touch him like a lover and yet you’re at least fifty years younger than he is. That’s not natural.’
Actually she touched him like a doctor—or a friend, at most—but she knew Dare only saw what he wanted to see.
She shrugged off his touch and felt a pang of disappointment when he released her so easily. Incensed by a need she was hard-pressed to understand given her stance on casual intimacy in general, and men like this one in particular, Carly briefly closed her eyes. ‘They say the mighty fall the hardest,’ she said with a composure she had to fight hard to maintain. ‘I so hope that’s true.’
He scowled at her. ‘If you’re not his lover then what are you? Because I’m not buying the whole “friend of a friend” baloney.’
‘Ask your grandfather.’
A beat passed between them before he nodded in agreement. ‘I intend to.’
Realising that he might be going to do so now and ruin Benson’s time alone with his daughter, Carly reached out and grabbed his forearm.
‘The village is just over the next rise. I thought you wanted to see it.’ She released him. ‘Or was your accompanying me just a ruse to get information out of me?’ She wouldn’t have put it past him.
‘Lead on,’ he said hardly.
Both relieved and agitated, Carly continued on in silence but it wasn’t the comfortable silence of before. Not even the view of the small village as they descended the slight incline onto the High Street was enough to elevate the tension between them.
Carly smiled at a few of the local folk walking by even though she’d never met them before. Which did make her feel better. In Liverpool most everyone kept to themselves in the city streets, hurrying about their business with grim determination. You hardly ever heard laughter in the streets, like here, where some sort of children’s game was going on in the village square.
It was a children’s birthday party and the game was dodge ball. By tacit agreement both she and Dare stopped to watch, Dare all brooding male energy with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his shoulders slightly hunched as if he had the weight of the world on them.
If he did she had no doubt that he would come out the victor. Power and strength radiated from him. If this had been a couple of centuries earlier she had no doubt he would have been some kind of war chief with a thousand men at his back.
‘I’m not in love with him.’ The words were out before she even realised they were there to be said and the air between them pulled even tighter. ‘I’m not in love with anyone.’
His eyes flicked to hers and she berated herself for the foolish comment. ‘What I mean is...’ she took a deep breath. ‘You might want to cut your grandfather some slack.’
His eyes flicked to hers. ‘Might I?’
Carly sighed. She would probably get more compassion out of a telephone poll. ‘Forget I said anything,’ she muttered.
The man was as hard as the sand rock used in the construction of the village buildings. Why she’d even said what she had she didn’t know. The Baron’s secrets were his own to disclose and it wasn’t as if she wanted this man to like her, or think well of her. What would that accomplish?
‘Then what is he to you?’ he demanded, his keen gaze probing hers as if he were intent on learning all her secrets.
‘I’d rather not talk about it.’ He would find out soon enough and then it would be Carly’s turn to have the last laugh. Until then she’d keep her mouth shut.
‘You were the one who brought it up this time.’
‘My mistake,’ she said loftily over her shoulder, circling the small square as if she couldn’t wait to see what was growing inside a potted plant across the way.
Dare shoved his hands into his pockets and watched her go. There was more to what was going on here and she held the key. But what was he missing? And why this constant nagging desire to take her into his arms and slay all her demons for her?