How to Woo a Widow Read Online Free PDF Page A

she pressed herself against him like a cat seeking a stroke. “Tony, we can’t.” Her protest was a feeble one, but somewhere she found the strength to push against him rather than pull him toward her as she devoutly wished. “Tony, stop.”
    This seemed to filter through his passion-soaked brain, for she felt the breath of his sigh against her, and he pulled back from her and straightened.
    “What were you thinking?” Portia demanded, batting his hand away so that she could adjust her gown without help. “For God’s sake, I’ve known you since you were a boy.”
    His mouth tightened in anger. “I am not a boy now. I’m a man and I know what I want.” Tony leaned in close to her, as if to ensure she heard him. “Surely you cannot deny there is something.” He lifted a hand to lightly touch her cheek. “Something between us.”
    Portia pulled back from his hand. “Of course I deny it,” she lied. “Tony, you’re confused,” God she hoped he could not see the truth in her eyes, else they were lost. “What you feel for me is the love a brother feels for his sister.”
    “I’m not a child, Portia,” he bit out. “I know what I feel and what I am feeling for you is nothing like what I feel for my sisters.”
    She lowered her eyes against his burning gaze. “Well, the love of a friend, then,” Portia finished lamely. “Regardless, nothing can come of this thing between us. Tony, do you not realize what people will say?”
    “Is that your only argument?” he asked, taking her chin and lifting it so that he might look into her eyes. “Portia, people talk. It’s what they do. Surely a bit of scandal…”
    This angered her. “I have had enough scandal in my life to last a lifetime,” she felt her voice rising in frustration but she didn’t care. “Or have you forgotten, my lord?”
    “No, I haven’t forgotten,” he returned. “And do not forget that I, too, have had my share of unwanted exposure. But you move past it. You move on.”
    “I have made one bad marriage, I do not care to embark on another.”
    Portia knew it was a low blow, but she had to convince him. An alliance between them would be the worst possible thing for him—if not for himself then his mother and sisters.
    But if she’d thought to dissuade him, she’s been wrong.
    “Perhaps we needn’t marry in order to be together,” he said finally, his eyes intense as if he were trying to persuade her with his stare. Could he really be suggesting…?
    “An affair?” she cried. “You want me to risk the reputation I’ve cultivated in the year since William’s death for an affair?”
    She stepped away from him before he had a chance to react.
    “You are more deluded than I thought,” she snapped, and stalked away from him toward the door they’d come out through.
    She’d almost reached the doorway before she turned.
    “I’ll thank you not to call on me or approach me again, my lord. We have nothing further to discuss.”
    And like that she was gone, leaving Tony to sink back into the stone façade of the building with an oath.
    Dammit. He’d botched that, but good.
    She’d been right to castigate him. He’d not been this clumsy with a woman since he’d first been seduced by Molly Sweet, the barmaid at the local tavern.
    He listened to the sounds of chatter among the grooms and coachmen tending to the expensive horseflesh of their masters. Smelled the scent of pipe smoke in the air.
    How would he convince her to change her mind, he wondered? Because he knew now, of course, that he had to have her. What he’d said there at the last had been a final attempt to convince himself as much as her that what he felt was simple, garden-variety lust. Something that could be sated with a few months of passion. But he knew in his gut it was something more. Much more.
    Dammit.
    As soon as he’d seen her there, shining like a gold guinea in a basket of stones, he’d known. He wanted her. Not just in his bed, but out of it as well.