Free Grey's Lady by Natasha Blackthorne Page B

want it up front.” He studied her calm, blue gaze. “Of course you do. You are an intelligent woman. I see no reason to haggle with you. If you accept my terms—”
    “Your terms?” Her face flushed and her eyes sparked.
    “Yes. If you accept my terms, I’ll invest a sum of”—at the affronted look on her face, he impulsively doubled the amount—”fifty thousand dollars, which upon my death will revert to you.”
    “ Fifty thousand? ” Her mouth fell open.
    His heart thudded hard against his ribcage. He should have said a hundred thousand.
    Damn you, when the stakes are high and the prize worth winning, never bid low.
    Too late. He’d look weak if he offered more now. “It’s more than generous.”
     “Yes, I suppose so.” Her eyes were wide and her face had gone ashen.
    He didn’t know if that was good or bad, so he clenched his jaw while he wasn’t too far behind.
    “No, it’s no good,” she said with heart-stopping firmness. “Everyone would know.”
    “They would. But as I said, no one would greatly care, so long as we were discreet.”
    “My brother would know.”
    Oh, damn, not back to that again . “Of course he would, but what of it? Doesn’t he want to see you live in comfort?”
    “It would break his heart. He would disown me.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “He’d call you out.”
    True, he might. But nothing risked, nothing gained. “If he knows you will be well taken care of, his opinion may change.”
    She crossed her arms over her chest. “I won’t chance it.”
    “You act as if the ground is going to open up and swallow us whole. This isn’t the first time in history a man has ever asked a woman to be his mistress.”
    Her blue eyes met his evenly. “And this isn’t the first time a woman has turned a man down.”
     

Chapter Seven
     
     
     
    Grey blinked. Was he hallucinating? He’d offered Beth extravagant—no, outrageous terms. Thrown his heart at her feet. And she had turned him down as casually as someone declining an extra lump of sugar at teatime. Unthinkable. He took a deep breath. Several of them. And he still didn’t trust himself to speak.
    “Besides,” she continued. “They need me to live in their house, to help with the children.”
    Bitter frustration knifed through his guts. Her damned family was the only thing holding her back. She enjoyed being in his bed. She’d enjoy being taken care of outside his bed even better.
    “And I have a young, impressionable niece. I cannot provide such a bad example to her. So please, no more gifts or…” She waved airily. “Whatever you call this.”
    “A carte blanche .” He couldn’t keep the resentment out of his voice.
    “Please don’t take it so personally.”
    As he watched her arise and dress, she seemed so calm and unconcerned. He couldn’t tell precisely what he was feeling, except it was burning, raw, and radiated from his chest to lodge in his throat. This was all he would have of her. Furtive love in the afternoon. He was just another stiff cock between her legs. Her fancy of the moment. Awareness of his position shook him to the core.
    She paused in rolling on a stocking. “Must you scowl at me like that?”
    “I need to return home soon. I want this business between us settled.”
    “When you come here next, we can see each other again.”
    “And while I am gone, how shall you find your amusements?”
    She laughed in a cynical tone. “And do you not have at least one bit of fluff stashed away in New York? I shall be a case of out of sight, out of mind.”
    He couldn’t even recall Kate’s pretty face—she was a blur of vibrant red hair and ivory skin. She was no one to him now. Just an obligation he’d have to deal with. But he wouldn’t tell Beth this. It would leave him too vulnerable for her to realise the depth of her hold over him.
    “Would you like to have a house in New York as well?” A gale of renewed energy swept through him. “Will you come there with me?”
    She rolled