“I doubt it.” She wrinkled up her nose with a rueful smile. “You’ve obviously forgotten I had an agent during A Doll’s House. When the play closed, he was no help whatsoever. He suggested I consider abandoning acting altogether. He said it didn’t really matter, anyway, since I already had another, much more lucrative career.”
“Dancing?”
“No.” Her smile faltered as her gaze locked with his. “You.”
Denys sucked in his breath, feeling that reminder of their former relationship like a knife between his ribs. He yanked open the left-hand drawer of his desk, shuffled through the cards docketed there, and pulled out three. “Here,” he said, holding them out to her.
“What are these?” she asked as she took them, but after one glance at the card on top, she shook her head. “Denys, I told you—”
“I don’t care what you told me. These men are well-regarded agents, tenacious at negotiation, and scrupulously ethical. Jamison might suit you best since he represents the widest variety of clients, but none of these men will try to shove you into musical revue or dance if those aren’t what you want. They’ll fight for you, they won’t cheat you or abandon you, and they certainly won’t make unsavory insinuations about your private life. Go interview them and pick one. Or find one on your own. Either way,” he added, hoping he would at last be able to bring this meeting to an end, “I won’t sign contracts with you until you have an agent.”
She bristled at that. “You’re being very autocratic about my career.”
“If you don’t like it, you are free to find work elsewhere.” It was his turn to smile. “The Gaiety would probably hire you.”
Her displeasure seemed to vanish as quickly as it had come, and even before she smiled again, he knew she was changing tactics. When she spoke, her words came as no great surprise.
“Let’s compromise. That’s what partners do together, isn’t it?”
He thought again of afternoons in bed with her, but this time, he managed to keep his gaze on her face. “What sort of compromise did you have in mind?”
She held up the cards. “I’ll find an agent if you’ll agree to a partners’ meeting.”
He gave a laugh. She was so outrageous, he couldn’t help it, even now, with erotic images in his mind and desire seething in his body. “So to get something you want, you’re offering to do something that benefits you?”
She bit her lip, looking at him over the cards in mock apology. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”
“And if I agree to this, what’s in it for me?”
“What do you want?”
That provocative question was like a gust of wind on burning coals. His amusement vanished, and his arousal flared into outright lust, providing irrefutable proof—as if he needed any—that being partners with Lola was an impossible undertaking.
“Nothing,” he answered, hating that even now, even after everything that had happened, he could still be aroused by her against his will. “There is nothing I want from you except for you to stay out of my way.”
“And I can’t accept that. So the only alternative is tear the Imperial apart. Is that what you want?”
He hated that it came to that sort of Hobson’s choice. Hated that he was trapped in something from which the only escape route was annihilation. “If it would rid me of you,” he answered, “then yes.”
“If that were true, you’d never have agreed to let me audition for a part in the first place. You’d have shown me the door and told me to sue you in the courts.”
“A choice I’m questioning more and more with each moment you stand here,” he muttered, glaring at her. “Business partners don’t have to like each other, but they do have to trust each other, and my trust is something I will never give you again.”
She flinched, but she didn’t move to leave. “Never is a long time, Denys, and I intend to earn your trust. And I know you’re seething with resentment, which is understandable, but that’s a hard thing to keep up, day after day, year after year.”
The mention of years was a reminder of just how trapped he was. “Be damned to you. What you’re suggesting is impossible.”
“I don’t see why.”
“Don’t you?” Provoked beyond bearing and frustrated as hell by a desire that still seemed unconquerable, he wrapped an arm around her waist. The application form fluttered to the floor as he pulled her hard against him.
“What are you doing?” she gasped.
“You want to know why this won’t work, Lola?” Desire thrumming through his body, he cupped her cheek, his thumb pressing beneath her jaw to tilt her head back. Her skin was as soft as he remembered, the fragrance of her hair as intoxicating as ever, and even as he told himself he was making a fatal mistake, Denys bent his head. “This is why,” he said, and kissed her.
Chapter 9
The moment his lips touched hers, pleasure pierced Lola like an arrow, pleasure so keen and so sharp that she cried out against his mouth.
He responded at once, his arms tightening around her as he pulled her even closer, and her mind tumbled back into the past, to summer afternoons in St. John’s Wood, to scents of bay rum and jasmine, to hot, frantic lovemaking and its languid, luscious aftermath, to a time and a place where sensation and bliss were the only things that mattered, where they had tried to burn away the social difference between a viscount and a cabaret dancer.
Denys, she thought, and the pleasure deepened and spread until it was in every part of her body, bringing a yearning she hadn’t allowed herself to feel in years.
Her lips parted, and he deepened the kiss, tasting her tongue with his own in a carnal caress that inflamed all her senses. Her handbag hit the floor with a thud, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.
He made a rough sound against her mouth, and his embrace loosened, but he did not push her away. Instead, his hands slid down, gliding along her ribs to her hips. His palms felt like fire, seeming to burn through all the layers of her clothing as he pulled her closer.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew she should stop this, for it could ruin everything she’d come here to do, but she feared it was already too late. The sandpapery texture of his cheek, the taste of his mouth, the hard feel of his body, were so achingly familiar, and when his grip tightened and he lifted her onto her toes, bringing her hips flush against his, she couldn’t summon the will to push him away.
She’d thought enough time had gone by. She’d thought both of them would be over this by now. Denys’s kiss, his caress, his lovemaking, those afternoons together—she’d worked so hard to make all of those things nothing but a distant memory. She thought she’d succeeded. Yet now, with his body against hers and arousal flooding through her, it was as if not a single day had passed.
Without warning, he broke the kiss. His hands tightened on her hips, then he shoved her away and took a long step back, his hands falling to his sides.
Lola stared at him, wordless, her senses reeling and her lips still burning. She ought, she supposed, to say something—something offhand so they could both get their bearings and pretend this hadn’t happened. But for the life of her, she couldn’t think of a thing. She pressed her fingers to her mouth and said nothing.
It was Denys’s voice that broke the silence. “God,” he said, his voice ragged, “if this doesn’t prove the point, nothing will.”