For All Time (Nantucket Brides 2)

“I don’t know. I don’t like anyone talking to my brother like that.” He was frowning. Toby sat down on the end of the bed and watched as he got dressed. He was striding across the room as though he were marching into battle but he was saying nothing.

“Can your mother tell you twins apart?”

“As proof that it’s True Love? Not quite,” he said, a sneer in his voice. It took Graydon nearly a minute before he realized what he’d said. He came to a halt, his shirt on but hanging open, and looked at Toby.

Only a paleness of her skin showed that Toby had heard him. She leaned back on her hands and looked up at the ceiling. “I see. I could tell you weren’t your brother, so you—the king to be—decided to stick around and see if I could be your True Love. You know, like in a fairy tale. Only in this story the prince is going to run away and marry the princess, not the strumpet who has a hangover.”

Graydon put his shoulders back, his body went rigid, and his face became expressionless.

Toby, still sitting on the bed, glared at him. “So help me, if you turn yourself into The Prince and freeze me out, I’ll show the lot of you to the front door.”

/> Graydon’s eyes widened for a moment, then he flopped down onto the bed behind her. “Oh, hell! I don’t feel much like a prince. My mother just cut my brother and my girl to pieces. I’d like to tell her what she can do with her opinions but she’s a queen. It’s not done.”

Toby stretched out on her back beside him but not touching. “What’s this about the True Love thingy?”

Graydon laughed. “How American. A ‘thingy.’ It’s just a family legend and ridiculous—except that it keeps coming true. Aunt Cale loves to tell how her husband, Uncle Kane, hated her when they first met. But she could tell him from Uncle Mike so they were doomed to be together.”

“Interesting,” Toby said, then rolled to her side to look at him. His shirt had fallen open and she did truly love the sight of his bare, muscular chest. All those fights with Daire certainly paid off! “So you set up dinner in a tent in order to find out what your True Love was actually like?”

“Mmmm,” Graydon said. “More or less.”

“And that’s what Rory was so angry at you about? You said you two argued about me. Wait a minute! I bet you weren’t even going to tell me what you do for a living.”

Graydon, with his eyes on the ceiling, tried not to smile. “Sometimes my, uh, ‘occupation’ tends to overwhelm people.”

Toby flopped back on the bed. “Sure it isn’t your ego that smothers them?”

Graydon rolled onto his side, his face close to hers. “I just wanted to present myself as me, a man, and nothing else.” He picked up a strand of her hair and twirled it around his finger.

“You and your Poor Prince act,” Toby said. “Did you think I’d get giddy at the mere mention of you and a palace?”

“Some girls do,” he said and rolled onto his back—but he didn’t let go of her hair.

“Ow!” Toby turned toward him and with a twist from him, she ended up on top of him. “Is this more of your seducing?”

“Yes. Do you like it?” He had his hands in her hair.

“I rather do,” she said softly.

“Do you know how beautiful you are? Your skin is like cream and takes my breath away. Your eyes are the color of a mountain stream, your lashes like butterfly wings, and your lips are like the ripest cherries.”

She put her lips almost on his, and when he parted his to kiss her, she rolled off him and sat up. “You make me sound like a cross between a forest and a farmyard.”

She started to get up, but Graydon caught her hair, began to wrap it around his wrist, and pulled her back to him. He pushed her onto the bed, then straddled her.

“How about this? If you were the king’s daughter I’d kill everyone to win you.”

“Better,” she said. “But you certainly talk a lot.”

In a quick motion Graydon put his arms around her, pulled her on top of him, and kissed her.

The intensity of what went between them surprised both of them. It was sparks, a merging, a flowing—a union.

They broke apart and stared, then came back together with a force that nearly shattered them. Graydon opened his mouth over hers, and rolled on top of her, covering her.

Toby reacted in the age-old way of wrapping her legs around his waist, her hands digging into his back, pulling him closer and closer.

It was Graydon who broke away. He pulled his mouth off hers and buried his face in her neck. “I can’t. We can’t. When I leave …” He didn’t finish his sentence.