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I am hereto find you. The statement should have made my skin crawl. It was so obvious that this incredibly gorgeous woman had planned to con her way into my heart and my parents’ meager wealth. So why was she showing her cards?

I frowned. The only thing to do was ask. “Why would you tell me that?”

Aurelia shrugged. “No one’s ever found me out. I am usually quite good at this.”

Long trains of thought rearranged themselves in my mind. “Good at what, exactly?”

Aurelia Hart shrugged. “Conning people. Getting my way. I’ve never failed, ‘til today.”

Her honesty stunned me. We had only just met. What was her angle? “And you’re just … telling me that?”

Her eyes narrowed as she stared at the whitecaps. “I don’t see another choice.” She let out a breath so long, it seemed significant. “Truth be told, Selene, you were my last, best chance.”

“At what?” I asked, genuinely curious, a feeling I wasn’t used to having around other people. Books, yes. Interesting ideas, always. But other people? Never.

Her arm tightened around mine, pulling me closer as she bent her head to murmur in my ear. “A wife who could deliver me into respectability. A safer life from the one I grew up with. Something steady.”

Slowly, I dragged my eyes to meet hers. Those cheekbones, and those languid eyes. The obvious tells that while she was being honest with me, Aurelia Hart was something of a rogue. I liked it. I likedher. “What’s so good about respectability?”

Aurelia’s sigh was rough, jagged as a piece of broken glass. “Perhaps respectability is not quite what I want …” she trailed off, letting the silence stretch between us. She pulled her arm from mine. “No matter. I am sorry to have bothered you.”

I caught the sleeve of her shirt. “Wait.”

six

. . .

Aurelia

I hadn’t been playingher for a fool. I was willing to walk away from Selene Krane. If I’d known I’d be so attracted to her, I would have orchestrated this differently, approached her in an entirely different way. There was no way she could know the truth about me and still want to be around me.

So when she caught my sleeve in her slender fingers, I was genuinely surprised. “Wait,” she breathed.

I could see she was thinking, and I would put money on the idea that if she were interrupted, she would become beautifully flustered. And in another moment, if Igotanother moment like this, I would revel in ruffling her feathers, in making it feel so good that she’d … Well, I was getting ahead of myself.

The breath she took was shaky. “I need help.”

For a moment, I thought she might pause, might force me to ask her what she needed my help for, but she forged bravely ahead, and the desire brewing in me shifted shape, out of pure lust and into something else, something deeper.

“My parents are rather old-fashioned. I suppose you know that?”

I nodded. I knew it, and that they were ready for her to pair. They’d been searching out a spouse for her, high and low. Ancient old men, from what I’d heard, as they valued a fortune.

“They believe the bloom has gone off the rose, as it were,” she added.

I frowned. The idea that the vivacious woman in front of me had lost her bloom was preposterous. The Kranes did not see their daughter clearly, that much was obvious.

“And they do not seem to understand that while I am technically amenable to men, I do not prefer them.” I rolled my eyes. She shook her head. We were in alignment with our disdain for the rather odd point of view. “I believe that if I do not marry by the end of this season, it’s possible they will disinherit me …” she paused, frowning a little. “Do you know about the Monas?”

I smiled. “The Monas is why I chose you.”

Her lips parted, her eyes widening. I wanted to kiss her so much it was distracting. “You care for the bookstore?”

A smile came naturally now. There was no artifice possible when it came to discussing the Monas. “It is my greatest dream to make the Monas a fixture of Nuva Troi society, and Antiquity Row as a whole an institution.”

Selene bit her bottom lip as she cast her eyes to the sand. A single tear welled in the corner of one of those glassy green eyes. She blinked it away. “They will sell the Monas if I do not pair this season.”

My heart beat in slow motion. Was she saying what I thought she was? Suggesting what I thought she might be? Nothing was ever that easy, ever that simple.