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The bottle landed with a sharp little bang. The old lady snorted, smacking her lips as she stirred. Adam froze… with his waist between Ellie’s thighs, his tongue in her mouth, and his hands on her rear end.

Which was not a position one ought to stay frozen in.

He jumped back, putting a shred of respectable distance between them. The roommate rolled over, drawing in another snorting breath before she went quiet again… at which point, part of Adam’s brain had evilly suggested that he should go right back to what he’d been doing.

He resisted it, dragging his eyes from Ellie’s heaving, flushed neckline.

“Lunch,” he whispered hoarsely and fled from the room.

Neil was going to kill him.

Adam hadn’t seen Ellie’s stepbrother in person since their time together at Cambridge—but Neil was still one of his closest friends. They’d been exchanging letters every two weeks for years now. Neil’s were pages stuffed with details about his studies, pet theories, job prospects, what he had for breakfast…

Adam’s were shorter. He wasn’t much of a wordsmith, if the words weren’t coming out of his mouth. Adam’s letters usually read something along the lines ofweather’s fine & tried some tapir jerky, ortripped on a mudslide but I found a lucky rock.

Neil hadn’t minded. Neil had never minded Adam being… well, Adam.

Neil was definitely going to mind Adam being Adam when it came to his baby stepsister. He was really going to get his socks in a twist over the fact that Ellie and Adam had spent a solid week alone together in the wilderness of British Honduras.

As for what they’d gotten up to in the hall, or on the desk, or in that cenote back in Tulan…

Adam felt awful about all of it. There was a right way of going about this sort of business—and it wasn’t throwing Ellie up against a wall while he nibbled her earlobe every time they found themselves alone together.

He wasn’t precisely sure what therightway would have looked like, given Ellie’s opposition to the whole notion of marriage… but it definitely involved coming clean to her brother and refraining from taking further liberties with her person until they’d sorted everything out.

Which he’d so far utterly failed to do.

He could almost hear his father’s voice in his head.

It’s not just that you’re lazy. It’s that you don’t think about the consequences.

The memory of those words—and of George’s Bates’s tired, disdainful expression—cut at Adam like a knife.

You can’t cruise through the world on a whim and call that being a man.

He’d spent the last decade telling himself that he wasn’t the person his father had always accused him of being—irresponsible, self-indulgent, undisciplined. But everything he’d been doing with Ellie seemed to fall right into those categories, and it left him burning with shame.

He had to make it right. Since he couldn’t do that by dragging her to the nearest altar, he was going to have to talk to her—like a reasonable, responsible adult—and let her know he was sorry and that it wouldn’t happen again.

Adam would do just that as soon as he got a chance… which wasn’t now, as he rode through Cairo in a stuffy carriage, sandwiched between the door and the exasperated dragoman.

Instead, Adam found his gaze drifting down to the place where Ellie’s thigh pushed against the light fabric of her skirt as she sat across from him.

He could easily have picked up her ankle, set it on his lap, and pushed that practical green twill up to expose one of her nicely-shaped calves…

Adam stifled a groan, dropping his head back against the seat as he fought to push the notion of Ellie’s calves out of his head… and realized that Ellie’s friend was staring at him.

Constance Tyrrell reminded him of one of those small, well-bred dogs that were fully capable of hamstringing you if you crossed them. The look she gave Adam left him certain that the woman wouldn’t rest until she had squeezed every last bit of dirt out of Ellie about their travels together over the last six weeks.

The prospect made Adam feel distinctly nervous.

The carriage rolled to a stop. Mr. Mahjoud held the door for the ladies, Adam following behind them.

They stood on a narrow street fronted by tall featureless houses. Any windows that Adam could see were relatively small and completely veiled by elaborately carved wooden screens, which allowed no view of the interior. It made the area’s wealth seem fairly subtle until you noticed the polished brass lanterns and elegant stained glass accents by the doors.

Constance led them inside, and the impression of plainness vanished. Adam found himself in a luxurious entryway lined with beautifully carved panels and a richly tiled floor.

More importantly, he could smell something cooking. His stomach rumbled in appreciative anticipation.