"Thank you," she said quietly. "For agreeing to the tour tomorrow."
"It's nothing."
"It's not nothing to me." She hesitated, then added, "I know you've been busy. Working. I understand if this is an obligation rather than something you want to do."
The word 'want' hung between us, loaded with meaning.
I wanted to touch her face, to tell her that showing her London was the only thing I'd wanted to do since the moment she'd stepped into my world. I wanted to confess everything—the acquisition, the timeline, the impossible choice I was facing between duty and desire.
Instead, I said, "I'll see you tomorrow morning. Ten sharp."
"Ten sharp," she echoed, and there was something in her eyes that told me she was fighting the same battle I was.
As I watched her walk back toward the blue suite, James appeared beside me again.
"Well," he said thoughtfully, "that was enlightening."
"How so?"
"Your sister," James continued thoughtfully, "seemed almost relieved when you agreed. Not her usual matchmaking triumph. More like she'd just defused a bomb."
I turned to study his expression. "What do you mean?"
"I mean Daphne's many things, but subtle isn't usually one of them. Tonight felt different. More desperate. Like she needed this to happen, not just wanted it." He paused. "That phone call she took? She went white as a sheet when she saw the caller ID."
The pieces clicked with sickening clarity. Daphne's unusual insistence. Her mysterious phone call. Her relief when I'd agreed to the tour.
"What aren't you telling me?" I asked.
James's smile was grim. "That's exactly what I intend to find out."
As he drove away, leaving Daphne already gone for her evening plans, I stood alone on the terrace, staring at the closed door of Lili's guest suite.
Tomorrow, I'd be with her for the first time since that charged encounter in the hallway. No Daphne to interrupt. No servants to maintain propriety.
Just the three of us and a city full of possibilities.
The smart thing would be to keep it strictly professional. Show her the Tower Bridge, the British Museum, maybe a brief walk through Hyde Park. Safe, public places where the only tension would be the kind I could ignore.
But as I thought about her smile, and the way she'd looked at me when I'd agreed to the tour, I knew I was already in far too deep to play it safe.
Next Friday was coming. The acquisition would proceed as planned. Lili's world would crumble, and I would be the one holding the executioner's axe.
The least I could do—the most I dared to do—was give her one perfect day in London before everything fell apart.
Even if it destroyed us both.
CHAPTER 6
Lili
"You're gripping that steering wheel like it personally offended your ancestors," James observed from the passenger seat, his voice cutting through the silence that had stretched between Edward and me since we'd left the staff quarter twenty minutes ago. I insisted on moving out of the blue suite the night before, it felt freer to stay somewhere with a normal size of bathroom.
I glanced at Edward in the rearview mirror, noting how his knuckles had gone white against the black leather, how his jaw was set in that particular way that meant he was either solving complex legal problems or plotting his escape from this exact situation. Given that he'd spoken exactly three words since picking me up—"Good morning" and "Ready?"—I was betting on the latter.
"I'm driving," Edward replied through gritted teeth.
"Yes, but you're driving like you're transporting nuclear waste through a minefield."