One knee in the grass, his leg bent beneath him, he scrubbed the shirt gently. Jillian watched the muscles in his shoulders flexing. He was more beautiful than any man had the right to be, with his great height and perfectly conditioned body, his black hair restrained by a leather thong, his piercing eyes.
I adore you, Grimm Roderick. How many times had she said those words safely in the private chambers of her head? Loved you since the day I first saw you. Been waiting for you to notice me ever since. Jillian dropped to the moss behind the rock, folded her arms on the stone, and rested her chin upon them, watching him hungrily. His back was bathed golden by the sun, and his wide shoulders tapered to a trim waist, where his kilt hugged his hips. His plunged a hand into his thick, dark hair, pushing it out of his face, and Jillian expelled a breath as his muscles rippled.
He turned and looked directly at her. Jillian froze. Damn his acute hearing! He’d always had unnatural senses. How could she have forgotten?
“Go away, peahen.” He returned his attention to the shirt he was washing.
Jillian closed her eyes and dropped her head on her hands in defeat. She couldn’t even get to the point where she worked up the courage to try to talk to him, to reach him. The moment she started thinking mushy thoughts, the bastard said something remote and biting and it deflated the sails of her resolve before she’d even lifted anchor. She sighed louder, indulging in a generous dose of self-pity.
He turned and looked at her again. “What?” he demanded.
Jillian lifted her head irritably. “What do you mean, ‘what’? I didn’t say anything to you.”
“You’re sitting back there sighing as if the world’s about to end. You’re making so much noise I can’t even scrub my shirt in peace, and then you have the gall to get snippy with me when I politely inquire as to what you’re mooning about.”
“Politely inquire?” she echoed. “You call a barely grunted and entirely put-upon-sounding ‘what’ a polite inquiry? A ‘what’ that says ‘how dare you invade my space with your pitiful sounds?’ A ‘what’ that says ‘could you please go die somewhere else, peahen?’ Grimm Roderick, you don’t know the first damned thing about polite.”
“There’s no need to be cursing, peahen,” he said mildly.
“I am not a peahen.”
He tossed a scathing look over his shoulder. “Yes, you are. You’re always pecking away at something. Peck-peck, peck-peck.”
“Pecking?” Jillian shot to her feet, leapt the stone, and faced Grimm. “I’ll show you pecking.” Quick as a cat, she plucked the shirt from his hands, twisted her hands in the fabric, and ripped it down the center. She found the sound of the cloth tearing perversely satisfying. “That’s what I really feel like doing. How’s that for invading your space? And why are you washing your own stupid shirt in the first place?” She glared at him, flapping the tails of his shirt to punctuate her words.
Grimm sat back on his heels, eyeing her warily. “Are you feeling all right?”
“No, I am not feeling all right. I haven’t been feeling all right all morning. And stop trying to change the subject and turn it around on me, like you always do. Answer my question. Why are you washing your own shirt?”
“Because it was dirty,” he replied with calculated condescension.
She ignored it with admirable restraint. “There are maids to wash—”
“I didn’t wish to inconvenience—”
“The shirts of the men who—”
“A maid by asking her to wash—”
“And I would have washed the stupid thing for you anyway!”
Grimm’s mouth snapped shut.
“I mean, that is … well, I would have if … if all the maids were dead or taken grievously ill and there was no one else who could”—she shrugged—“and it was the only shirt you owned … and bitterly cold … and you were sick yourself or something.” She snapped her mouth shut, realizing there was no way out of the verbal quagmire into which she’d leapt. Grimm was staring at her with fascination.
He rose to his feet in one swift graceful motion. Mere inches separated them.
Jillian resented having to tilt her head back to look up at him, but her resentment was quickly replaced by a breathless awareness of the man. She was mesmerized by his proximity, riveted by the intense way he was eyeing her. Had he moved even closer? Or had she leaned into him?
“You would have washed my shirt?” His eyes searched hers intently.