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“You should save your silver tongue for a woman less jaded than I.”

“Dear Pel,” he murmured, smiling. “I adore that you are jaded. You hold no illusions about my less-than-sterling character.”

“I have no idea what your character is anymore.” She pulled away, and he released her. Straightening her spine, Isabel looked around the small store. When she saw the clerk busy recording their transaction, she said, “I don’t understand why you would say such things to me, Gray. You never had any romantic notions, nor sexual ones, to my knowledge.”

“What color are the flowers in front of our house?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The flowers. Do you know what color they are?”

“Certainly, they’re red.’

He arched a brow. “Are you sure?”

She crossed her arms, and arched her own brow. “Yes, I’m sure.”

“How about the ones in the planters by the street?”

“What?”

“The planters by the street have flowers in them. Do you know what color those blooms are?”

Isabel chewed her bottom lip.

Gerard tugged off his glove, and then tugged that lush bottom lip out of her teeth. “Do you?”

“They are pink.”

“They’re blue.”

He moved his hand to her shoulder, and stroked the creamy expanse of skin with his thumb. The heat of her flesh burned through his fingertips, and spread up his arm, igniting a hunger such as he had not felt in years. For so long he had been numb and frozen inside. To feel this heat, to desire to burn with her touch, to want so desperately to be scorched inside her… He relished all of it.

“Blue flowers, Pel.” His voice was huskier than he’d like. “I’ve found people tend to take for granted the things they see everyday. But just because one fails to see something, does not mean it isn’t there.”

Goose bumps prickled her skin. He felt them, even through the calluses on his fingertips.

“Don’t.” She brushed his hand away. “Don’t lie, and say pretty things, and attempt to make the past into what you wish it to be in the present. We were nothing to each other, nothing. And I wanted it that way. I liked it that way.” She tugged off the ring, and set it on the counter.

“Why?”

“Why?” she parroted.

“Yes, my lovely wife, why? Why did you like our marriage as a sham?”

Her eyes shot daggers at him. “You liked it as a sham, too.”

Gerard smiled. “I know the reasons why I liked it, but we are talking about you.”

“Here you are, Lord Grayson,” the clerk said with a wide smile.

Cursing inwardly at the interruption, Gerard dipped the proffered quill in ink and signed the bill. He waited until the ring was boxed, tucked it into his inner coat pocket, and then glanced at Isabel. As she had in the tailor’s, she stood staring out the window with a ramrod straight spine, every inch of her voluptuous form betraying her anger. He shook his head, and couldn’t help but think that all the restrained passion in her was untapped. What the devil was Hargreaves doing, or more likely not doing, that left her so volatile? Another man might see the rigidness of her spine, and be discouraged. Gerard took it as a sign of hope.

He walked to her, drawn to the vibrancy that attracted everyone. Coming to a stop directly behind her, he breathed her in, and then whispered, “Can I take you home with me?”