Love is a Battlefield: Games of Love, Book 1 (7 page)

“That bitch is crazy,” he panted.

“You’re going to have to leave,” Peterson said stonily. “You and your friend. We don’t allow attacks of a sexual nature here.” He continued holding Jada back with one hand, as if she might attack again. Julian, for one, was glad. He angled his body behind a chair just in case.

Kate moved stealthily behind him, picking up their purses and things, murmuring repeated apologies to the still-bent Michael.

“I’m so sorry, Julian,” she said under her breath. “I’m not quite sure what got into her. Too much vodka, probably. She’s very protective of me.”

“So it seems.”

He scrawled his phone number and full name onto one of the cocktail napkins littering the table and pressed it into her hand. “You don’t have to call, but I’d like it if you did. And I’m sorry about Cornwall Park. Maybe I can help you find somewhere else.”

She looked at the piece of paper and then back up at him, her eyes glinting with sparks of green around the center. “You can what?”

“I’d like to help. I know some good places around here.”

“But Cornwall Park is a good place.”

“Well, it’s obviously already taken,” he said slowly. “You’ll have to find another venue.”

“Um…I’m sorry. I don’t remember discussing the subject. You don’t own it—it’s a public park. You said so yourself.”

The pianos stopped, and a round of applause broke out around them. Julian felt himself swirling in the sounds, unable to look away as Kate flushed with emotion. “You’re joking, right? I mean, the SHS has been there for years.”

“Look—can we talk about this later?” She laid a hand on his arm. It was a simple gesture, light and innocent, but the sensations it evoked were anything but easy. His body stirred, and all the fight in him melted into a pool of acquiescence. He wanted nothing more than to feel that hand moving up his arm, twining around his neck. He wanted to take the hand in his own, press it and promise it whatever it asked. For a brief and frightening moment, he thought he might give up Cornwall Park for it. For her.

It scared the shit out of him.

Sorry, Harold.
He sent up a silent prayer. Battering ram or not, this was the moment of retreat. He was going to have to quash the warm feeling in his gut before it took hold. He was going to have to play the Highland warrior card.

He pulled away and allowed his face to change into its natural, stony front. “We can talk all you want, but as far as I’m concerned, there’s not a whole lot else to discuss.”

Kate’s face fell, and his stomach fell with it. Remembering their discussion from before, he hammered in the final nail.

“I guess you’re just going to have to move your silly little book club somewhere else.”

His words had the opposite effect than he’d imagined. Her eyes didn’t fill with tears, and she didn’t storm off in a huff. Instead, her eyes narrowed, and Julian realized with a chill that she was moving her Cadillac to the center of the road.

“Excuse me? What did you say?”

Michael, Jada and Peterson all looked up. The room stopped, and everyone in it might have looked up too. Julian couldn’t tell.

“That there is nothing to discuss.” He was resolute. He had to be.

“After that.” She clenched her teeth as she spoke, and her entire body stilled. “About my little club,” she added.

Julian chose his words carefully, calculating them to hit like perfectly landed blows. Michael and Peterson stood there, watching him, counting on him. Those two men practically were the SHS.
He
was the SHS. Years of dedication to history and tradition had taught him if there was one thing the Scottish never did, it was give in to the British.

And no woman’s touch would ever be able to change that.

“Let’s not pretend we’re talking about the same thing here,” Julian said coolly. He aligned himself next to his friends, all three of them straightening as one. “You’re talking about dressing up and reading some old books with a few of your friends. I’m talking about a major athletic event that’s been going on for centuries. You and I both know all that Jane Austen stuff is fluff. Romantic fluff.”

“You got that right,” Peterson muttered. Julian had no idea if Peterson knew what was going on, but the man had his back anyway. Warriors. Friends. That’s what they did.

“It’s not fluff, but it
is
romantic.” Kate busied herself with shoving her arms into a white sweater, but Julian didn’t miss the expression on her face. Pain. Anger. He knew them well. “Jane Austen is worth serious study if only because men knew how to behave back then.”

Jada nodded. “In a more gentlemanlike manner,” she added.

Julian gave a bitter laugh. Gentlemanlike. He knew all about women’s fanciful notions of a gentleman. He knocked on their front door with ten dozen roses and a white horse. He gave up his land for a chaste peck on the cheek and declarations of undying love.

But Julian knew a real man stood up for himself and protected his own. He fought for what was his.

“I’m sorry,” Julian said, “but you’re wrong. The only thing that makes the nineteenth century the least bit romantic is that it was the first time men and women starting having sex from behind. All that romance had nothing to do with tea and ball gowns. It was about hard, dominant, mind-blowing sex.”

Kate’s eyes widened and her face paled. She couldn’t have reacted any stronger if he’d smacked her across the cheek.

“That’s offensive.”

“No, Kate, it’s true,” Jada interjected. “I was reading on the subject the other day. It had to do with issues of hygiene.”

“Exactly.” Julian nodded, barely even recognizing himself as he shot out the words. “Give a woman a bath, and every man suddenly wants to be hitting it doggy-style.
That’s
your romance.”

Kate stared at him as Peterson and Michael shook with muffled laughter behind him.

Julian almost got caught up in the hilarity of the moment himself. It was absurd—he’d just betrayed every minute of the polite upbringing his mother had worked so hard to instill. In a dueling piano bar. Over a tract of land. With a woman he wouldn’t mind having hard, dominant, mind-blowing sex with right that minute.

But he didn’t budge.

Kate came closer, the top of her head just reaching his shoulder, not the least bit dismayed to find herself at a physical disadvantage.

“You may be big and you may be strong, but that doesn’t mean you get to make all the rules.”

“I just did.”

“No. All you did was confirm my original suspicions—I thought you were different. I thought you were nice. But you’re just like every other man I’ve ever met. It’s all fun and games until you don’t get what you want—but no worries. If there’s one thing that’s easy to do, it’s push Kate Simmons out of the way. She doesn’t matter. She’s easy to walk all over.”

His resolution wavered. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Yes,” she said quietly, her voice and gaze trained on him with intense concentration. It was more effective than if she’d been shouting at the top of her lungs. “It was.”

He splayed his hands helplessly. What else was there to say?
She was right, and he felt like the biggest jerk in the world for saying it, but he’d already made his decision. The Games came first.

“We’ll go.” She grabbed Jada’s arm and pointed her friend toward the door. “But don’t think that means we’re done here.”

He wished rather than believed that to be true.

Before they were out of earshot, his friends finally let loose a loud whoop, half war-cry, half hilarity, and wholly inappropriate for the time and the place. Kate heard it and turned to stare at them. For a second, he thought the flash of emotion that crossed her face was bringing her close to tears.

He couldn’t have been more wrong. It was as though she were memorizing every last detail of their triumph, savoring it to chew up and spit out later.

Julian stopped, suddenly filled with a sense of foreboding. He recognized that look, because he’d worn it himself a few times. On the battlefield. Facing down an enemy.

It was how wars began.
 

Chapter Four

Removing the Kidskin Gloves

“Call him.”

Kate blinked sleepily. She hadn’t even realized Jada was still there.

Jada had come over painfully early considering what time they’d returned home from Vixen’s Gin and Juke Joint the night before. That was the downfall of having a friend who got up at four o’clock every morning for work. To Jada, sleeping in until eight was a disgusting display of slovenliness.

Kate had answered her door that morning to let Jada in when she came knocking, but she’d stumbled back on the couch and fell into a catnap without offering her friend so much as a “hello”.

“How long have you been here? What time is it?”

“I’ve been watching you sleep for about an hour. You know, for all the crap you have in here, your house is really clean. I had no idea you folded your underwear.”

Kate bolted upright, pulling her hand-knit afghan around her. “You spent the morning snooping in my underwear drawer? Jeez, Jada. I had no idea your life was that boring.”

“My life isn’t boring—yours is. That’s my point. Call him.”

“And say what? ‘Gee, thanks for the drinks last night. Sorry you acted like an insensitive jerk and we had to cut it short’?”

Jada flopped onto the couch next to her. It was a stuffed, purple velvet Victorian piece—all intricate carvings and very little comfort. It matched the rest of Kate’s furniture, a hodgepodge of vintage pieces she’d found at antique stores throughout the years—more sentimental than functional. Her dining room table was missing most of one leg, a stack of old hardback copies of Nancy Drew books keeping it from toppling down altogether.

“Oh, I don’t know. How about, ‘Your dark and brooding ways pierce straight to my quivering womb’? Or, ‘You know, I’d love nothing more than to cast these Regency women to the wolves and watch you and your friends run around that park in short skirts’?” Jada crossed her arms and pursed her lips. “This shouldn’t be a tough call to make.”

Kate sighed. She knew what Jada was thinking—gorgeous men. Big logs.

Kate had been dreaming of almost the same thing for most of the night—gorgeous man. Big log.

She got up and stretched, padding her way into the kitchen to start the water boiling for her French press. “I’m not going to call him. I barely know the guy, and most of the time he sat there with a frown on his face.”

“Yeah—and you know what he was doing the rest of the time?”

Kate colored. She did. Up until the argument, she’d been almost convinced Jada was right—Julian did want to take her over his shoulder and have his way with her back in his cave, pressed up against the cold rock wall, his body supplying all the heat she’d ever need.

She shivered, even though her old, poorly insulated house was already growing hot for the day. “You heard him,” she said, slamming the cupboard shut and forcing her mind to clear of the erotic images that had fueled so many different dreams during the night. “He assumed his event was more important than mine and that I’d give up my plans for his. Did you see the way he took over the drink order and tried to tell me where to go? Controlling—that’s what he is. Like I don’t already have enough of that in my life.”

Jada gave a sigh, casting her eyes up to the ceiling. “Oh, I do love a masterful man.”

“
You
call him, then.”

She poured some coffee grounds into the bottom of the canister, spilling most of them all over the counter. Jada stepped in and took over, directing Kate to a stool at the kitchen island.

“What was he thinking? Opening your car door and buying you drinks. The nerve.”

“He laughed at me, Jada, and after I told him how important the group is. It’s one thing when you make fun of the JARRS—it’s another when a guy like that does it, and in front of his friends, no less. You’ve earned the right to mockery after fifteen years of friendship. I don’t owe that man a thing.”

Jada finished preparing the coffee and set an empty cup on the counter in front of Kate. “No, you don’t. But wouldn’t you like to? Just imagine how he’d exact payment.” She gave a little shimmy for good effect.

Kate rolled her eyes. Owing that man anything was too dangerous to even contemplate. He was like the Scotsmen of old, stealing cattle all along the border and celebrating his victories with home-brewed whisky and arms full of bosomy women. Being indebted to him would be akin to being an insect pegged against a board, wriggling helplessly under the gaze of those dark, piercing, unreadable eyes.

It was a bad idea every way she looked at it. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d come across a man who went so wholly against her ideals of gentlemanly behavior. She’d always sought out mild-mannered, professional men. Gentlemen. Men who knew the difference between champagne and sparkling wine—who treated her not like an object of lust or derision, as the situation called for it, but like someone to be cherished from every angle.

Kate was a romantic. She knew that. Too many years spent reading historical novels and watching her parents exist in a farcical marriage in which neither party respected the other had taught her to appreciate a different type of man than the ones who existed today. She wanted grand, sweeping gestures that indicated a lasting commitment. She wanted a slow courtship in which her mate couldn’t help but be taken in by her fine eyes. She wanted… Well, she wouldn’t know for sure what it was until she found him. But Julian Wallace—mocking, domineering Julian Wallace—wasn’t it. That much she knew. Her reaction to him was purely physical. Carnal. Not nearly enough to found a romance for the ages.