‘Idiot,’ muttered Nolan under his breath. ‘Idiot, idiot.’
There was no sign of Sienna coming after him. He wasn’t surprised. He’d all but told her she was the most perfect woman in the world and that he was a fool who couldn’t string a sentence together when speaking to a woman. She’d gazed up at him, not stopping him as he had rambled on. Thank goodness he hadn’t told her that his expression probably had nothing to do with any of the reasons he’d listed and everything to do with plain old jealousy. Ash had told him his sister-in-law was the perfect fit for him. Nolan had met her and had agreed wholeheartedly. It had only been subsequent meetings that had shown his friend was wrong. Sienna’s pained expression when he’d tried to get some sentences out that didn’t make him sound like a complete bore would forever haunt him. He’d passed it off as yet another bad match, but he had never been quite able to shake off his initial attraction to her. If anything, today had only made her appeal stronger, and now he needed to bring their hunt to an end before he made an even bigger fool of himself, like telling her how he really felt.
Hurried footsteps came after him. He slowed because he may be embarrassed by his outburst but he was not a cad. He would not make her run to keep up.
‘What will we do for the last item on the list?’ she asked. ‘I know nothing about France. Do you?’
He rubbed his chest. It shouldn’t hurt that she wanted to brush the last few moments to one side, but it did. ‘I can speak their language,’ he said.
‘You can? Did you fight in the recent war?’
He paused. He couldn’t tell her what he had done during the war. He may no longer work for the Foreign Office, but that did not mean he was free to talk about the months he had spent in enemy territory. ‘In a manner of speaking,’ he said vaguely.
She was silent for several steps. ‘Were you a spy?’
‘Sienna,’ he laughed. ‘As if I could answer that honestly, even if I had been.’
She didn’t say anything for a while. ‘I am not sure you speaking the language will help us find something.’
‘Indeed. I have an idea,’ he said. He didn’t, but she did not need to know that. He needed to get away from her and recover some semblance of normality before he embarrassed himself further. ‘But perhaps it is something I need to complete on my own.’
‘Oh.’
He waited for her to argue but she didn’t, which told him everything he needed to know. ‘Shall I escort you to the house?’
‘I can find my own way,’ she said softly.
‘Very well. I shall look forward to seeing you at dinner later.’
He bowed with as much dignity as it was possible to muster when one’s appearance was in disarray and when one had laid bare one’s thoughts only for them to be ignored.
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