“Mmm,” Bourne added. “You think you’ll get peace, and instead . . . you can’t stop thinking about them.”
He looked from one of his friends to the other. “You’ve both become women. I would easily stop thinking about her if she weren’t . . .” He hesitated.
If she weren’t so infuriating.
If she weren’t so all-consuming.
If she hadn’t been so damn beautiful as she stood tall and proud in his ring and took the blows he delivered like a champion. Like she’d deserved them.
Which she had.
But what if she hadn’t?
“If she weren’t . . . ?” Cross prodded.
Temple poured himself a glass of scotch. Drank deep. Hoped the burn of liquor would erase the burn of her memory. “If she weren’t my link.”
“To?”
To Lowe. To the past. To truth. To the life he’d so desperately wanted for so very long.
More than that. She was his link to everything.
He pushed the thought aside and leaned over to take another shot, ignoring the twinge of pain that sizzled down his arm, disappearing as though it had never been.
He missed. Bourne and Cross looked to each other in surprise. He gave them his best glare. “You try it with one arm.”
A knock sounded on the door, and they turned as one, Temple grateful for the change of topic. “Enter,” Bourne called.
Justin entered, followed by Duncan West, the owner of no fewer than eight newspapers and magazines in London, arguably the most influential man in Britain, and the man who was going to restore Temple to his rightful place in the peerage.
West surveyed the room. “Room for a fourth?”
Temple extended his cue toward the newcomer. “You may have mine.” He moved to a sideboard and refilled his glass before pouring a second as West shucked his coat and tossed it to a nearby chair.
“Who is winning?”
“Temple,” Bourne answered, taking his own shot and missing.
West gave Temple a look, accepting the proffered drink. “And you don’t wish to continue the streak?”
Temple leaned against the back of a nearby chair and drank. “I’d rather speak unencumbered.”
The newspaperman stilled. “Should I, too, be unencumbered?”
Temple waved the glass in the direction of the carom field. “You play until I say something worth listening to.”
The suggestion seemed to work for West, he moved to survey the game. “Fair enough. How is the arm?”
“Attached,” Temple answered.
West nodded, setting the glass on the edge of the table, leaning over and lining up his shot. As he pulled back on the cue, Temple announced, “Mara Lowe is alive.”
West missed the shot, but he wasn’t paying attention, already turning to face Temple, eyes wide. “You’ve said something worth listening to.”
“I thought you might feel that way.”
West set his cue down. “As I’m sure you can imagine, I’ve a dozen questions. More.”
“And I’ll answer every one of them. What I cannot, she will.”
“You are able to speak for the woman?” West let out a low whistle. “This is a story. Where is she?”
“It is not important,” Temple said, suddenly uninterested in sharing the private details of Mara’s whereabouts. He drank again. Liquid courage. Where the hell had that thought come from? “Do you plan to attend the Leighton Christmas Masque?”
West knew a good story when he saw one, and he knew better than to refuse. “I assume Miss Lowe will be in attendance?”
“She will be.”
“And you intend to introduce her to me?” Temple nodded. West was intelligent, and able to put the pieces together. “That’s not it, though.”
“Is it ever?” Cross said from his place at the carom table.
“You want the girl ruined,” West said.
Did he?
“I don’t blame you.” The newspaperman continued, “But I won’t be your puppet in this. I came because Chase summoned me, and I owe him. I’ll hear your story. Your side. But I’ll hear hers, as well, and if I don’t think she deserves the shaming, she won’t get it from me.”
“Since when are you so noble?” Bourne interjected. “The story will sell papers, will it not?”
A shadow crossed West’s face, there then gone so quickly that Temple would have missed it if he hadn’t been watching so closely. “Suffice to say, I’ve ruined enough people with my papers that I am no longer required to do the bidding of every aristocrat with a vendetta.” He met Temple’s eyes. “Does she deserve it?”
It was the question Temple had hoped he wouldn’t be asked.
The question he’d hoped he’d never have to answer.