Romancing the Billionaire (Billionaire Boys Club #5)(27)
Author: Jessica Clare

Anticipation unfurled in his belly. “And what is it?”

Her eyes sparkled as she grinned up at him. “A dormouse lover.”

“A what?” She giggled at his expression, and he was fascinated by the sound, by the way she smiled. God, her happiness alone was making his dick hard as a rock. He longed to touch her, to feel that soft skin under his fingers. Instead, he only gripped his coffee cup harder.

“A dormouse lover,” she repeated, still smiling. “It seems that Shelley’s nickname for his wife was ‘dormouse,’ and so he picked ‘Glirastes’ as pen name for an inside joke. It means dormouse lover.”

“It’s an interesting tidbit, but why would your father point that out?”

“Well.” Violet tilted her head and began to scroll through her phone again. “Remember that my letter had certain parts of words written in a bolder hand than the others. If I take all the bolded letters, it spells out ‘thirteen steps underneath.’”

“Yes, but underneath what? Where do we start looking?”

She held up a finger again. “I’m getting there. So, ‘dormouse’ was apparently a nickname that Percy gave to Mary during their time in a city called Marlow, which is on the Thames River. And Marlow is best known for an old suspension bridge. This bridge.” She pulled up a picture on her cell phone and held it out to him.

Jonathan took it from her. For a moment he was distracted by the warmth left from her grip, and he had to force himself to focus on the photo of the bridge. “You think it’s here?”

“It’s as good a place to start as any,” she told him. “But ‘Ozymandias’ was first published under the name ‘Glirastes,’ and Glirastes came in to play because of the time they spent in Marlow. I figure we can check under the bridge. I mean, if it’s thirteen steps under a house, I’d rather not tear up anyone’s basement without trying all of our options first.”

He looked over at her, so lovely in the shadows of the car. “Our options?” That tiny change in her thinking stuck out at him. For so long, she hadn’t wanted to be part of this chase. She’d all but planted her feet every time he suggested anything.

And now Violet was researching on her own time? Talking about searching together?

She leaned over and nudged him with her elbow, the gesture similar to one that Reese had given him earlier. Except this time he reacted completely different. Violet’s soft body next to his played havoc with his senses, the faint scent of her perfume filling his nostrils, and his body immediately responded to her touch, his c**k hardening.

“I figure we’re in this together,” she told him. “Whatever my father wants us to find out, he wants us to find it out together.”

“Together,” he agreed. He liked the sound of that.

—

Violet fidgeted and shifted in her chair, trying to get comfortable. Despite the late hour and the relative poshness of the leather chaises in the private jet, she couldn’t relax. Maybe it was the three cups of coffee she’d gulped down while sitting in the limo. Maybe it was the fact that they were on their way to London for the next part of the scavenger hunt, and she was feeling excited despite herself.

She suspected it was all those things, but throw in a very sexy, intense Jonathan Lyons sitting across from her? Sleep was impossible. He was wearing another blazer over a T-shirt and jeans, and the effect was overtly masculine and confidently casual at the same time.

Sad to say, she was still affected by his presence. Their sexual relationship was ten years in the past, but the way her ni**les seemed to react, you’d think it was just yesterday that he’d had his mouth on them. Of course, she couldn’t blame her ni**les—not when the rest of her body wasn’t playing fair, either. There was an ache between her legs that wouldn’t go away, and her skin prickled with awareness whenever he drew close enough for her to smell his aftershave.

Her mind was the most traitorous of all, because every time Violet closed her eyes, she saw Jonathan’s body moving over hers. It wasn’t the nineteen-year-old Jonathan, either. It was the man seated across from her, hard with muscle, eyes world-weary and intense all at once. He’d been sexy as a college boy, but he was utterly devastating as an adult man.

And it was making her antsy as hell.

She shifted in her chair again.

“Can’t sleep?” Jonathan asked, and his foot nudged her leg from across the aisle.

Well, no sense in pretending any longer. She straightened up and propped her chin on her hand. “Something tells me that all that Starbucks earlier was a bad call.” Your proximity isn’t helping. She didn’t say that aloud, though. Not while they were on neutral ground. But still, the man should have guessed that his sitting directly across from her in a plane with at least a dozen other empty seats would rattle her, right? Or he should have known that when he sat with his legs open and sprawled as if he owned the place, it would make her body break out in goose bumps.

Heck, he probably did own the place. “Too much coffee,” she muttered when a new round of goose bumps pricked her arms and she rubbed them.

The smile he gave her was slow, gorgeous, his gaze utterly focused on her. “You’ll wind down in a bit.”

For some reason, she felt nervous and fluttery under that intense stare. “I suppose.” Now that they’d vowed to just be friends, it seemed her body—stupid, stupid body—was fixated on other, non-friend-like things.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Her heart started thumping faster, and her gaze went to his sensual mouth. She tried to play it casual, though. “Oh, um . . . question? Sure?”

“How many do you think there will be?”

For the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what he was talking about. “How many what?”

“Letters? Clues to follow?”

“Oh!” Her mind had been anywhere but on their actual business together. “Usually there were about four.”

“Mmm. So we’re looking at two more.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

Violet found herself staring at his long fingers as he rubbed. She flexed her own. Down, girl. It’s still Jonathan, jerk at heart. Except she wasn’t so sure she believed that anymore. “Don’t get too excited,” she blurted. “I’ve found every single one of these chases to be a disappointment at the end.”

“Even so.” He continued to rub his chin idly, and she had to hold back the urge to snatch his hand away from his jaw. That slow, thoughtful rubbing was driving her to distraction. “There has to be a point to this little postmortem game of his. Even if we discount the fact that he hid his journals, it’s not like Dr. DeWitt to steal from an excavation site.”