Practically Wicked by Alissa Johnson Page B

something his friend didn’t have to do alone, Max finished silently. “I’m happy to stay.”
    Lucien bobbed his head and took a seat on the very edge of the settee across from Max. “Excellent. Excellent. She’s from your world. Your presence might well put her at ease.”
    “We live in the same world, Lucien,” Max drawled. “I just know more interesting people. Who is this girl?”
    “Miss Anna Rees. The daughter of Mrs. Rebecca Wrayburn.”
    “Anna…” The name came out a little strangled. Max cleared his throat and tried again. “Anna Rees? The Miss Anna Rees?”
    Oh, hell. Oh, holy hell.
    The light of memory washed over Lucien’s worried face. “That’s right, didn’t you tell me that you know the girl personally?”
    “No, I told you I’d met her.” Once it had become clear that Anna Rees wanted nothing to do with him, he saw no particular reason to keep secret the fact that they’d met. He’d also seen no particular reason to advertise the fact that she wanted nothing more to do with him, and had therefore limited his accounting of the evening to Lucien and Gideon.
    “What is she like?” Lucien inquired.
    “I don’t know. She’s…” She was Anna Rees. Beautiful, alluring, captivating. Cold and unattainable. Max shook his head and resisted the urge to shift in his seat. “I don’t know.”
    He’d only imagined he’d known.
    “Come on, man,” Lucien pressed. “You’re one of precious few people to have ever spoken with the girl.”
    “My memory of the occasion is a bit foggy round the edges, for a contingent of reasons.”
    “You were drunk?”
    “It was four years ago. Naturally, I was drunk.” Max shrugged, unashamed and unrepentant. Many men went through a period of unruliness. His had come a mite later than some, that was all. He’d since tempered his drinking. The remainder of his habits continued to garner the disapproval of good society, but he no longer felt the need to drink himself into oblivion on a regular basis. “I was also grieving the unexpected acquisition of the viscounty.”
    “Hell. How did that meeting proceed, exactly? You didn’t behave badly toward her, did you?”
    “Do you know, I have wondered that very thing—” He grinned when Lucien’s face took on a dark cast. “Settle your feathers, Your Lordship. I was in no position to have taken advantage of the girl. I fell asleep in creation’s most uncomfortable chair. Little minx left me there.”
    Just like the first time he’d mentioned the meeting to Lucien, Max wisely left out that he’d proposed to the woman in a drunken stupor. That he’d returned a week later, as she’d made him promise, only to be told by Mrs. Wrayburn that her daughter was not receiving visitors. That he’d returned again and again, and had written, twice, before finally accepting the fact that Miss Rees wanted nothing to do with him.
    Lucien rose from his seat yet again and stabbed a finger at Max. “By God, if I hear a different story from her…Maybe you should leave.”
    Max decided he wasn’t going anywhere. The last thing Lucien needed was more time alone with his worries. A bit of distraction, that’s what he needed. “You’re going to be unbearable as an older brother.”
    “I’m already an older brother.”
    “Not to a sister. It’s different.” He thought of his own sister, Beatrice. Often when he pictured her in his mind, he saw not the grown woman with a child of her own, but the mischievous little girl who used to follow him about the house, begging him to play at dolls or some equally inconvenient and embarrassingly female game, and generally having her way. It was near impossible to deny Beatrice anything…or should have been. “Trust me.”
    “You’re right.” Lucien speared his fingers through his hair. “I know you’re right. What the devil do I know of sisters?”
    “You’ve a sister-in-law,” Max pointed out.
    Lucien sent him a bland look. “Have you met Freddie?”
    The