Knockout by Sarah MacLean

Author:Sarah MacLean
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

In all the time Imogen had imagined Tommy Peck outside of Scotland Yard—and Lord knew that was a great deal of time—it had never occurred to her that he might have a family.

She’d imagined him at a pub in Marylebone after work with the men from Whitehall, drinking a pint and mulling his next case. She’d imagined him at home, in the small apartments she knew he let in Holborn, reading by candlelight, a whisky at his elbow.

Once, while on a walk in Hyde Park, she’d imagined him swimming alone in the Serpentine lake, his broad body cutting through the water, rivulets of water sluicing over his muscles.

Imogen liked that one very much.

From time to time she’d imagined him with a woman. Nameless and faceless, but tall and graceful and stunning—with endlessly long locks that defied gravity and a level of sophisticated understanding of the mechanics of intercourse that made her all any man desired.

Imogen didn’t like that one at all.

But she’d never imagined that there might be a flat in Shoreditch where his mother lived, a beautiful white woman—tall and lithe and lovely, who looked impossibly young, as though there was simply no way she had a son Tommy’s age—who greeted them with a warm hello and an even warmer smile, then opened the door to their flat and welcomed her son in from the cold, along with the total stranger with whom he’d arrived.

Perhaps it was the bizarre, unexpected discovery that made Imogen so happy to accept his mother’s invitation inside. Curiosity was a quality Imogen was rarely able to control.

He stepped to the side to let her enter before him, the little girl—his niece, Annabelle, who proudly announced she was seven—in his arms. As she passed, he said quietly, “We’re not staying.”

Imogen nodded, ignoring the disappointment that came at his words, and his clear discomfort with her being there. Whatever coincidence had brought her here, following his mother up the stairs to the small flat, her gaze focused on the striped broadcloth of her workaday skirts, he didn’t want Imogen there. But she couldn’t stop herself from stealing this glimpse of him—a glimpse she’d never get again.

At the top of the stairs, a door stood ajar, and Mrs. Peck pushed through. Imogen hesitated on the threshold, suddenly nervous. She paused and looked back over her shoulder, to where Tommy stood two steps below her, Annabelle in arms, his eyes level with hers.

One of his dark brows rose in a silent question. This whole thing was unsettling and unexpected—the last thing he’d done was kiss her senseless and then leave her alone in a carriage to ride up with the driver. And now she was standing in his mother’s flat. But she couldn’t find the words to say all that, so instead she settled for “Is it alright?”

Hesitation flashed across his face, and she held her breath. If he told her no, she would leave. The whole world might think Imogen Loveless lacking in grace or tact or an ability to understand her place, but she did not want him to think those things.

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