At least I had that.
“I—but, why?” was the next thing I managed through still-tingling lips.
Lucas took out a handkerchief and wiped his face. “Why what?”
I flapped a hand in the direction of my face. “Why that? The kiss? Why? I didn’t even know you thought of me…that way.”
Recognition crossed his marble face. “Oh, I thought that was clear: the kiss was part of the message from Daniel.”
Each word fell like a stone to the bottom of my stomach.
Message.
From.
Daniel.
Who, if Lucas was to be believed, was playing the good Samaritan in the back of an ambulance while I had been making out with his brother like a drunk sorority girl on her twenty-first birthday.
My hand flew out before I could stop it and met Lucas’s cheek with a hard slap. His head jerked to one side, and when he looked back, my handprint was white on his ruddy skin. He pressed his own hand to it, a parody of a lover’s touch.
“What the fuck was that for?” he snapped.
Something odd, something like respect, colored his shock.
“You r-ruined it!” I wrapped my arms around my waist, wishing I could shrink into the wall.
“Ruined what?”
“Why did you have to do that? Who kisses someone on behalf of their brother? Daniel wouldn’t have wanted that, and you just came in here, and youstolemy first kiss, and?—”
I cut myself off before I could incriminate myself further. Lucas Lyons had just humiliated me here in the conservatory. He’d thieved my innocence. He didn’t get to have my history too.
Unfortunately, the damage was done. Horror was etched all over Lucas’s face. “Your first—do you mean to tell methatwas your first kiss?”
Tears welled. “Shut up.”
“But—but—but that’s impossible.”
I swiped at the tears that streamed down my cheeks, not caring that the act would certainly ruin my makeup even more than it was already. “Unfortunately, it’s not. Embarrassing, yes. Impossible, no.”
“But you’re…you’reyou.” He almost seemed angry at the fact.
I glared. “What is that supposed to mean?” I might have enjoyed that he was the one stuttering now, but I was too upset to care.
“You’re…my God, you must be younger than I thought.” Panic flashed in those eyes like a bolt of lightning. “You’re not under eighteen, are you? Did we hire a child ten years ago to clean the baseboards?”
“Jesus,no. I was fifteen when I started, which makes me twenty-five now. I’ll be twenty-six in October.”
The horror receded, briefly, replaced by relief. Then returned to shock.
“Christ, that’s still young, though.”
“Twenty-five or fifteen?”
“Both.” He rubbed his cheek. I must have slapped him harder than I thought. “I don’t understand. How canyoube almost twenty-six years old and never been kissed?”
“Quite easily, as it happens,” I said as dryly as I could, which was to say, not very, as my throat was cracking under the strain. “Or are you forgetting that until one year ago, I was basically a frumpy nun living in everyone else’s shadows?”
