Charming a Spy by Elizabeth Chance Page B

momentarily distracted. Ask again, would you?”
    She was obviously miffed by his inattention but asked again in her most saccharine voice, “What do you think about a game of charades?”
    Geoff abhorred charades and all parlor games, but he remembered his role as the sporting bachelor on the prowl. “A capital idea. Charades would be fun.”
    Jessica organized the group into a battle of the sexes, ladies vs. gentleman.
    “The rules are simple,” she explained. “One gentleman shall give any lady of his choice a clue to act out. Everyone will guess at the clue and the first to choose the right answer will earn a point for his or her team. Then a lady will choose a clue and give it to a gentleman to act out. The game will proceed like so until one team has five points.
    “And what shall the winning team be awarded?” Mrs. Chaplin asked. The Townsey twins, sitting next to her, giggled as if she’d said something outrageous. Jessica looked momentarily flustered, trying to think of a prize for the game she’d invented.
    “A picnic on the morrow,” Geoff said, coming to her rescue, although he wasn’t sure why he was fueling the irksome girl’s enthusiasm. He’d already planned the picnic anyway, so it wasn’t a great hardship.
    “Oooo!” the women tittered like he’d offered them rubies.
    “But wouldn’t a picnic be a prize for everyone? Not just the winning team?” Trig Trannen objected.
    “Indeed it will. But the losers will have to plan the entertainment for the afternoon,” Geoff improvised.
    “What a delightful idea, Your Grace,” Jessica said, looking very much relieved that a suitable prize had been decided for the game.
    Charades commenced with Trig pretending to be a balloon seller at a county fair who got carried away by his merchandise. The men won the clue. Trig then gave the next clue to Maribel to act out. Geoff noticed that Trig was obviously taken with Maribel and he suspected she also harbored feelings for him, but was far too female to figure it out. It was idiotic when two people so obviously attracted to one another could miss the romance between them.
    The women correctly guessed that Maribel was crossing the Atlantic on a pirate ship. Maribel gave to the next clue to Rafe Grier and the game went on like that for far too long. Geoff could not remember a time when he had to try so hard to look amused. This was a special kind of torture; death by parlor games.
    At least the distraction gave Geoff plenty of time to think about his houseguests, and what the connection was amongst them. His thought kept wandering back to Rafe and Katherine. What was the truth about their relationship? He imagined them involved in a romantic tryst, but his mind quickly turned into a fantasy about him and Katherine instead. Primarily Katherine. Mostly Katherine in a silk night rail standing in front of a fire, where he could see the outline of her slender legs leading up to a delicious point.
    Then he realized Katherine really was standing in front of the fire, in real life, no longer in his fantasy. She was not wearing the transparent dressing gown of his daydream, but a red dress cut so low the tops of her breasts peeked out, like a soft fleshy pillow begging him to rest his head there.
    She couldn’t possibly be involved with Rafe. She was too brave, too outspoken, too damn curvy, and too French. Rafe seemed the type of man who would want a simpering English bride, a willow of a girl with alabaster skin who accommodated his wishes implicitly. Katherine was simply too much woman for Rafe.
    “Socrates teaching at the Pantheon,” someone shouted out. Katherine nodded while the crowd erupted into laughter and cheers. Geoff realized that while he’d been imagining her in a series of lewd acts, she’d actually been acting out a clue in the game.
    Now it was Katherine’s turn to choose a victim. She held the tip of her pen to her mouth as she carefully contemplated her next move. Oh, how he’d like to be