Wolfishly Yours Read Free Page A

to the point where Gray, with his wolfish ears, was probably the only one in the room who could hear them. He was about to ask who the girl looked like, but his mother didn’t look like she would be capable of speech for quite some time. So, Gray just rocked on his heels and waited for an introduction.
    The lady looked more than startled when his mother crossed the room and wrapped her in her arms and hugged her tightly. “When did you arrive?” his mother asked. But then more questions exploded from her mouth. “How was your trip? Was the weather nice?”
    “Pray allow her to answer, Mother, before you bombard her with more questions,” Gray teased. The girl looked up at him, and Gray got caught in the heat of her gaze and was nearly taken aback. He cleared his throat. But she continued to appraise him. Her gaze dropped from his hair to across his face, to his shoulders and downward.
    “Close your mouth, dear,” he heard his mother whisper to her like a conspirator. The lady’s mouth snapped shut quickly, and a rosy blush settled on her cheeks. “Hadley men are handsome, aren’t they? And though they’re friendly enough, they’re like pups who haven’t been shaken by the scruff of the neck quite often enough.” His mother raised one brow at the lady. “This is my son, Grayson Hadley.” She motioned him forward with a frantic wiggle of her fingers.
    He bowed his head, and the visitor held out her hand. Gray took it in his, and the heat of her skin seeped through his gloves. “Does the lady have a name?” he asked.
    The blush on the exotic beauty’s cheeks grew even more vivid, and she dipped into a hasty curtsy. “Liviana Mayeux, my lady,” she said to his mother. “And sir,” she amended quickly to the end.
    Gray lingered a little longer over her hand than was proper, he was sure. But she smelled like a spring meadow. Fresh and inviting.
    “You can release her now, Hadley,” the earl spat in his direction.
    Gray did so reluctantly, letting her fingers slide through his grasp slowly. “What brings you to the area, Miss Mayeux?” he asked. He wanted to hear her talk. She didn’t have the same cadence to her voice that the British did. He could probably listen to her all day.
    “My father’s fear that I’ll disgrace him, I believe,” the chit said without even cracking a smile. Then she shot a caustic look toward the earl. “And now that my grandfather has met me, he fears the same. Must be the French in me.” She shrugged her delicate shoulders, then speared Gray with a glance. “I’ve been sent here to learn how to be a lady.”
    “Which is not something you should go announcing to any ruffian who stumbles over my threshold,” the earl barked.
    So now Gray was a disgraceful ruffian, was he? Normally, he would be quite annoyed by the earl’s assessment of his character, but as he stared into Miss Mayeux’s cerulean eyes, Gray turned a deaf ear to her grandfather’s criticism.
    Gray’s mother crossed the room and whispered something quietly to the earl, and Gray allowed his gaze to roam as freely down the American chit’s body as her gaze had slid down his. “It doesn’t appear to me that you need any help being a lady,” he said slowly.
    “It’s the social graces that I don’t fully understand.” She looked decidedly uncomfortable, and Gray felt a little uncomfortable for her. “But it appears as though you don’t either, so I’m in good company, aren’t I?”
    She couldn’t have surprised Gray more if she’d offered him a bone to gnaw on under the dinner table. “My manners are in fine form,” he retorted. Weren’t they? Had he committed some egregious error already? He’d only just walked into the blasted room. He glanced back toward the earl and his mother, and discovered their heads close together as they whispered. Gray couldn’t hear a damn thing when they whispered, and his mother was well aware of that. Miss Mayeux was not.
    “Don’t worry, they’re