Stubborn woman. She wanted to see him at his best? Fine. He smirked and said, “Just remember, I’m not responsible for whatever happens after this demonstration.” He put his drink on the side table and rubbed his hands together.

Offering up a lazy smile, he pitched his voice low. “Hello, miss. Have we been introduced? My friends call me Kit.”

She folded her arms across her chest, expression unchanged. “My name is Alice.”

“Hello, Alice.” Her name rolled off his tongue in a sensuous caress. He slowly dragged his gaze over her neck, her chest, then back to her eyes. “May I get you a drink? Some champagne, perhaps.”

“No, thank you.”

He leaned in. “Your eyes are beautiful. I’ve never seen any quite like them, with the hints of green and gold between the dark brown.” All true, but she did not seem impressed.

“Hmm,” was all she said.

This wasn’t going as it usually did, so he picked up his drink and took a long sip, watching her over the rim the whole time. When he finished, he licked his lips while staring at her mouth.

She arched a single brow, her mouth flat. Unwilling to concede defeat just yet, he barely brushed her arm with his fingertips. “Have you seen the gardens? I hear they’re quite lovely at this time of year.”

Instead of blushing or giggling, she sighed.

Sitting back, he frowned. This made no sense. These methods were tried and true, honed over years of engaging with the opposite sex. One or two had worked countless times. Putting all of them together was almost a guarantee—yet Alice had practically yawned. Where had he gone wrong?

“Is there more?” she asked. “Or is that it?”

He truly used these tricks to get women into bed? Alice shook her head. Perhaps Kit didn’t know as much about women as he thought.

“I don’t understand,” he muttered, rubbing his jaw. “You didn’t like any of that?”

“To be honest, no. It made me uncomfortable.”

His eyes widened. “Uncomfortable? How?”

This was hard to put into words. But it was clear the real Kit hadn’t been flirting with her, not the man she’d come to know over the past two days. She wanted him, the sensitive one who hid his true feelings underneath all that charm. “Just everything. It was too . . . invasive. And artificial.”

“Artificial? Invasive? I was complimenting you and offering to fetch you a drink.”

She lifted her shoulders. “I didn’t care for it.”

“How was any of that artificial? You do have beautiful eyes and the gardens are probably lovely right now.”

“I don’t know. I just . . . That wasn’t you. That was some other man, one who didn’t care about getting to know me. You stared at me like a piece of meat.”