“Come with me, Red. I’m getting you the hell out of here.” He put a protective hand on her shoulder; a silent warning to anyone watching–and they were watching–that she was underhisguard. An unexpected act of chivalry from a decidedly unchivalrous man.
Of course, Eloise wouldn’t see it that way.
“I’m not going anywhere with you, you absolute buffoon! Release me at once!” she cried, trying to twist free of his grasp. “This is kidnapping. Help! I’m being kid–”
“Stop squawking and start walking,” he snarled in her ear before he yanked her against him, sliding his arm around her hips and tucking her in snugly against his side as if they were lovers out for a stroll instead of bitter enemies poised to go for each other’s throats.
When she jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow, he grunted and just kept moving, cutting through an alley to the backside of an abandoned warehouse. When she stomped on his instep–what the fuck did she have on the bottom of her shoes, iron spikes?–he winced and moved more of his weight to his other leg. But when she swung a closed fist at his nether regions, he stopped so abruptly that they both nearly lost their balance and fell.
“What is wrong with you?” he shouted, casting his arms out to the side as he towered over her. His broad shoulders blocked the sun, bringing her outraged countenance into sharp, stunning focus. A thick sweep of auburn lashes above blisteringly furious blue eyes. The slightest spattering of dusty gold freckles over the bridge of a pert little nose and arching cheekbones. A heavy top lip over a full, lush bottom one. “Can’t you see that I’m trying tohelpyou?”
“I am not a damsel in distress. I don’t need saving!”
“That’s fine, because I’m no one’s goddamned knight.”
“Then what are we doing here?” she demanded.
Whatwerethey doing here?
Better yet, what washedoing here?
Every action that Adam committed had a purpose. A goal. A reason. He was not a man who wasted time on idle pleasures or useless diversions. Yet here he stood, next to a crumbling brick building with broken windows and empty gin bottles strewn all about, while a vicious minx tried to punch him in the balls. That he hadn’t already walked away was a mystery more complex than the disappearance of the Roanoke settlers.
Inadvertently, his gaze returned to her mouth. Her pink, plump, stubborn mouth. And in that moment, Adam found his purpose.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she said, suddenly wary, and she had a right to be.
“Like what?” He reached out and captured another shiny red curl, letting it wind and twist around his finger as if it were a serpent…and he was in the Garden of Eden, about to take a bite from the forbidden apple. A small tug, and Eloise stepped closer, her eyes wide and watchful.
“Like you want to do something to me,” she whispered, her husky voice delivering a shot of desire to the very same area that she’d sought to injure with her fist.
Another tug.
Another step closer.
“And if I did?” he murmured, lowering his head until his mouth was a hair’s breadth from her own as their crackling animosity took a sideways shift towards carnal appetites.
“I’d tell you to go ahead,” she said, a silent challenge gleaming in her gaze. “Unless you haven’t the nerve.”
He skimmed his thumb along the edge of her jaw and then slid his hand to the nape of her neck, lightly anchoring her in place. Their surroundings faded away. The warehouse. The bottles. The screech of gulls as they circled overhead. Beneath the pad of his index finger he felt her pulse racing, its frantic, fluttering speed revealing that she wasn’t nearly as calm as her expression would like him to believe.
“That impertinence of yours is going to get you into trouble, Red.”
“Trouble doesn’t frighten me,” she said, her chin raising a notch.
His eyes darkened. “It should.”
5
The First Kiss
As an unofficialkeeper of secrets, Eloise was keeping a few of her own.
One of them was that she had never been kissed.
Not to say she hadn’t come close a few times.
On her sixteenth birthday she had almost let Lord Bakersfield kiss her in the library, but at the last minute she’d decided to go for a ride instead. Everyone knew that horses were better companions than men, even though Lord Bakersfield, with his buckish teeth,hadsomewhat resembled a member of the equine family.
