The Bridal Season
Page 29
“Never!” he denied. “I’m perfectly serious. I’m just thankful you aren’t this very minute sending for your parents’ lawyer in order to press suit, and I wish to express my gratitude by offering you a nice glass of lemonade. Which is in the kitchen. Which is where I am taking you.”
Gads! Listening to him she could almost believe she was in the moral right and he ought to be making amends, when she knew very well that she should be offering him every apology she could think of to keep him from ringing up the local constable and having her carted away to the jail for breaking into his home.
“Besides,” he was saying, “I should dearly love to hear why it was ‘essential’ that you speak to me.”
She hesitated, knowing she should protest further. But he didn’t seem to mind carrying her and she didn’t seem to mind being carried, not in the least, so she relaxed in his arms and sank comfortably against his chest.
It was a nice broad chest. And warm under the starched, white shirt. He smelled fascinating, too: sharp astringent soap, earthy warmth, and something else, something unique.
She closed her eyes, trying to pinpoint the aroma and finding instead a whole new vista of sensations opening before her. The easy, rhythmical motion of his stride carrying her, the gentle swing of her legs in counterpoint, the soft feathering of his breath on her face. She held herself still, soaking up impressions. Lovely.
She smiled and opened her eyes just as he looked down and knocked her glasses askew with his chin. She shoved them back into place, the movement causing her to shift in his embrace. He jounced her up, settling her more comfortably and in doing so his hand slipped up her rib cage and his fingers brushed the curve of her breast. His hand jerked back. His brows suddenly dipped in a scowl.
“You’re not from Mrs. Boyle’s school, are you?” he asked in a voice tinged with accusation. He looked down into her upturned face, peering past the faintly smoked lenses, touching on her mouth and moving to the dark tumble of hair that had come undone during her escapade and now swirled like a gorgon’s tresses around her shoulders. “Why you’re not a girl, at all!”
“I beg your pardon.” Evelyn stiffened.
“You are a woman.”
By God! He’d thought she was…a child! That’s why he hadn’t castigated her, or sent for the authorities, or treated her as a real person at all. He’d thought she was from this girls’ school he’d been babbling about, and that this was some girlish prank!
Evelyn, who had spent the last decade fighting the prejudices roused by her youthful appearance, who was always, in spite of her best efforts, a little too aware of her lack of female curves and thus a tad defensive about her womanliness, spoke before she thought. “Heavens, you’re perceptive! I bet that you might even be able to find your way to the front door!”
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Look for Bridal Favors
Book 2 in the “The Wedding Planner” Series
by Connie Brockway
Available Now!
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Amber House Books by Connie Brockway
The Golden Season
So Enchanting
As You Desire
A Dangerous Man
The Bridal Season
Bridal Favors
One Bride Too Many
Lassie, Go Home