LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

to me, he locked me into a gaze that could have melted titanium. For a moment, the space between me and this mysterious stranger thickened with electric, sizzling air.

      My lungs stopped burning, but my heart stammered.

      “Can I have my hand back?” His body stiffened under my touch.

      No.

      Reluctantly, I released him from my grip.

      The stranger gently placed my other hand on another root. He left his hand over mine for a second and turned that unsettling gaze back to me. He shuddered slightly and tensed. “Now would you try not to get yourself killed if I jump to the pond edge and guide you down?”

      I nodded.

      “There, put your foot on that rock.” He gestured to a white stone that jutted like a bony elbow out of a wall of red mud. “You should be able to find a rock for each step almost to the bottom.”

      Far below me, he’d landed with perfect ease. I was still four full body-lengths above his head. Pressing my body closer to the embankment, I used the dirt wall to support my forehead. Slow, deep breaths steadied my thrashing heart.

      “It’s not that far now. Just ease your right foot about two feet down. You should find the loop of a root to stand on.”

      In a few seconds, he’d guided me as far down the wall as I could go without having to jump. The rocks and small roots were too unstable for footing.

      “When you jump, push back from the wall. Don’t worry. I’ve got you. I promise.”

      That voice. It reverberated inside me. My head swam. I gripped at another loose root. A stone broke free, and I began to slip.

      Expecting to meet with the ground, the stranger caught me under my back and legs. His shirt was soft and seductively musky under my cheek.

      He put me down but kept me in the loop of his arms. His grip didn’t loosen immediately. “Can you stand?”

      That accent. Where had I heard it?

      The air thickened and the night sounds silenced.

      His arms were vice grips as his heart slammed against my chest. “You’re going to have to walk.”

      My cheeks burned. I stepped out of his arms as a searing pain spread through my hand.

      He started to say something but stopped. A jagged rock had slashed my palm open. He took a deep breath and held it as blood splattered the ground. It covered the front of his T-shirt. Stumbling back, he stuttered.

      “We should get that”—he turned away from me—“cleaned up and bandaged.” His voice was monotone. He stepped farther away.

      “It’s just a little blood,” I said and started to the pond. Just as my fingers grazed the water, he grabbed me by the waist and jerked us both back where we toppled to the ground.

      “What’s wrong with you?” I flinched out of his grip.

      “It’s stagnant. You want an infection to set in, go ahead and dip your hand in there.” His voice was cold. He pulled his T-shirt around and, with little or no effort, wrenched a long strip off, bearing some of his stomach in the process. Slapping the fabric around my hand, he jerked it into an angry knot.

      I cried out.

      He regarded me with sympathy for the first time since the fall, and loosened the knot. A little. Sounding so proper it was out of place, he said, “I wouldn’t purposely cause you pain. I apologize.”

      “I’ll be fine.” I held my hand up to slow the blood flow, but it still soaked the T-shirt. And it hurt. Bad. Tears threatened to break free, but I refused them.

      The guy inspected the knot and shook his head.

      “I’m such a klutz.” I pressed the wounded hand to my chest.

      “Apply pressure,” he said, the last word through clenched teeth. He put space between us as he distracted himself with looking between the embankment and a path that led off into the woods behind the pond.

      The full moon’s light slid down his chocolate brown hair to his muscular neck and over his shoulders.

      How could a man look that good in a simple white T-shirt and not be poised on the front of a magazine?

      As he considered our options, he pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. “If I take you back up the bank, we’ll only cut your hands further, but if we take the path through the woods, it’ll take an hour to get back around to the driveway. You get all her money. You could at least have the brains not to fall down an embankment.”

      “And this is my fault?” Everyone here considered me a trailer park, gold digger. Rage raised my voice an octave. “A big cat almost ate me, and I was trying to—wait.”

      He didn’t look at me.

      The rage dissipated to suspicion. How did you just happen to catch me in the middle of my almost-plummet to death? And how did you get away from that cat?”

      His face twitched in the moonlight. “I come down here a lot. Tonight, I was walking the edge of the pond when I heard your screams, so I climbed the wall. When I saw you start to fall, I jumped to where I knew there was good enough footing to catch you. I barely escaped the cat myself. Now, are you coming or are you staying out here with the carnivores?”

      “So, you just expect me to roam into the woods with a stranger? In the dark? Alone?”

      “An animal just tried to eat you. It’s fine by me if you want to stick around to see how long it takes for him to come back for seconds. Otherwise, I’m Cole Kinsley.” He jutted out his hand in mock offering. “We’re no longer strangers, so let’s get you back home before my uncle sends out a search party.”

      Cole took his hand back before I could infect him with trailer park germs.

      “You’re Cole,” I repeated. That made sense. Well, sort of. I hadn’t expected the weed eater guy to be Thomas’s mean nephew.

      Trailer park rolled over and over in my mind. The jab was completely undeserved, and jab is just what I wanted to do to him. Right in the eye.

      “I see my uncle’s been talking.”

      “If you didn’t want me in your girlfriend’s room, all you had to do was come tell me instead of yelling it through the house.”

      “I find it disrespectful to sleep in a dead girl’s room. And equally disrespectful to eavesdrop,” he said through tightly clenched teeth. He squared his shoulders and turned away, continuing without me. “And the trailer park remark. You know what they say. You can take the girl out of the trailer park. You know the rest.”

      “Eavesdrop? I’m sure I’m not the only person in the house who overheard you rambling on like a lunatic. And if this is about your precious flower bed, I’ll replace the flowers.” Tears burned my eyes. I stomped in his path. Well, he was definitely not my dream guy. I had to have been transferring my emotional need over on to the first guy I saw.

      Cole turned back. The same weird green flash I’d seen in his eyes at the front entrance sparked again. “Of course, you can afford to re-landscape the whole property. You have all her money.”

      That was it. “To set the record straight, you jackass, I’ve never lived in a trailer. Not that I’m above doing so if the situation were to arise. And to be honest, I have no idea why I’m here. If she really did choose me for that, then, she had to be demented or something. No woman in her right mind would leave her whole estate to a stranger.”

      “No, when Ava Rollins says—said—she was going to do something, she did it. No matter how outlandish the scheme. And leaving it to you was pretty damned outlandish, if you ask me. Now every member of the staff has to worry if you’re going to sell it off to some kook who’s gonna kick us out on a whim.” He purposely walked faster. What did he do? Run marathons for fun?

      “If

Скачать книгу