Once Tempted by Elizabeth Boyle

Author:Elizabeth Boyle [Boyle, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780739418581
Publisher: Avon Books
Published: 2000-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Any hint of a truce between them ended the next morning. Olivia awoke at dawn and went to check on her patient. She found him halfway out of his berth, a blanket wrapped around his waist.

"What do you think you are doing?" she asked.

"Getting out of this confounded bed, if you must know," he told her. "Where have you put my clothes?"

She should have been warned immediately by the crotchety tone in his voice, but she hadn't just spent the last week nursing this man back to life only to have him throw it away by getting out of bed too soon. Hands on her hips, she faced him. "I threw them overboard."

"You tossed my clothes overboard?"

"Well, at least your hearing wasn't addled by your fever, but your mind obviously was if you think you are well enough to get dressed and start stalking about this ship."

His face turned murderous, but it was hard to fear a man whose legs were shaking like a foal's and whose jaw was quivering in a painful line of determination.

She could only guess how much it had hurt him to inch his way out of his berth, let alone continue to stand there arguing with her.

He wavered for a moment, his grip on the berth tightening, leaving his knuckles a deathly white.

"I should fetch you some broth," she told him, turning to leave.

"Damn the broth, you termagant! Get me some clothes."

"That is hardly the way to address someone who saved your life."

"Might I remind you, you owed me one." He slumped onto the side of the bed in defeat, letting out an enormous frustrated sigh. "Consider us even now."

"Even?" she sputtered. "I hardly think so."

He looked up. "And how is that?"

"Have you forgotten you kidnapped me? Hauled me aboard this ship against my will and in a sack, no less?"

His answer was an arrogant shrug. "As a point of record, I don't remember you making any protests as we boarded this ship."

"I might have been able to express myself if you hadn't poisoned me."

He slumped back into the bunk, finally giving in to the pain that must have cost him all his meager stores of strength. "That was Pymm's idea, truly not my first choice. But really you left us no other means."

She took the two steps across the room to help him, but he brushed her away. "You most certainly had other means," she told him gently, setting aside her more strident tones and trying to take a more calm approach. "And the obvious one was to leave me be."

"Leave you be?" He laughed. "I hardly think so. I have my orders where El Rescate is concerned. I wasn't to return to the Peninsula without its whereabouts, and according to you, now I have them. Such as it is—and what good it will do is a fool's notion." He gazed out the window, but Olivia knew what his mind saw was far away, far from the endless waves, to the well-worn tracks of Portugal, to the high, hard plains of Spain.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.