Teresa Medeiros by Nobodys Darling

Author:Nobodys Darling [Darling, Nobodys]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Esmerelda froze at the sound of that unmistakable drawl. Her first instinct was to drop the sheet, spring away from the bed, and shove both hands behind her back as if she’d been caught sneaking them into the cookie jar.

Instead, she forced herself to calmly lower the sheet and meet Billy’s gaze. “I was looking for the washrag.”

Billy’s eyebrow arched. “The one in your hand?”

Esmerelda glanced down at the dripping rag, beset by a desperate urge to fling it at his face and run. “Oh,” she said, refusing to let her scalding blush spoil her dignity. “I could have sworn I’d dropped it.”

“And I could have sworn I’d died and gone straight to heaven.”

“As we’ve discussed in the past, Mr. Darling, I doubt that would be your final destination.”

Esmerelda busied herself with returning the rag to the basin, but was unable to resist stealing a furtive glance at Billy from beneath her lashes. His recent vulnerability had made her forget just how dangerous he really was.

While she’d been distracted, he had propped his hands behind his head. The casual motion had caused the sheet she’d so painstakingly arranged to spill back down his chest, baring him to the waist. The heated glimmer in his eyes as they followed her every motion warned her that he wasn’t nearly as cool as he appeared. All he needed was his hat, a cigar clamped between his teeth, and a gun in his hand, and he would have looked just as forbidding as he had at their first meeting.

Since then she had learned there were emotions that could be more hazardous to a woman’s heart than a bullet from a Colt .45. She gasped with shock when Billy’s lean fingers shot out and closed around her wrist. At first she thought he meant to jerk her into the bed with him, but he simply turned her hand upward, using his thumb to probe her palm with a thoroughness that sent a wicked quiver of anticipation through her flesh.

“Nope. There’s no doubt about it,” he said. “Those weren’t the claws of an imp bathing my mortal flesh, but the hands of an angel. I must surely be heaven-bound after all.”

Their eyes met over her palm, hers wary and his knowing, as if he could discern her darkest secrets with nothing more than a mocking flicker of his lashes. She was so intent on denying what she learned of herself in those gray-green eyes that it took a minute for his words to sink in.

“You were awake?” she yelled, snatching her hand back.

He crossed his arms and shrugged, but his devilish smirk ruined the apologetic gesture. “Only since you washed behind my ears. And a mighty fine job you did of it, too.”

Esmerelda blanched to remember the tender care she’d lavished upon him, the way her hands had betrayed her by lingering against the muscled contours of his chest, the taut plane of his belly, the rangy length of his calves and thighs. She also

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