The Gamble by Laura Parker

Author:Laura Parker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION/Romance/Regency
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2013-11-07T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Jack considered half a dozen things that he might say in response, beginning with the fact that she did not know the real Jack Law. She had met, instead, himself in disguise. But curiosity is a powerful emotion, he was discovering. At the moment it was as powerful as his lust for her. She had come into his embrace with very little urging. No doubt, he could easily persuade her back into it. For the moment, curiosity to understand her reasoning proved the greater temptation.

He slid his hands from her hair. “You want this miscreant’s life spared. Why, sweeting?”

He had not refused! Sabrina tried to disguise her elation with an indifferent shrug. “Because the fellow was kind to me.”

“Kind? Did he not rob you?”

His sardonic tone was not lost on Sabrina. As she tried to rise from his lap he held her there by placing his hands firmly on either side of her waist. Strangely, she felt no desire to struggle. She turned her head to stare straight ahead into the hearth flames, choosing her words with care. “Yes, he did rob me. But he was not a wastrel. He was gentlemanly and civil and even—”

“Romantic?” Jack supplied.

She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “I did not say that.”

“There was no need. What but romance would cause a young woman of your station to remember kindly a scoundrel of the byways?”

“Certainly I am not so foolish!” The annoyance lacing through her was not, she knew, free from embarrassment. If only he would release her she might be able to think. The unfamiliar sensation of hard muscle and harder bone shifting beneath her petticoats was most distracting. His hands were persuasively warm about her waist and his kiss still lingered on her lips. She had only to lean closer to once again taste … No, she had indulged herself enough.

“My reasons are far from impractical. Yet they are my own and, as such, privy to none other.”

“Is it his kiss you crave?”

The immediate blush, no more than a shadow creeping across her lovely profile in the firelight, astounded Jack. Mercy! She was half in love with a sham, a shadow, a make-believe! Truly, what man could say he knew the workings of a woman’s mind?

To think he might have won the minx that night on the highway and saved himself the business of the last few days! So, she liked them deadly, disreputable, and villainous! And here he had been at odds to conceal his true character from her!

He laughed, clear, unfettered masculine amusement at his own lack of perception.

Sabrina winced, bitten to the quick by his mirth. “I think your sense of the absurd is misplaced.”

This time as she tried to stand he did not stop her. In fact, he seemed in helpless thrall to his amusement. He leaned his head back to better allow the gusty sound to erupt.

She had thought him handsome before. With his face flushed by mirth and his features

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