Unbidden (The Evolution Series) by Hughey Jill

Author:Hughey, Jill [Hughey, Jill]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-11-12T22:00:00+00:00

The day had begun in an uproar and hadn’t improved. Rochelle had strode around in an internal turmoil, refusing to answer her mother’s unusually insistent queries about why Gilbert was leaving, barely acknowledging Theo and Doeg as they departed in different directions, and trying vainly to ignore David who stood back and watched her stalk about in a sullen temper. She did not ride that day because she could not bear to spend a moment alone with him. She took her meals in the office and went to bed early.

The next morning she tried to escape without David, but he followed her to the stables. They rode silently in a bone-chilling wind as Rochelle attended to a variety of tasks, then stopped for lunch in the middle of the afternoon. She hadn’t had the heart to go to the river, so they were in a tiny copse of trees south of the vineyards. A few dead leaves rattled overhead, forlorn and alone, while their brothers and sisters rested in a communal blanket far below.

“You are angry that your fate is again out of your hands,” David observed.

Rochelle scoffed, “My fate was only in my hands twice recently. First, when I resisted your very seductive attempts to have sex with me. And second, when I refused to lie for you.”

David registered no shock at her bald language. “At least you thought I was seductive. That is something.”

“You are also a hypocrite and an ass.”

He refused to be baited, keeping the same carefully blank expression on his face. “Rochelle, what is this really about? Are you afraid I will lose the tournament, because you need not be."

“Afraid? Have you ever considered I might hope that you do?”

She’d finally broken through. He stepped back from her as if she had struck him. “No,” he said quietly. “I had not. Tell me what has happened. What has changed between us? I thought we were getting along well. I thought you wanted me.”

The genuine hurt in his voice flashed her thoughts to the tender man she’d believed him to be, the lonely man who everyone admired but almost no one really knew or cared about. It made her immensely sad to think he never had existed. She missed the David she’d known.

She looked through the trees to the meadow beyond. “I did want you. But now I know you were pretending. I heard you the night before last, David. I heard you tell Theo how you had almost gotten me, how, if you had ignored all my nonsense, you could have taken my virginity in the hay like some housemaid and all of this could have been yours.”

“You were eavesdropping?”

“I was coming downstairs to be with you, but there were those words, hanging in the air like poison.”

“And then what did I say?”

“I did not listen any more. I was so heartsick I went back in my room.”

He strode to her and gripped her arms in his hands. “Then you did not hear me go on to say that I could not imagine losing you.

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