Immortal Bride. Lisa Childs

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СКАЧАТЬ to my fiancé—my ex-fiancé.” She expelled a ragged breath and lifted her gaze to Damien’s. “But now…I don’t know….”

      At the thought of her wearing another man’s ring, Damien tensed and tightened his grasp on her hand. “But you had some doubts….”

      She nodded. “I’m not sure they were really my doubts, though, or…”

      “If you had any doubts, you did the right thing,” he assured her, “by returning his ring.”

      He’d had doubts, and now he wished like hell he hadn’t ignored them. But Melanie had fallen for him when he’d been a poor Indian kid on a college scholarship with nothing else to his name. And then she’d stuck by him through all those long, empty days and nights while he had been working to establish his career. Guilt gripped him, as it always did, when he acknowledged that he hadn’t been there for her when she had needed him most.

      The blond-haired woman tugged at her hand, trying to free it from his. But instead of releasing her, he entwined their fingers. “So since you don’t intend to use the wedding package, you’re here under false pretences,” he pointed out. “You are trespassing.”

      “What are you going to do?” she asked, her voice soft with challenge. “Call the sheriff?”

      Even if the nearby village of Grayson had an active sheriff, calling him wouldn’t have been Damien’s first inclination. His first inclination of how to handle his beautiful trespasser had his blood pumping faster through his veins…in anticipation.

      He shook his head. “Nope. My land. My law.”

      “Hmmm…” she mused, pursing her full lips, “I don’t remember that law being on the bar exam.”

      “Did you pass?” he asked, his tone doubtful even though he believed she would not have brought up the exam if she hadn’t passed.

      Her chin rose a little higher with pride and a touch of arrogance that intrigued him as much as her beauty did. “First time.”

      “So you’re smart and beautiful,” he concluded.

      “Brilliant,” she bragged with a self-deprecating grin that mocked her own ego.

      “And modest,” he teased.

      She shrugged those sexy bare shoulders. “I don’t have time for modesty.”

      “In that case maybe you decided to trespass in order to skinny-dip in the lake. So don’t let me stop you.” He released her hand but reached for the buttons on her vest.

      She grabbed his wrists, her breath coming fast through her parted lips. “Don’t! Don’t—”

      “Oh, would you rather I go first?” He stepped back and pulled his shirt over his head, dropping the black cashmere onto the rocky shore.

      Her eyes wide, she stared at his chest. “I—I—uh…” she stammered then slid the tip of her pink tongue across her bottom lip.

      “I hope you’re more eloquent than that in court.” He reached for his belt.

      “Don’t!” she yelled again. “Don’t take off anything else. I’m not here to skinny-dip.”

      “Or for a wedding,” he reminded her. Because the Lake of Tears would become a wedding spot only over his dead body.

      “I’m here because I’m curious about the lake,” she admitted. But she didn’t so much as glance at the water, her attention still focused on his bare chest.

      “So let me satisfy your curiosity.” He stepped closer and she jerked her gaze to his face.

      “A-about the lake,” she stammered.

      “Of course. About the lake,” he agreed, unable to keep a grin from his mouth. “What do you want to know?”

      “You don’t want to put your shirt back on?” she asked, her voice soft and wistful.

      He shook his head. “It’s hot.”

      “No, it’s not,” she protested, shivering in the light summer breeze.

      “You’re from the Lower Peninsula,” he surmised. “Downstate.”

      “Detroit.”

      He would have guessed. She had an urban air about her—one of glamour and sophistication. All the things he had fought so hard to become she had probably been born.

      “I’m thinking about moving up here, though,” she shared, her gaze watchful as if she cared what he thought.

      “To get away from the ex?” he asked, wondering about her broken engagement.

      “To be here.” She gestured toward the lake. “Somehow I think I belong here. I know that probably sounds crazy….”

      What was crazy was the way she made him feel—as if she belonged with him.

      “I don’t even know your name,” he realized.

      “Olivia Kingston.” She held out her hand.

      Instead of shaking, he lifted it to his mouth and brushed his lips across her knuckles. She shivered again.

      “And you are?” she asked.

      “Your destiny,” he answered her.

      She smiled. “Apparently I’m not the only one who doesn’t have time for modesty.”

      He didn’t have time for a lot of things—actually for anything or anyone outside the casinos he ran throughout Michigan. But yet something about her compelled him to make time…for her. “I’m Damien Gray.”

      She laughed. “Of course you are. No wonder you don’t have time for modesty.” Her laughter evaporated like water on the hot rocks. “And you don’t have time for my questions, either. I’m sorry to have bothered you….”

      She stepped forward as if she intended to move around him and head up the hill to the house and the street beyond it. But he caught her, wrapping his hand around her bare arm. Goose bumps rose on her skin beneath his palm.

      “You have bothered me,” he admitted, resenting how she had opened up his world to possibilities again. “But you’re going to bother me more if you leave now.” Because then he would never know what might have become of those possibilities.

      “I don’t think it’s a good idea for me stay,” she said, and for the first time fear flickered in her eyes.

      “Why?” he asked, lowering his voice. “Afraid I might talk you into skinny-dipping?”

      Her gaze slid over his bare chest again, and with a heavy sigh, she confessed, “I’m afraid you might talk me into all kinds of things.”

      Later, after he’d told her Gray Wolf and Anya’s legend of the Lake of Tears, he had talked her into skinny-dipping.

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