Storming Paradise. Mary McBride

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СКАЧАТЬ Shula.” Libby turned and faced her sister. “I’m doing it. One of us ought to go since the man was kind enough to ask. If you’d like to go yourself, I’ll stay here and watch over Andy.”

      Shula lay back on the pillows and returned the cloth to her eyes. “I can think of a million things I’d rather do than suffer through a meal with some big, dumb ranch hand who only says ‘yes, ma’am’ and ‘no, ma’am.’” With a little sigh, she added, “Even if he is handsomer than sin.”

      “Really?” Libby shrugged as she pulled on her gloves. “I hadn’t noticed.”

      Shula yawned. “Now why doesn’t that surprise me one little bit?” She flounced onto her side and scrunched a pillow beneath her cheek. “Try not to wake me when you come back, Libby. I’m sure we’ll have to be up before the damn chickens tomorrow.”

      

      Libby didn’t know how handsome sin was, but she had to admit, seeing the tall cowboy spilling out of the dainty chair in the hotel lobby, he was a very nice looking man. All of him. From his wide shoulders to his trim waist and on down the endless length of his denim-clad legs.

      His hair was dark and longer than she was accustomed to seeing on gentlemen. She thought she liked the way the raven waves brushed his collar and framed his angular face. That face wasn’t tan so much as it was bronze, and not all of that deep color had come from long hours under a hot Texas sun, she was sure. Judging from his cheekbones, the strong flare of his nose and the flint in his dark eyes, Libby assumed her father’s foreman was more Indian than Jones.

      Funny, she thought as she crossed the Persian-carpeted lobby while scrutinizing the man in the chair. She felt an overwhelming sense of recognition, yet she doubted that Shadrach Jones had been at Paradise fifteen years ago. He didn’t look like the type to stay in a place fifteen minutes, let alone fifteen years. He looked wild somehow—dark and shiny as a mustang stallion she remembered from years before.

      The thought brought instant color to her cheeks. Stallions, indeed, Libby admonished herself, straightening her shoulders and firming her mouth as she proceeded toward him.

      When he caught sight of her, he unwound from the little chair and rose with what Libby could only define as a casual grace. The way smoke rises on a windless day. He was, she thought suddenly, handsomer than sin.

      “Mr. Jones.” She extended a gloved hand.

      Damnation! There she went again, putting that little paw out for him to crush. He could feel the kitten warmth even through the thin fabric of her glove. And, as before, he had intended to let go immediately when it struck him like a lightning bolt that this lady was the dark-haired, skinny little girl who’d been crying all those years ago. Elizabeth? No…Libby. Sad little Libby.

      She was looking up at him now, dry-eyed, even a trifle confused. He wondered all of a sudden if he had said her name out loud.

      “Miss Kingsland,” Shad said now, letting go of her hand, trying to clear his head of visions from half a lifetime ago.

      “It was kind of you to ask us to supper, Mr. Jones.”

      “It’s not exactly me, ma’am. Your father—”

      “I realize that,” she said, cutting off what was probably going to be a pretty muddled, bush-beaten excuse anyway.

      “My sister has decided not to join us, I’m afraid.”

      Shad didn’t know if he was glad about that or not. Was one lady worse than two? Especially when the one was prim little Miss Libby? He shrugged slightly as he planted his hat on his head.

      “Well, let’s get going then,” he drawled as he gestured toward the hotel’s front door.

      It wasn’t exactly an enthusiastic invitation, Libby thought. More like a man on his way to the gallows than one preparing to dine. The man had all but admitted he was just doing his job and following her father’s orders. Still, he offered her another of those sunny Texas grins as he was waving her toward the door.

      “Yes, let’s,” she said with as much brightness as she could muster, once again aware of that peculiar thread tightening in her stomach.

      Libby sniffed garlic as she stepped into the foyer of the restaurant. She sniffed trouble, too, the minute she caught a glimpse of the crystal sconces and the silk-swagged windows. It was a very elegant establishment. Much too elegant for a big dusty cowboy and a woman in a wilted traveling suit.

      Behind her, Shadrach Jones muttered a grim little oath as his hand pressed into the small of her back to urge her forward toward a mustachioed little man in a black cutaway coat whose expression was hovering between panic and disgust.

      The maître d’ dismissed her with a quick “Bon soir, madame,” then slid his gaze to her companion. “I am sorry, monsieur, but gentlemen are not permitted to dine without the appropriate neckwear.”

      There was a sudden change in the temperature of the room. It had seemed merely warm before, but now Libby noticed that it had become distinctly hot. And she realized that the source of that heat was the man standing behind her. Shadrach Jones was giving off heat like a blast furnace.

      “Appropriate neckwear,” he muttered now from between clenched teeth, making the phrase sound like an oath.

      “Oui, monsieur.” The little man gave his mustache a quick twist. His eyes flicked toward the door, as if inviting them to use it.

      Libby would have, too, only her father’s foreman was bolted to the floor like a big, hot stove behind her.

      “You mean like a tie?” he drawled now.

      The little man lofted his gaze heavenward as if to seek patience and deliverance from ill-dressed, persistent fools. “Oui, monsieur,” he said with a sigh.

      “Kinda like the one you’re wearing?”

      The question seemed innocent enough, but Jones’s tone—much to Libby’s horror—was what a snake might use if snakes could speak. Its lethal quality seemed lost on the officious little man, however, who lifted a finely manicured hand to touch his black cravat.

      “Oui, monsieur. Comme ça.”

      The words were barely out of the Frenchman’s mouth when a dark hand flashed out and, in what seemed like a single movement, flicked loose the bow and whipped the tie from beneath the starched white collar with such incredible speed that Libby thought she caught a whiff of smoke from rope-burned skin.

      A second after that, Shadrach Jones was looping the black silk around his own neck and grinning down on the stupefied maćtre d’.

      “We’d like a table for two,” he drawled.

      The little man swallowed audibly. “Oui, monsieur.”

       Chapter Three

      You wanted fancy, Amos? Here’s your goddamn fancy. Shad yanked at the silk noose around his neck and let his gaze travel around the room as he forced himself to cool off. Actually, СКАЧАТЬ