The Playboy King's Wife. Emma Darcy

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СКАЧАТЬ said with genuine fondness for the newly wedded couple, then turning to the woman who’d won his heart. “And, Miranda, you must truly be the most beautiful bride in the whole world.”

      “She is to me,” Nathan said with such love, tears pricked Sam’s eyes.

      Would Tommy ever say that of her?

      The photographer summoned them to stand in a group in front of the gazebo, facing the wedding guests. Remembering her bridesmaid duties, Sam checked that Miranda’s veil was falling right from the single white rose fastened in the gleaming blonde chignon, and that the beaded hem of her fabulous wedding gown was displayed properly along the folds of the graceful train.

      “Enough! That’s perfect,” Tommy murmured, scooping her with him to stand in line for the photographs.

      His arm remained around her waist, coupling them very much together, and even when the photographer was satisfied with the shots he’d taken, and the pastor announced that guests could now come forward to congratulate the bride and groom, Tommy did not release his hold, drawing her aside with him, his hand applying a light pressure around the curve of her hip.

      “They look great together, don’t they?” he said warmly, watching his mother and Jared bestowing a kiss on Miranda and pressing Nathan’s hand.

      “Do you mind losing her to Nathan?” The question slipped out, voicing the long insecurity which had been fed by Tommy’s interest in other women.

      He frowned. “Why would you think that? I never had Miranda to lose.”

      Somehow Sam couldn’t let it go. “You were attracted to her when she first came to manage the resort,” she stated flatly.

      Beautiful, elegant Miranda, with her swishing blonde hair, lushly curved body, and fascinating green eyes hiding the mystery of her private life, keeping her distance while Tommy chased…Sam had been in knots, expecting Miranda to succumb, but she never did.

      He slid her a look that challenged her judgment. “Was I?”

      The taunting little question spurred her to remind him, “You kept asking her out with you.”

      His eyes seemed to mock her knowledge of those invitations even as he sardonically replied, “Curiosity. She was in charge of my resort. I wanted to know what made her tick…a woman like that, keeping herself to herself. You were curious, too, remember? It was you who tackled her head-on about the family she never spoke about.”

      She flushed at the memory. “That was awful. I was so grateful to Nathan for smoothing it over with tales of your family.”

      “At the time, I backed you up, pressing the question. Simple curiosity, Samantha. I’m not attracted to cool blondes.” His mouth curved into a slow, sensual smile. “I’m much more drawn to a fiery combination.”

      Sam’s heart flipped. The flush in her cheeks deepened. She just wasn’t used to Tommy turning this kind of attention on her, and as much as she had craved it, she found herself in wretched confusion as to whether it was real or not. Somehow it felt wrong that a superficial change in her appearance should spark such a difference in his behaviour towards her.

      Before she could sort out her own ambivalence, her family came streaming towards her, having been close behind Elizabeth and Jared in offering their congratulations to the bride and groom. The friendship between the Kings and the Connellys went back a long way—three generations—both families running cattle stations in the Kimberly, and Sam had been the only girl born to either family in the current generation.

      Three sons to Elizabeth and Lachlan.

      A daughter and two sons to Robert and Theresa Connelly.

      Sam reluctantly acknowledged it was true, what Elizabeth had said earlier. All her growing-up years she had wanted to be a boy—or every bit as good as a boy in her father’s eyes. Until Tommy had started stirring other feelings in her, feelings that she hadn’t known how to handle then. Or now.

      The distraction of her family was welcome, familiar faces, people who loved her. Her father looked very distinguished in a suit, his mane of thick white hair—all red gone out of it in recent years—curling away from his still ruggedly handsome face. Strange, she had been the only one to inherit his hair and blue eyes. Her younger brothers, Greg and Pete were built like their father, but had their mother’s dark colouring, and both of them looked very attractive, all brushed up for the wedding. Her mother, as always, was the essence of femininity, her dainty figure encased in a peach lace dress.

      Robert Connelly’s voice boomed out from his big, barrel chest. “Well, look at you!” His hands grasped Sam’s arms, squaring her up for his beaming pride and admiration. “So much for your mother’s accusation I was making a man of you by letting you have your head about doing what you wanted.” He turned triumphantly to his wife. “My Sam can turn into a beautiful woman any time she likes.”

      Her mother regarded her with more whimsical bemusement. “I couldn’t imagine you looking more lovely, Samantha,” she said quietly. “It was like a dream, watching you walk up the aisle.”

      “I guess dreams can come true sometimes, Mum,” Sam wryly answered, still helplessly insecure about Tommy’s response to her.

      They stayed chatting about the wedding for a while before spotting friends and moving away to catch up with them. Her brothers lingered to make teasing remarks to Tommy about keeping their suddenly glamorous sister under his wing. He blithely replied he was the best man to take care of her, and under his wing was precisely where she belonged, this claim being accompanied by a light hug, plunging her straight into more emotional and physical turmoil as the length of her body was drawn against his, her arm pressed to his chest, hip to hip, thigh to thigh.

      Her brothers laughed and wished Tommy the best of luck as they drifted off in search of some luck of their own. Sam was inwardly reeling from the electric awareness of being this close to him, feeling the strong masculinity of his physique, smelling the subtly enticing cologne he must have dabbed on his neck, sensing the strong current of energy that was so much a part of his vibrant personality.

      “Do you know this rose in your hair is right in line with my mouth?” he softly mused. “I have the most extraordinary urge to pluck it out with my teeth and sweep you into a wild tango.”

      “Don’t!”

      Jolted into tilting her head to look up at him, she lost the train of protest, any further words dying in her throat. His face was perilously close to hers, the smooth clear-cut line of his jaw that invited stroking, the mouth perfectly shaped for kissing, a nose that seemed to embody a flare of passion, dark eyes dancing with wickedness and fringed with thick long lashes that were sinfully seductive, eyebrows slanting into a diabolical kick and the springy black curls that made him look so dangerously rakish.

      “Such appealing eyes,” he murmured. “Why have I never seen them appealing to me before, Samantha?”

      Her heart was in her mouth. She couldn’t answer.

      “I would always have answered an appeal from you,” he went on. “As I will now. Your rose is safe…until you want to match me in wanting to let your hair down and…”

      “Tommy!”

      The sharp call of his name broke the intimate weave of his words around her heart. It was a woman’s voice, claiming his СКАЧАТЬ