Born In Ice by Nora Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

if his system hadn't been so busy going haywire.

    "It's not the carburetor this time," he said and wondered what she would do if he pressed his lips just where the pulse in her throat was jumping.

    "No?" She couldn't have moved if her life had been threatened. His eyes had gold in them, she thought foolishly, gold streaks along the brown, just as he had in his hair. She fought to get a breath in and out. "Usually it is."

    He shifted, a test for both of them, until their shoulders brushed. Those lovely eyes of hers clouded with confusion, like a sea under uncertain skies. "This time it's the battery cables. They're corroded."

    "It's... been a damp winter."

    If he leaned just the slightest bit toward her now, his mouth would be on hers. The thought of it shot straight to her stomach, flipped over. It would be rough-he would be rough, she was certain. Would he kiss like the hero in the book she had finished the night before? With teeth nipping, tongue thrusting? All fierce demand and wild urgency while his hands...

    Oh, God. She'd been wrong, Brianna discovered, she could move if her life was threatened. If felt as if it had been, though he hadn't moved, hadn't so much as blinked. Giddy from her own imagination, she jerked back, only to make a small, distressed sound in her throat when he moved with her.

    They stood, almost embracing, in the sunlight.

    What would he do? she wondered. What would she do?

    He wasn't sure why he resisted. Perhaps it was the subtle waves of fear vibrating from her. It might have been the shock of discovering he had his own fear, compressed in a small tight ball in the pit of his stomach.

    It was he who took a step back, a very vital step back.

    "I'll clean them off for you," he said. "And we'll try her again."

    Her hands reached for each other until her fingers were linked. "Thank you. I should go in and call my mother, let her know I'll be a little late."

    "Brianna." He waited until she stopped retreating, until her eyes lifted to his again. "You have an incredibly appealing face."

    As compliments went, she wasn't sure how this one fit. She nodded. "Thank you. I like yours."

    He cocked his head. "Just how careful do you want to be about this?"

    It took her a moment to understand, and another to find her voice. "Very," she managed. "I think very."

    Gray watched her disappear into the house before he turned back to the job at hand. "I was afraid of that," he muttered.

    Once she was on her way-the Fiat's engine definitely needed an overhaul-Gray took a long walk over the fields. He told himself he was absorbing atmosphere, researching, priming himself to work. It was a pity he knew himself well enough to understand he was working off his response to Brianna.

    A normal response, he assured himself. She was, after all, a beautiful woman. And he hadn't been with a woman at all for some time. If his libido was revving, it was only to be expected.

    There had been a woman, an associate with his publishing house in England, whom he might have tumbled for. Briefly. But he'd suspected that she'd been much more interested in how their relationship might have advanced her career than in enjoying the moment. It had been distressingly easy for him to keep their relationship from becoming intimate.

    He was becoming jaded, he supposed. Success could do that to you. Whatever pleasure and pride it brought carried a price. A growing lack of trust, a more jaundiced eye. It rarely bothered him. How could it when trust had never been his strong point in any case? Better, he thought, to see things as they were rather than as you wanted them to be. Save the / wants for fiction.

    He could turn his reaction to Brianna around just that way. She would be his prototype for his heroine. The lovely, serene, and composed woman, with secrets in her eyes and ice floes, banked fires, and conflicts stirring beneath the shell.

    What made her tick? What did she dream of, what did she fear? Those were questions he