Bound By Desire (The Acadian Curse) by Rebecca Lyndon Read Free Book Online Page B

She’d expected trouble
coming here tonight. That was why she’d brought ammunition.
    Sarah grabbed the brown paper bag at her side
and swung open the door.
    “You drive too damn fast,” he said before her
feet even hit the dirt.
    Sarah shrugged. “I’m usually in a hurry.”
    “Don’t you have a car of your own?” He came
down onto the step, but kept a hand on the post.
    “I do,” she said. She dismissed his curt
tone. “But it's no good on these roads. Besides, I kind of like
this old truck. I learned how to drive in it."
    “It's old,” he said.
    Sarah’s eyes went wide as she arched her
brows. A little laugh sputtered out from between her lips.
    “I didn't mean….”
    “Good thing, or I might be tempted not to
share this with you,” she said, raising the bag in her right
hand.
    “Is that from Maggie’s?”
    Sarah nodded and risked stepping up on the
first stair. He didn’t stop her, even though she could tell a part
of him wanted to.
    “What kind is it?” he asked.
    “Peach. Peace Offering Peach, I suppose,”
Sarah said with a smile. He stared at her, silent. She let her eyes
fall to the thick oak plank beneath her feet. A flush of
embarrassment started to burn her cheeks. “Come on. You’re not
going to leave me out here to eat this whole thing by myself are
you? Because I am totally capable of doing just that.”
    The war within him was clear on his face, and
Sarah knew it had nothing to do with the contents of the paper bag.
Maggie’s pies were good, legendary even, but they wouldn’t make a
man question his most deeply held beliefs.
    And that was exactly what she was asking
Grant to do. She knew it. She’d wrestled with her conscience all
day. Was it nothing more than selfishness and the promise of
pleasure that had her craving to see him again? Maybe. But if it
was solely that Sarah could have resisted. She wouldn’t have been
happy about it, but she would have stayed home tonight. She had no
right to put her own desires above another person’s welfare.
    But no matter she tried, she couldn’t
convince herself that Grant was acting in his own best interest.
She had no doubt he thought that he was. He thought he
needed to be chained to wall in order to keep everyone else safe.
And from the sound of the gossip around the office that day—and
there had been plenty of it—his life wasn’t any better during the
other twenty-eight days of the month. He hardly went out at night.
No one had ever seen him out with anyone. And, while everyone made
certain that Sarah knew what a nice guy they all thought he was, he
hadn’t made a single close friend in the three years he’d been in
town.
    He wasn’t just hiding himself away on the
nights that he changed. He was hiding from life. All because he
thought he was a monster.
    He wasn’t. Sarah believed that down to the
bone. She’d stared into the eyes of both the man and his demon and
had found no evil there. Intensity? Yes. Potency? Ferocity? Without
a doubt. But not malice.
    She’d been the only one to have the chance to
see both sides of him, and Sarah had no doubt that, if Grant had
his way, she would be the last. She was the only one who could
change his mind about what he was. She was the only one who could
show him that this curse wasn’t as terrible as he believed,
and that wonderful things could come out of the power within
him.
    As she saw it, she had two choices. She could
either come out here and try to prove that to him, or she could
walk away and leave him to his misery.
    The answer had never been in doubt. Sarah
McIntire was her father’s daughter after all.
    So she’d come up with a plan, flimsy and
feeble as it was. She would have to arrive at the perfect time. Too
early and he’d have time to think better of letting her stay. Too
late and he’d probably already be locked away for the night. She’d
been able to wait until seven o’clock to leave the office before
her nerves got the best of her, but, even then, the sun