Corbin's Fancy by Linda Lael Miller Read Free Book Online Page A

weather, and then pinned her thick tresses into a severe coronet at the back of her head. Maybe she wasn’t innocent anymore, but she certainly looked the part, and that was what mattered now. If Keith and Mrs. Thompkins had seen her in her earlier, scandalous state, she would have been mortified.
    Jeff was in the kitchen when Fancy dared to return to that room. He’d stripped off his shirt and he was washing industriously, noisily at the sink, the sparkling water flying in every direction.
    Of course, Fancy took in the long scar stretchingacross his broad back and her anger softened, just momentarily, into tenderness. She longed to walk across that room and touch the mark with her fingers, tracing its path from his shoulder to his hip.
    He turned to see her frozen there in the doorway, his face and hair dripping water from his impromptu bath. Mirth danced, deep blue, in his eyes. “How very prim and proper you look, Miss Jordan. I liked you better with hay in your hair.”
    Fancy blushed but she did not avert her eyes, though she longed to. This was a contest of wills and even if she could not win, she had no intention of being cowed, either. “I’ll thank you not to refer to that—that indiscretion again!”
    One toasted-gold eyebrow arched in eloquent amusement. The muscles in Jeff’s furred chest rippled as he reached for a towel and began to dry himself. “Is that what it was, Frances? An indiscretion?”
    Fancy’s cheeks ached and burned. “Yes!”
    “That’s a pity—that you feel that way, I mean. Because I intend to have you again, first chance I get.” He paused and his maddening, handsome face was speculative, mischievous. “It’ll be in the carriage next time, I think—”
    Fancy swayed and groped her way to a chair at the table, falling gratefully into it. “The carriage!” she gasped, stunned at his audacity.
    He nodded. “You’re a tasty little morsel,” he reflected, ignoring the new surge of color in Fancy’s face, the trembling of her clasped hands. “I’d like to set you on the carriage seat and—”
    “Stop!” wailed Fancy, mortified.
    “It would be delicious,” he continued, “for you as well as for me.”
    “Nothing will be ‘delicious,’ Captain Corbin,” Fancy spouted. “I intend to leave this place immediately!”
    He came to stand disconcertingly near, the towel stretched taut between his hands. Fancy’s heart fluttered wildly for a moment, for she thought that he meant to choke her.
    As if to add credence to this idea, he caught the moist towel behind her neck and pulled until she was forced to stand, facing him, within inches of his conquering body.
    But Jeff did not strangle Fancy; he merely kissed her. His lips were soft upon hers, cool from his washing, tasting of spring water and a lingering trace of her own soaring joy.
    “Don’t leave me,” he muttered.
    Fancy broke away from him, but with difficulty. And she was still imprisoned by the towel he held. “I was not hired to serve your base instincts, Jeff Corbin,” she managed to say.
    He bent, caught her lower lip between gentle teeth, then tugged at it. A jolt of renewed need rocked Fancy. “Don’t go,” he repeated in a throaty voice. “Promise you won’t, or I swear I’ll carry you upstairs and demonstrate every single reason why you belong in my bed, Fancy Jordan.”
    “I d–don’t belong in your bed!”
    He let the towel go and bent as if to lift her. While Fancy knew that she could not permit such a thing, a part of her wished that Jeff would make good on his threat. “Oh, no?”
    “I’ll stay!” she burst out.
    His hands came up to brazenly cup her breasts. “Promise?”
    “I pr–promise!”
    “Good.” He plucked pert, woolen-covered nipples into prompt obedience. “Now, let’s try to look as though we’ve been good while the pastor was away, shall we?”
    “H–How?”
    In complete contrast to his own words, Jeff was unbuttoning Fancy’s prim gray dress at the bodice.