Deep in the Heart by Sharon Sala Read Free Book Online Page B

later as she crawled into bed and pulled up the sheet, she turned her face into the pillow and inhaled again. Now, not only did she catch the pine-scented air filtering through the screen of her open window, but she’d taken a bit of Johnny Knight to bed with her.
    It was an intriguing notion and one on which she dwelled only a minute before exhaustion claimed her.

4
    S AMANTHA WOKE SLOWLY . For a moment before she opened her eyes, she expected her mother to call out at any moment that it was time to get up, and that she was going to be late for school.
    The familiar scents of bacon frying, coffee perking, and fresh air wafting through the open windows told her she was home in Cotton. She buried her face in her pillow, reluctant to move from the comfort of her bed, and smiled in half sleep as the piney woods beckoned. At the same time she thought of Johnny, she remembered where she was, and then why she was here.
    She was in Cotton, or so close that the difference hardly counted. Later she would learn that Johnny Knight’s home was barely two miles outside of Cotton’s city limits. Only a few miles to the southeast was Rusk, the county seat of Cherokee County. But she hadn’t come back for a visit, she’d come for her health. By anyone’s standards, dying was an unhealthy state of being.
    She rolled over onto her back, stretched and yawned, and then opened her eyes and gasped with surprise. She didn’t know whether to glare, or just throw back the covers and invite him in. He was standing in the doorway, watching her sleep.
    “Mornin’, Sam,” he said softly, and took a deep draw on the cup of coffee in his hands. Swallowing it slowly saved him from saying anything else that might get his face slapped. He knew that he’d intruded. He should have looked in as planned, then pulled the door shut and let her awaken alone. All he’d meant to do was check on her. He hadn’t intended to stay.
    But that wild, long, black hair splayed out across the sheets, the way she’d jammed her turned-up nose forcefully into the pillow, and the peaceful sprawl of her long arms and legs as she slept soundly on her stomach had mesmerized him. He hadn’t been able to move.
    She pulled the covers up beneath her chin and gave him what she hoped would pass for a glare. She did not know that, to John Thomas, it looked more like an invitation. Her eyelids were still heavy with sleep, and her mouth was all soft and vulnerable, just like the look in her eyes.
    “When you’re dressed, there’s breakfast, if you’re hungry.”
    She gulped. He looked good enough to eat in his low-riding Levi’s and his shirt untucked and only half buttoned. From the appearance of that thick black hair framing his face, she suspected that he’d ignored propriety and used his fingers for a comb.
    She managed a nod.
    “Did you sleep okay?” he asked, and still didn’t move, unable, or unwilling, to give her the space she obviously needed to crawl out of bed.
    “Yes, thank you, I slept just fine. Now get, Johnny, so I can get up.” She smiled. “Or maybe I should call you John Thomas, since you’re so important and proper these days.”
    “You can call me anything you want. You always did.”
    She thought about the implications of that statement, and for the moment, decided not to pursue them. She folded her arms across her chest, cocked an eyebrow, and stared, waiting for him to move.
    He grinned. “I get the message. But you better hurry before Rebel gets what’s left.”
    Samantha’s attention piqued. “Who’s Rebel?”
    He pointed toward the low, open window beside her bed and waited for her reaction. It wasn’t what he’d expected, but he remembered later that Sam always had a way of making her point without a fight.
    She squealed with surprise at the face in the window. A large, brown, lop-eared hound with the saddest face she’d ever seen was staring at them through the screen. His tongue lolled to one side of his mouth as his soulful