Heartstrings by Rebecca Paisley Read Free Book Online Page B

“State zitto means to hold your tongue. A polite way of saying ‘shut up.’ Of course, as I said earlier, he doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
    Roman pitched the bird a glare. Replacing his Colts in his belt, he crossed to where his saddle lay.
    Theodosia watched him retrieve his bedroll and return to the fire. Though she saw him walking, she heard no evidence of his footsteps. He moved with the sleek grace of a cat. A black panther, she decided, watching his long ebony hair slide across his broad chest and thick arms.
    Unable to resist, she studied him more intently. His face, bronzed by endless days in the sun or perhaps by Latin lineage, appeared sculpted. Ruggedly so, for he had high sharp cheekbones with deep hollows beneath them and an exceedingly square jaw that tapered slyly into a strong clefted chin.
    His eyes blazed. Not with fireshine, nor with anger. With something deeper, something she’d never sensed in any man she knew in Boston.
    Something primitive, untamed.
    Silently, it sought, found, and beckoned to some unknown part inside her.
    “Something wrong, Miss Worth?” Giving her his back while he spread out his bedroll, Roman smiled. She might as well have reached for him with her hands; he felt the caress of her eyes as though they touched him with delicate fingers.
    “I don’t believe anything is wrong, but I am unaccustomed to the odd feelings that come to me when I watch you. It happened this afternoon when I first met you and again while you loaded my belongings into the wagon. It is happening a third time now. My breath quickens. Warmth flashes through me. I realize this is nonsensical, but if there were such a thing as a heated tickle, that would describe the feeling.”
    Bent over his bed, Roman straightened slowly. His first reaction was shock. He’d never met a woman who talked so freely about desire.
    But as he pondered what she’d said, he realized she didn’t know she was talking about desire. All she knew was that a hot tickle flashed through her.
    Well, well, well, he mused. He’d finally discovered a subject the little genius knew absolutely nothing about. One he knew as well as he knew his own hand.
    He wondered if she’d like a little schooling. He certainly didn’t have to be overly fond of her to tutor her. Stifling a rakish grin, he decided to play with her for a while. “Does this uh— hot tickle hurt, Miss Worth?”
    She wrapped a long lock of hair around her thumb, contemplating her emotions. “It isn’t painful. It—well, perhaps it is painful in a certain sense. It’s much like a pang of want or need. Like hunger.”
    “Sounds serious.” His lips twitched with restrained mirth as he stretched out on his bedroll and propped himself up on his elbow. “I might be able to help you figure out what it is, but to do that I have to ask you a personal question. Can I?”
    “ May I,” she corrected him. “Yes, you may.”
    He ignored her grammar lesson. “How many men do you know in Boston?”
    She didn’t see anything at all personal about his question. “Fifteen or twenty, perhaps. Why do you ask?”
    “What sort of relationships do you have with them?” He picked up a twig and began drawing swirls in the dirt while wondering just how bold Bostonian men were.
    “I study with them.”
    “Study? That’s all? Don’t they ever take you anywhere? To a party? Out for a walk?” Have any of them ever stolen a kiss on some moonlit balcony?
    “Mr. Montana, the men I know in Boston have little time for socializing. I have never acquired a passion for it, either. And what’s more, I fail to see what my relationships with my male acquaintances have to do with—”
    “I’m getting to that.” He held back yet another grin as he imagined the men she knew in Boston. Scholars, all of them, just like her. If indeed they ever got the itch to kiss her, it would probably be a half-second peck on the tip of her nose. Then, after that highly erotic interlude, they’d get