Midnight Rose by Shelby Reed Read Free Book Online Page A

plants with better fertility.” While he told her about his work as a horticulturist, she sat across from him and studied his face. He mesmerized her. She wanted to file him in her mental little black book as handsome, but his features held an element that went far beyond merely attractive. “Otherworldly” came to mind. So did “incredibly sexy” and “completely hot”. The thought made her smile, even though what he was telling her—something about roses and poor germination rates—wasn’t funny in the least.
    He paused. “You’re amused?”
    Instantly she sobered. “No. It’s not you. Well, it is you. I just…I feel like I’ve known you a very long time. Kind of like what I said in the living room this morning. I feel as though we’ve met before.” Leaning forward, he wrapped his hands around his mug and studied the rich liquid inside. “Were you thinking this before or after you saw me swimming buck-naked last night?” Oh, God.
    “That would be after.” She actually managed to sound unfazed. “Martha told me you were out of town. I didn’t know you liked to skinny-dip when I came out on the balcony. I wasn’t spying on you.” “I know. But once you saw me, you could’ve gone inside.”
    And given up such an incredible sight?
    “Yes,” she said. “I could have. It was just one of those awkward moments when a girl doesn’t know what to do.”
    The corner of his mouth quirked. “So she watches.”
    “Yes. No.” Kate shifted on her chair and glared at him. “I was mortified. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
    “But it did.”
    “Right.”
    “I didn’t mind.”
    Her gaze flew to his, and for an endless, aching moment they stared at each other, while excitement sent tiny jolts of electricity through her body. Then she shook her head and shoved back from the table, frustration fueling her movements with superhuman speed. “I can start with Jude’s lessons first thing when he wakes up tomorrow, or we can work at night. Whatever he needs. I know his days and nights get turned around because of his sensitivity to light.” She thrust her mug in the sink, paused to make sure she hadn’t shattered it, and started for the stairs.
    “Kate.”
    The mildly plaintive note buried in that one word stopped her, but she refused to examine it, or the pleasant shiver it sent down her spine. “What?” she said without turning around.
    “We got off to a strange start. I know what happened last night wasn’t your intention, and it wasn’t my intention to be turned on by it.”
    She swallowed. “Were you?”
    “I was. I think you were, too.”
    Kate didn’t reply, just braced for the touch she somehow believed would come at the nape of her neck, for the gentle brush of fingertips at the base of her spine. They hardly knew each other, and yet it seemed he had a right to touch her thus. So she stood in silence, and waited.
    She heard the scrape of his chair on the brick, the soft fall of his footsteps, then sensed the close proximity of his body, not quite heat, but galvanic and thrilling all the same. He didn’t touch her, but when he spoke again, his lips were close to her ear. “I’d like us to start over, but I don’t know how to erase the last few hours.” She stared up the shadowed stairwell, inanely wondering how many decades of footsteps had climbed them. A hollow groove was worn into the wood. “You can’t,” she said in a shaky voice. “You can’t make me forget last night, Gideon, or the way you kissed me today. I know you kissed me,” she added when he took a breath as though to argue. “I won’t forget how it felt, and I wouldn’t want to, anyway.
    No woman in her right mind would want to. And if it happens again, I won’t mind any more than I’d mind spying on you skinny-dipping in the pool again.”
    “Christ,” he said on a groan, and she waited until she was upstairs and past Ferdinand, the flower-sniffing beagle, before she let herself smile.

Chapter Four

    How