Only Mine by Elizabeth Lowell Read Free Book Online Page A

trunk. When she opened it, she saw that it was packed right to the top with curling irons, clothes brushes, flatirons, tissue paper, linens, toiletries…
    “Oh, no,” Jessica breathed.
    Wolfe took a breath that kept dissolving into laughter. “Problems?”
    “I’m missing a trunk.”
    He counted the trunks with a lazy, raking glance. Six. “They’re all here.”
    “They can’t be.”
    “Why?”
    “I haven’t packed my riding clothes and all the trunks are full.”
    Wolfe shook his head. “Somehow I’m not surprised. Hand me some of that tissue paper.”
    “Why?”
    “I’ll help you pack.”
    “What does tissue paper have to do with packing?” she asked.
    Wolfe shot a sideways glance at Jessica. “Tissue paper keeps out the wrinkles.”
    “Wrinkles?”
    “The things you take out of clothes with a flatiron.”
    She blinked. “You do?”
    “No. You do. Ironing is a wife’s duty. So is washing, drying, and folding the clothes.”
    “What is the husband doing all the while the wife is at work?”
    “Getting things dirty again.”
    “A truly taxing duty,” she said sardonically.
    Wolfe’s smile faded. “Any time you want to go back to being Lady Jessica Charteris, complete with maids and footmen to do your bidding, let me know.”
    “Do hold your breath waiting, my lord. It will make the time so much more pleasant—for both of us!”

2
    J ESSICA moved sleepily and burrowed closer to the warmth that held the cold dawn at bay.
    “For God’s sake,” Wolfe muttered.
    The weight of her against his usual morning arousal was altogether too hot. When small hands slid beneath his coat to reach the warmth of his body, his heartbeat speeded. Without waking, she tucked her face against his neck and sighed.
    Wolfe closed his eyes, but it didn’t help. Nothing could shut out the memory of Jessica’s creamy, pink-tipped breasts rising from the ruins of her peignoir. Before that moment, he had never permitted himself to think of his redheaded elf as anything but a child.
    Now Wolfe could think of little else but the womanly shape of her breasts.
    He had suffered the torments of the damned every time Jessica dozed off on the endless stage ride. Invariably, the stage’s erratic motions would threaten to send her to the floor. Invariably, he caught her, supported her, then finally cradled her across his lap while she slept, her breath tangling softly with his. Invariably, he found himself wanting her with an urgency that infuriated him, for heknew she didn’t want him in return.
    And even if she had, he would not take her. She was the wrong wife for him. No amount of desire could change that.
    Yet the warmth of Jessica’s breath against Wolfe’s mouth as he turned his face to her went to his head like wine. The softness of her breasts begged for his hands to cup and caress them. The sweet weight of her hips against his aroused flesh was a torment he both savored and prayed would end soon.
    Jessica murmured and nuzzled against Wolfe sleepily, knowing only that he was warmth and the world was cold. The brush of her lips against his skin sent a painful shaft of need through his body.
    “Wake up, damn it,” Wolfe said beneath his breath. “I’m not a feather bed for your ladyship’s convenience.”
    When Jessica made a protesting sound and clung more tightly, Wolfe’s arms pulled her closer despite his better judgment. He searched her face, telling himself it was the gray dawn rather than exhaustion that had drained the radiance from Jessica’s skin and put shadows under her eyes.
    But he knew it wasn’t simply a trick of the light. Stage travel was hard on grown men. For a young woman who was used to cossetting, travel by stage was an endurance contest she couldn’t hope to win.
    Damn it, Jessi. Why won’t you give up and go back where you belong?
    Yet even as Wolfe formed the thought, he was smoothing back Jessica’s hair from her face with a gentleness he was helpless to combat. She looked like