Prairie Song by JODI THOMAS Read Free Book Online Page A

feeling her every touch like a whip to the raw flesh of his memory. And even now, with his muscles too tired to ache, he still wanted to be near her. It had been so long, so very long, since he’d been around a lady. This strong, tall woman standing so close to him was driving him mad with her touch. He could almost feel the steam rising from his wet clothes as she pulled his coat away from his shoulders.
    “I swear, Grayson. How can you just stand there dripping?” Her hand slid over his chambray shirt. “Even your shirt is wet.”
    Grayson stood like an oak against the storm of his need to touch her in return. Sam McMiller, back in Bryan, wouldn’t have called her a cold crow if he could see her now in her royal blue dressing gown with her mass of hair damp and tumbling down her back like a midnight black waterfall. There was nothing hard or petrified about her once she’d removed her tight stays and laces, for Grayson had trouble keeping his eyes off her long, slender curves. The fire her nearness was stoking was almost consuming him as her fingers moved along to the last button of his shirt. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to crush her against him or turn and run.
    “We’ll hang your things by the fire.” Margaret draped his coat over a ladder-back chair. “Grayson, you’re acting like I’m trying to steal your clothes. I wish you could understand more of what I’m saying.” She moved closer, tugging at his shirttail as though he were a child. “We have to get these off you.”
    Grayson’s huge hand covered hers, stopping her progress. He imprisoned her fingers between his own and the muscle over his heart.
    For the first time, she raised her eyes and looked into his stormy gaze. She could talk all she wanted to about him catching cold; she could even treat him like a child. Yet in that moment Grayson saw a hunger in her indigo blue depths, a hunger she wouldn’t have admitted to him or to herself. A need basic to all men and women. A need she’d deny to her dying breath. But he saw it in her eyes for one long moment and her hidden desire touched his soul.
    She looked away as if frightened, not by him, but by her own thoughts. “I asked Bar to bring a cot in here but I don’t see one. You may have to sleep on the couch.”
    As she pulled her hand free from his grasp, he felt a gaping hole in his chest as though she’d pulled his heart out with her slender fingers. He closed his eyes and reminded himself that he was a Union officer with a job to do, not some lovesick cowhand who’s been on the trail for three months. If this lady was involved with the Knights, he was obligated to see her behind bars and not anticipate her in his bed.
    She moved near the fire, unaware of his longing. “There’s no sense heating up the entire house.” She pulled her robe together as though the fire gave her no warmth. “You can sleep here. I put no stake in ghost stories, but I’ll sleep better knowing we’re all close enough to hear one another.”
    Grayson watched her walk away, thinking he’d have to move his cot to the Oklahoma Territory to be able to sleep.
    “Good night.” Her whisper and the door’s closing sounded in harmony.
    Grayson stared at the closed door that barred him from the first woman he’d wanted since his wife died. How many doors ? he thought. How many doors in both our pasts will I have to break down to get to her ?
    He yanked off his wet clothes and twisted inside the blanket Margaret had left on the long couch. “Get a grip on yourself,” he whispered. “This woman is as hard as they come. Any man would be crazy to try and woo a widow away from her memory of the perfect husband. A husband killed, not by just a bullet, but a damned Yankee bullet.”
    It’d been ten years since he’d done more than hand over money to get a woman in his bed. He had a job to do and that job might just mean having to arrest Margaret and her niece. If they were connected to this house, they had to