Remember Summer by Elizabeth Lowell Read Free Book Online Page B

help but respond to the hunger and strange gentleness in him, and to his deeply buried, nameless yearning that called out to her as surely as she called out to him.
    Yet he was already turning away from her, his face impassive. Had it not been for his fingers laced so deeply with her own, she would have felt . . . lonely.
    Without thinking about it, she pressed her palm along his, her fingers holding tightly to him as they walked. After a few minutes she felt as though they had always walked this way, side by side, intimate. And they always would.
    She would have smiled at the thought, but it hurt too much. She knew all the way to her soul that they had no future together. Sooner or later there would be a brushfire in some savage little country, the alarm would go out, and Cord would leave her to walk through the gathering darkness alone.
    “I started riding when I was five.” Raine didn’t look at him while she spoke. She was afraid he could read her as clearly as she read him. She didn’t want to shatter the fragile peace of the moment by focusing on the bleak certainty of the future. “I was an afterthought. An accident. Eight years younger than my closest sibling.”
    His grip on her hand tightened gently, encouraging and reassuring her, telling her that he was listening and understanding . . . even though his eyes constantly searched the surrounding land for possible danger.
    “I was always smallest and last and worst at everything the family did,” she said, her voice a mixture of humor, resentment, and acceptance. “So I found something no one in the family did, and then I did that better than anyone in or out of the family.”
    “Riding?”
    “Yes. Mom and Dad didn’t really care about horses, beyond a certain relief that I had found something to do besides turn things upside down at home.”
    Cord smiled faintly and looked at the deceptively delicate fingers twined with his. “You mean you weren’t a perfect little angel?”
    “I was a perfect little witch. But I didn’t know it at the time, any more than I knew why I was so determined to succeed at riding. I simply went through life hell-bent on being best.”
    “Just like your father.”
    “Do you know him?” she asked, startled.
    “A lot of people in the trade know of Chandler-Smith,” Cord said easily, neither evading nor really answering her question.
    This time Raine didn’t push the issue. She liked the feel of his palm against hers and the hint of a smile softening his mouth. She liked being close enough to smell the sun and dust and eucalyptus clinging to his skin. It would end soon enough. There was no need to rush toward the future by asking questions that only silence would answer.
    After they paused at the top of a small rise, he looked out at the dry riverbed in the distance. “There’s not much light left for a lens as big as you’re using. Better get shooting.”
    She reached for her camera, then realized that her hand was still securely held in his. When she looked up, she found herself reflected in his pale, burning blue eyes. He slid his fingers from between hers so slowly that every pressure of his skin moving over hers became a lingering, sensual caress. When he was no longer touching her, she felt strangely lost, as empty as a cloudless sky.
    With fingers that trembled just enough for Cord to see, she adjusted the focus ring on the telephoto lens and began taking pictures. He forced himself to look away. He knew if he kept on watching her, he would have a hell of a time keeping his hands off her. So he took her sketch pad and pencil out of the knapsack. Using quick, efficient strokes, he reduced the surrounding landscape to dark slashes across white paper.
    He finished more quickly than she did. She was having trouble holding the heavy lens and camera still for the one-second exposures the dying light required.
    As Raine had each time before, she took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. When there was no more air