The Memory of Your Kiss by Wilma Counts Read Free Book Online Page A

dirty, threadbare, and torn shirt over a pitifully thin chest.
    “He’s alive,” she announced. She gently felt along his arms and legs. “Not broken.” She carefully felt along his head and pulled back to see blood on her glove. “We need a doctor,” she shouted at the crowd even as she took the child into her arms.
    Zachary turned his hold on the team over to a bystander and joined Sydney, taking the child from her arms into his own.
    A woman wearing a shabby man’s coat over a thin cotton dress pushed through the crowd, screaming, “Tommy! Tommy! My son!” As she came closer to reach for him, she said, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! He’s bleeding.”
    Sydney grasped the shoulders of the nearly hysterical woman. “He’s all right. He has a cut on his head. He was knocked unconscious.” She shook the woman’s shoulders. “Do you understand me?”
    Slowly the woman focused her gaze on Sydney and nodded. Sydney released her and Zachary placed the boy in his mother’s arms just as the doctor arrived. Having taken in the state of the clothing of both the mother and child, Zachary pulled a card from his pocket.
    “Send me your bill, doctor.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    The crowd parted, then closed around the departing trio of mother, son, and doctor. Several voices spoke at once.
    The driver of the vehicle: “’Twasn’t my fault. Happened in a flash, did.”
    His passenger: “Come along, John. I am late already.”
    A male bystander: “Quick thinking there, soldier.”
    A female bystander: “Oh, miss. Your clothes. Them stains will never come out.”
    Zachary saw Sydney look down at the light green pelisse she wore over a light cotton dress, the flowery print of which bore the same shade of green. There was blood on her chest, a sleeve, and her gloves, as well as street dirt on the hem of her dress. Zachary had thought earlier of how that shade of green intensified the gray-green of her eyes. Her bonnet had been knocked askew. He thought she had never looked lovelier.
    He noted movement at her feet.
    “Oh. The puppy.” She reached to pick it up, thus getting even more street filth on her garments.
    “Here. I’ll take it,” a young woman in the crowd said. “Tommy will be lost without that mutt.”
    Sydney turned it over, straightened her bonnet, and she and Zachary finally managed to extricate themselves from the group. Zachary felt her hand on his arm trembling in the aftermath. He put his other hand on hers.
    “Do you always go around rescuing street urchins and puppies?” he teased.
    “No-no.” She quickly regained control of herself. “This was my first street urchin. My second puppy.”
    “You were quite heroic there. You may well have saved that little boy’s life.”
    She smiled up at him. “You were not so bad yourself. I daresay you may have saved both that child and me.”
    He merely patted her hand as they walked on, but he stored the incident away as providing more insight to the enigma of Miss Sydney Waverly.

CHAPTER 6
    Z achary was finding it harder and harder to adhere to the rules of the pact he and Sydney had made. She fascinated him as no other woman ever had. He responded as he supposed any virile male would to her physical attributes: shining light brown hair that his fingers itched to touch, eyes that seemed truly to be “windows of the soul,” a smile that dazzled, and a figure that was both trim and enticing. But what really intrigued him were her quick wit, her readiness to smile or laugh, her lack of hesitation in responding to ideas.
    It had been his experience that most women waited to find out what he thought, then they agreed with him—or pretended to do so. No, that applied mostly to younger women. Certainly, his mother and her friends did not demur at offering their opinions on anything and everything—nor did they hesitate to admit that they occasionally read a newspaper or a book. So why did they encourage their daughters to be empty-headed flibbertigibbets?