The Temptress by Jude Deveraux Read Free Book Online

Tynan, I know my father quite well. If he wanted someone to take me through an impenetrable forest, he wouldn’t hesitate when people said it couldn’t be done. He’d just find out how to do it. My guess is that he found that you’d been through the forest and it wouldn’t matter to him if you were on your way to the gallows. He has enough money and power to cut any ropes, even if they’re hanging around someone’s neck.”
    â€œHe’d trust his daughter to a murderer?” Tynan asked, turning his head to look at her.
    She was thoughtful for a moment. “No, I don’t think he would. I believe that my mother and I are the only people he’s ever really loved. I wasn’t sure he was going to recover after my mother died, but I think he decided he still had me.”
    â€œBut you’re saying that he put you under the care of a criminal, someone rescued from the hangman’s noose.”
    She paused in rubbing the cream into his wounds. “Mr. Tynan, you must be an innocent man. You’re perfectly right that my father would never entrust my care to a villain. Yes, of course, that’s it. You’re either innocent or you did something that wasn’t violent. Breach of promise perhaps.” Smiling, she resumed smoothing the cream on his back. By now, she was as much massaging his muscles as doctoring him.
    â€œHow close am I to the truth?” she asked and when he didn’t answer, she laughed. “You see, Mr. Tynan, we all give clues to ourselves, no matter how hard we try to conceal them. I’m sure Mr. Prescott has no idea that you are in pain every time you move, but if you watch, you begin to see things about people.”
    She kept rubbing his back, greasing her hands and running them over the curves of muscle in his arms, massaging until she felt him relaxing completely. His breathing was soft and deep, as if he were asleep. All Chris’s motherly instincts rose within her. How she’d like to take this man home and feed him and see that he rested. She wondered if her father’s housekeeper, Mrs. Sunberry, had met him. If she had, Chris was willing to bet she liked Tynan.
    Smiling, Chris lifted one of Ty’s hands and began to massage it, being careful of his scarred, raw wrist.
    â€œI’m not hurt there,” he murmured sleepily but made no attempt to move.
    â€œI was thinking about Mrs. Sunberry.”
    â€œBlackberry cobbler,” Ty said. “With cinnamon in the crust.”
    Chris laughed. “So you did meet her. I thought she’d like you.”
    â€œLike adopting a stray dog?”
    â€œYou’re a stray perhaps, but certainly not a dog. Ty, where were you born?”
    He moved as if he meant to get up but she pushed him back down.
    â€œAll right, no more questions, but please don’t get angry again. It’s too nice a day to ruin with anger.” She ran her hands in his hair and began to massage his scalp.
    â€œDo you like being a newspaper reporter?” he asked.
    â€œYes, at least I did, but I think I’m getting tired of it. I’m twenty-eight years old and I started when I was eighteen. That’s a long time. I think I want…I don’t know what I want but it’s something more.”
    â€œA home and kids?”
    She laughed. “You’ve been talking to my father. Did he tell you how he got me back to Washington? How he lied to me? I was working in New York and he sent me a telegram saying he was at death’s door. I cried from one end of the country to the other thinking he was dying and when I arrived home, filthy, tired and terrified, there he was atop a bucking bronco having the time of his life.”
    â€œYou’re lucky to have a father.”
    â€œYou don’t?”
    â€œNot that I know of.”
    â€œOr mother?”
    â€œShe’s dead.”
    â€œAh,” Chris said. “How long have you been