Read Online A Loving Man by Cait London - Free Book Online Page A

were flower rustling,” Rose explained shakily, as Stefan carefully took a clean white handkerchief and began methodically wiping her face, holding it gently with one hand. She heard herself talking and knew it was because she was so nervous, her skin heating as he touched her. “It’s an old custom here for new homemakers in Waterville to take a piece of this beautiful old home-place to theirs…an inheritance, so to speak. Taking those starts thins out the bulbs and lets the plants grow better. Sometimes people come out here to separate the plants and start them at another place on the farm, like those willows over there. It’s a family sort of thing to do. You know, like Grandma Granger did when she was a girl, and like Mom and Dad did when they were dating, and like— Lily of the Valleys are pretty down in that hollow…little white bells on dark broad leaves—”
    “Why did you kiss me?” Stefan asked softly. His intimate study of her face, her eyes, her cheeks and mouth took away her breath.
    “You were there,” she answered truthfully. “It seemed right after catching the pig. I had to celebrate somehow.”
    “I would like to carry you off and feast upon you,” Stefan said raggedly. “Do you not know how seductive you are—part girl, so innocent, and all woman?”
    “‘Seductive?”’ Rose circled the thought. “You’re mistaken. Not one of my—”
    “They were blind fools,” Stefan said passionately. “I do not want to hear about them.”
    His command shifted Rose’s unsteady emotions into simmering anger. In her lifetime, no one had spoken sharply to her, or ordered her. “Oh, you don’t? And I don’t like your tone. Take it back.”
    Stefan blinked as if she had reached out and struck him. “Take what back?”
    “That high-handed order, like you were a general or something.”
    He was silent for a moment, his expression darkening. “Perhaps I speak too formally to you. I was born in this country, but sometimes my upbringing—some schooling in France—emerges when I am…emotional. My father spoke thus—very proper—when he was…emotional.”
    Stefan shook his head as if a new thought had entered it and he wasn’t certain of it or himself. He started again. “You arouse me. I do not like that I am so susceptible to your touch, but I am. You think I like to think of you with other men?”
    Rose held up her hands. Stefan was volatile and cruising off into areas of her life that even she didn’t want to examine too closely. “Let’s get back on course. There’s nothing between us. There isn’t going to be.”
    “Is that so?” Then Stefan reached out one hand, curled it around the back of her neck and tugged her close. She pushed at his chest and then, failing to dislodge herself, stood staring defiantly up at him. “So you decide what is to be, do you not? You open yourself to no one, especiallyme. I am too old, you think? I am not suitable? You wound me, ma chérie, ” he said in a scathing tone, his accent more pronounced.
    “Do you have to be so darned open about what you’re thinking?” she demanded and realized that Stefan’s other hand had settled firmly on her bottom, caressing it, as if her curves pleased him. Stefan was the first man to look at her like that, to touch her as if he had all the time in the world to enjoy her. She began to shiver, her nerves dancing as if they needed to lock on to an anchor—
    Suddenly Stefan bent, picked her up on his shoulder and carried her to the pond. When he tossed her into the water, it was cold, and mud sucked at her feet as she struggled free. Rose didn’t think; anger pushed her out of the pond. She ran at Stefan, who was walking back to his pickup, and hit him with a linebacker’s tackle.
    He went down in the field grass, turned, grabbed her and pinned her beneath him. Rose frowned up at him, her wrists clasped by his hands. Stefan’s grin flashed; he lowered his head and took her mouth in a devastating kiss. It was