Read Online Duchess by Susan May Warren - Free Book Online Page B

also inspire us to be better, be more. That’s what I want. To make movies that change us. That’s why Angel’s Fury is important, Roxy. So we understand exactly the cost of war. So we make sure we do everything to stop it from happening again.”
    She knew the cost. Had spent years trying to forget it. She stared at her glass and suddenly wanted to give a little of herself. “I lost my brother in the war. He simply vanished, and we never knew what happened to him. My mother still thinks he’s alive, somewhere. She hasn’t stopped hoping.”
    â€œAnd you?”
    She took a sip of her juice. “I think that if a person wants to be found, they will be. And if they want to hide, start over, then maybe we should let them. Maybe what he left behind is just too terrible to remember.”
    He sat up, braced his hands on his knees, his shoulders wide as he considered her. “What’s your real name, Roxy?”
    Oh, he was handsome. And sitting so close, she could nearly feel his eyes caressing her. A warm shiver went through her, and for a moment she realized just how easily it might be to trust him. To even give him her heart.
    To find herself right back where she’d been after Guthrie. Lost. Alone. Broken.
    She couldn’t go back to Rosie Worth. Couldn’t let him see the woman she’d been.
    She drew in a breath. “Roxy is my real name, Rafe.”

    It was too easy to enjoy Rafe Horne. To laugh with him.
    To relax into his embrace on the dance floor, in the soft jazz of the music that pulled her arms around his wide shoulders and pocketed her into the curve of his embrace.
    He read her lines with her and didn’t laugh when she got them wrong. He helped her work out the crazy retakes Sherwood demanded.
    He told her about his life in Belgium, growing up in the country, the village he grew up in. She listened, wrapped herself into his world.
    Made him believe that she hung on his words.
    Maybe she did, a little.
    He made three weeks of tireless shooting fly by, sitting at night with her by the pool or on her balcony, rubbing her feet, making her laugh.
    And he didn’t even try to kiss her.
    Strange.
    He did, however, give her the sky, taking her up in one of Sherwood’s biplanes, over Oakland and the frothy waves of the ocean. She expected terror and white-knuckled the sides of the plane. But Rafe sat with his arm around her, held her tight, and she relaxed into him, surveying the surf, the matchbox houses, the road curling like a ribbon along the shore.
    They flew over Neptune Beach, and she waved to the riders of the Ferris wheel.
    Rafe touched her back down just as the sun dipped into the sea, and then he took her walking on the beach, his hand bumping hers.
    She wanted to take it, to hold on.
    She walked barefoot, her toes digging into the creamy sand, feeling decadent.
    â€œWe’re just waiting for the clouds,” he said into the night wind.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œSherwood. He’s waiting for the skies over Oakland to grow cloudy. Then he’s going to add scenes to his aerial shootout. He’s thinking by next week it’ll get stormy.”
    â€œAre you going to fly?”
    He nodded. “He needs extra fliers for the stunt.”
    She drew in a breath. “You could get killed.”
    He stopped, turned, caught her hand. “I flew over Germany, nearly got shot down so many times, I lost count. Nothing is going to happen to me over the skies of Oakland, California.”
    His thumb ran over her hand, sending tingles up her arm, through her entire body. His eyes met hers, and they turned her inside out.
    She turned away, shaking, heading up the beach, away from Rafe.
    She didn’t want this, the feeling of teetering at the edge of something she couldn’t have. Something that would only end up destroying her. Clara’s words had bounced around in her head for the past week, “ You gotta keep ahold of your heart, or