Read Online Knight in Blue Jeans by Evelyn Vaughn - Free Book Online Page B

soap and water can’t fix.”
    The contrast between this controlled, public Arden and the real Arden he’d just been kissing stabbed through Smith’s gut. That had to be why he taunted her, grinning more widely. “Well, hell, sweetness. If you like it dirty…”
    All he got was a flash, a bare moment of green-eyed annoyance, before her laugh usurped it. “Now you behave yourself, Smith Donnell, or I’ll have to call my Daddy on you.”
    They locked gazes, her smile as grim as his glare felt desperate.
    She didn’t know how badly it would endanger him—maybe both of them—to be found together. This would be no casual trespass between acquaintances to her Comitatus father.
    This would be treason.
    Arden could never know that, though, not even if Smith longed to forget it. He’d taken a stupid damned vow.
    If he destroyed the Comitatus, would it still matter?
    But he couldn’t destroy her father without destroying her, could he?
    Hell. At least her society-girl mask made that thought a little easier. Just not a lot.
    He’d come here for something, hadn’t he?
    “How’s your brother doing?” Smith asked, relieved to see her lovely mask crumble, unexpectedly, behind honest and protective fury.
    “Jeff is none of your business!”
    “Whoa—I didn’t say he was. Just being sociable,” he lied. Through his teeth. “How old is he now? Thirteen?”
    “Almost fifteen.” But she withheld more details.
    To ask really? when? would further rouse her suspicions. But with a big Comitatus meeting coming up, what better time to swear the boy into his ancestral obligations? And once Jeff had taken vows to the organization, he would be trapped, just as Smith, Mitch and Trace had been trapped.
    “Have you considered taking a long vacation with him? You can get some really affordable last-minute deals overseas…” Right. Like she needed affordable.
    “You need to go now,” declared Arden, since Smith wasn’t taking his social cue. “Whatever you came for, you can ask me tomorrow. Somewhere else. ”
    Smith remembered Jeff, an open, idealistic, curly haired kid. Someone who could do some good in the world, if he wasn’t hijacked to the dark side first.
    Smith had liked him.
    He also liked how Arden dropped her pretenses when things concerned Jeff. She’d all but herded him out the door onto her balcony, overlooking the back gardens, before he realized what she was doing.
    He liked that side of her a lot.
    “Oh, that,” he agreed, pausing for the afterthought as if that, and not Jeff, had been his excuse for coming here. “Tomorrow. I’d like you to set up a meeting with this Vox07 person, the conspiracy buff who offered to trade information—”
    “Tomorrow,” she insisted, outright cutting him off. Goodbye, southern belle. Hello, lover.
    “Shall I pick you up here?” He wouldn’t dare; he just wanted to keep her riled. To spend a few more minutes with her in this mood.
    “ No. Come by the rec center.”
    “Isn’t that for girls?”
    She planted both hands on his chest and pushed. “We don’t have cooties.”
    “If you insist.” Now he was just being ornery…but it was so fun!
    “I do.”
    “Because—”
    “Smith!” She leveled her dark green gaze at him. “Get out. ”
    Grinning and feeling as if he’d won some kind of contest, Smith slipped out onto her dark balcony, jumped to the lawn and headed back toward his crappy, pay-by-the-week apartment.
     
    The next morning, at breakfast, Jeff looked up from his egg cup and asked, “Whatever happened to that guy you used to date? The sarcastic one?”
    Arden’s surprisingly sunny mood stuttered to a halt. What did he know? “Smith?”
    “Uh-huh.” Jeff’s dark eyes seemed innocent enough, but…could she ever see her brother as anything else? Even a few weeks short of fifteen, he would always be a baby to her.
    Their father’s gaze held a lot more weight. “Donnell and Arden parted ways over a year ago. Isn’t that right,