Read Online To Marry A Scottish Laird by Lynsay Sands - Free Book Online

all that golden skin. Instead, she clasped her hands together, bit down hard on her lower lip and then turned back, determinedly focusing on his wound.
    As he’d said, it was fine. Truly. The man must have a healthy constitution, for it was healing quickly, and she could see no sign of tearing from his carrying her. Still, she leaned to the side to grab her bag and opened it to retrieve her salve. ’Twas better to be safe than sorry, she told herself as she began to smear it gently on the wound. This had nothing to do with her desire to touch him, and everything to do with his healing. Really.
    Rolling her eyes at herself, Jo finished with the task, quickly tugged the plaid back up over his shoulders and stood.
    “Good?” Cam asked, rolling onto his side.
    “Aye. ’Tis healing well,” she mumbled, turning away to move back around the fire to where she’d first lain down. “Good sleep.”
    “Good sleep,” Cam responded, curling up in his plaid once more.
    Sighing, Jo stretched out on her side and closed her eyes, but her mind was filled with moments from that day. Riding with her arms around Cam’s waist, her chest pressed to his back. His carrying her back to camp, his arms and chest surrounding her with heat and making her feel small and safe. His grin of anticipation when he’d watched her open the sack he’d brought back with him from the tavern. Cam lying half naked before her as she rubbed salve on his back . . .
    Jo drifted off to sleep with a smile on her face.
    Muttering a curse under his breath, Cam shifted restlessly and peered at the woman on the other side of the dying fire. She was sleeping like the dead. He, however, was wide awake. Again. He’d had the devil of a time getting to sleep the night before and should be exhausted now . . . and he was, but that didn’t make a difference. He still couldn’t sleep. It was Jo’s fault. So far today she’d plastered her little body to his back like a leech on his horse, her hands just inches above the part of his body that had woken when he’d accidentally seen her undressing and learned he was a she. Then she’d gone and knocked herself out, scaring him silly and forcing him to carry her in his arms, her warm little body cradled against his. And then she’d moaned and sighed her way through their entire meal like a woman responding to a lover’s attentions. She had definitely forgotten she was supposed to be a boy there. No lad would react that way to a bit of chicken.
    The pièce de résistance, though, was her rubbing salve on his back. It was not the first time she’d done it, and she hadn’t done it with any sort of sexual intent, but that hadn’t made any difference. His body had reacted as if it were foreplay and now he was wide awake and aching and she, bloody minded woman that she was, was completely unaffected.
    A cold drop of liquid hit his nose and Cam blinked and brushed it off with one finger, his gaze moving automatically skyward just as another drop hit his forehead. Great! Now it was going to rain. He should have known. Clouds had been gathering in the sky as he’d made his way to and from the village, and darkness when it had come had arrived fast and hard as it was wont to do when clouds aided in its arrival.
    Two more drops hit his face and Cam’s gaze slid to Jo. While his plaid was oiled on the outside and water would just run off it so that all he had to do was pull it over his head to remain dry, his traveling companion did not have such protection. She would be soaked in minutes once the clouds opened up. Another drop, on his eyelid this time, started him moving and Cam got quickly to his feet and rearranged his plaid as he moved around the fire to Jo’s side. He didn’t shake her awake or say her name, Cam just settled on the ground on his side behind her, and threw his plaid over to cover them both, then let his hand rest on her hip.
    It took him about a heartbeat to realize that this might have been the