A Thrill to Remember Read Online Free PDF Page B

that obviously wasn’t her real voice. Just like him, she was playing a part. Her words hung between them like a physical entity, their meaning sinking into his brain one vivid movie-reel image at a time.
    She wanted to teach him a few tricks.
    Holy macaroni!
    He was going to combust right there on the spot. What a game. Suddenly, he knew he had to get her alone.
    “Wrap up your plate,” he said, barely remembering to keep up his Spanish accent. “Take it to go. We’ll have a picnic in the forest.”
    “The forest?” Her eyes widened and for a moment he thought he’d panicked her and she was going to back out of their little masquerade.
    “Twenty yards right outside this door, and you’re in the Tongass National Forest.”
    “You don’t say.”
    He waited. “Well?”
    “I don’t think I’m really in the mood for food,” she murmured.
    “No?”
    “My appetite is of a different nature.”
    Caleb thought he was going to break out in a sweat right then and there. “Mine as well.”
    “You go on ahead.” She cast a surreptitious glance around the room and settled her plate on an empty table. “And I will follow. One can never be too careful. There might be spies.”
    “Spies?” He knew this was just part of her charade, but damn if he wasn’t turned on by the thought of being observed. “Who is watching us?”
    “Why, any number of your women, or my men.” She winked. “We must keep our clandestine affair secret. No sense making our other lovers jealous.”
    Caleb gulped.
    Potential scenarios tumbled through his head, each more stimulating than the next. He was cast iron hard, and the leather pants did nothing to arrest his arousal. All she had to do was glance down and she would know his every illicit thought.
    “Go,” she urged in an imperative whisper that charged his libido. “Hurry, before we are spotted. I will meet you in the forest. Wait for me.”
    She pressed her hand to his forearm, setting off monster ripples of sensation straight up his shoulder and into his chest, to his belly and beyond—a tautness, an electrical impulse, a dynamic combustion that made it difficult to string two words together.
    “Don’t stand me up,” he growled.
    “I won’t. Now just go.” She pushed him toward the front door.
    Then, before he could respond, she turned and disappeared out the side exit adjacent to the stage.
    Caleb had never done anything like this before—scheduled an amorous rendezvous with a woman he did not know and might never meet again. He was by nature a quiet, solitary man guided more by his brains than his body or his heart. But ever since putting on that Don Juan costume, he’d been transformed.
    Tonight he was different.
    And so was she.
    Caleb sensed this was as much an erotic adventure for the mysterious Klondike Kate as it was for him, and he was bound and determined to make it a night neither of them would ever forget.

3
    WHAT IN THE HELL had she just done?
    Had she gone completely mental? Could the stress of the past six months have caused her to take leave of her senses and chase after the first man who showed her some attention? So what if Don Juan was sexy and handsome as Hades, and apparently more than willing to indulge in flirtatious games? None of this explained her uncharacteristic behavior.
    Her brain squawked, telling her how foolish she was to take such a chance, but a tiny voice in the back of her head whispered, “Seize the moment. For once in your life, Megan Marie Scofield, live a little.”
    Then again, maybe her real motivation was more of a compulsion than any sincere desire to take charge of her life. From the moment she’d spied him lounging so lawlessly against the wall, she’d felt…well, something special.
    As she picked her way through the forest in the twilight, her condom-filled clutch purse tucked beneath her arm, Don Juan’s cape flapping about her shoulders, her heart rate thudded faster and faster, headed straight for the danger zone.