Affair of the Heart Read Online Free PDF Page A

just coming out, and she stopped abruptly at the sight of him. He wore jeans but no shirt, and she caught herself staring at his chest and shoulders. He was so slim that the strong muscles were a surprise, and he was deeply tanned. She looked up into his face and was immediately conscious of her own long tangled hair and long bare legs. “Are you finished?” she said. There was a small dab of shaving cream along his jaw.
    “Yes. The bathroom’s all yours.” He stepped into the hall, very close to her, and she was acutely conscious of his bare brown torso only inches away from her.
    “Thanks,” she managed to say. “See you at breakfast.” And she slipped into the bathroom and closed the door firmly behind her.
    “What’s in the cards for today?” Joe asked his son at breakfast.
    “Frank said there were reports of hunters up near section sixteen. I thought I’d better go check to see if the gates are all closed.”
    “Why don’t you take Caroline with you?” Joe said. “Take the horses. Ellen will pack you a lunch.”
    Jay looked at Caroline. He didn’t want her along, she thought. “Would you like to come?” he asked with obvious politeness.
    “Sure,” she said. “It sounds like fun.”
    “Good,” said Joe heartily. “It’ll give you two a chance to get better acquainted.”
    From the look on her stepbrother’s face, Caroline deduced that one of the last things in the world he wanted was the chance of becoming better acquainted with her. Well, she thought, like it or not, you’re stuck with me, chum. She gave him one of her sweetest smiles.
    It was a beautiful day, and Caroline enjoyed the mountain ride enormously. Being outdoors on a horse was the thing she loved best in the world; she was able to ignore her stepbrother and simply take pleasure in the horse and the spectacular landscape.
    “Are you getting tired?” Jay asked after they had been climbing for two hours. It was almost the first thing he had said to her.
    She looked surprised. “Why, no. I’m fine, thanks.”
    “You surprise me,” he said. “You look as if a strong wind would blow you over.”
    She laughed. “I’ve sometimes spent six or seven hours on the hunting field. Now that is work.”
    “You like to hunt?” he asked noncommittally.
    “I adore it.” He didn’t say anything, and she glanced at him quickly. “Yes, I know it’s the pastime of the decadent rich,” she said. “The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible, and all that. But the fact remains that there’s nothing else like it in the world.”
    Quite suddenly he grinned. “Who said that— ‘the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible’?”
    “Oscar Wilde. Hunting wasn’t at all his thing.”
    Jay looked sardonic. “No, I don’t suppose it was.”
    So he knew who Oscar Wilde was. She patted the gray gelding’s neck. “I shouldn’t be surprised if Dusty wouldn’t make a good hunter. He’s strong and he moves well.”
    “He’s not that big.”
    “You don’t want a really big horse to hunt,” she replied. “You’d hit your head on too many branches.”
    The blue eyes turned momentarily to her face. “I thought you had a job. How do you find the time to hunt?”
    “I don’t work weekends. And I have vacations.”
    They rode for perhaps ten more minutes in silence and then came to what was clearly a pasture. Jay turned his horse and began to ride along the fence, and Caroline moved abreast of him. “The sky is so blue,” she said, looking up. “It reminds me a little of Ireland.”
    “I thought it rained all the time in Ireland.”
    “Not all the time. And when the sun comes out the sky is cobalt—-just as it is here.”
    “Was your father the ambassador to Ireland?” he asked. He sounded perfectly pleasant but Caroline felt her hackles rise. “No. But I’ve hunted in Ireland.” There was a pause and then she said, she didn’t know why, “In fact, I was once engaged to an Irishman.”
    “Oh?” He frowned at a piece of