Ana Seymour Read Online Free PDF

took her hand. “Ah, Katie, if it sounded cold it was because I was writing it with a broken heart. I didn’t know what to tell you.”
    “You said you had to go back to your family’s business.”
    “I was forced back by my father. He said he was tired of my foolish whim to play prospector. If I hadn’t gone home, he might have disowned me.”
    “And he forced you to leave so quickly you couldn’t even come to tell me in person?”
    Her voice was growing cold again. Sean looked down at the floor. “No,” he said m a low voice. “That was sheer cowardice. I think I knew if I had to look into those beautiful eyes of yours to say goodbye, I’d never be able to leave.”
    Kate pulled her hand out of his almost regretfully, without her earlier anger. “As you said the other day, I’m not the same person I was back then, Sean. We don’t know if we would even feel the same about each other.”
    Sean met her eyes. “Maybe you don’t, but I knewit the minute I saw you again, Katie.” He recaptured her hand and this time brought it to his mouth and planted a kiss on her palm. “Tell me you don’t feel it, too.”
    She made no reply, and this time she didn’t pull her hand away. He followed the one kiss with another on the inside of her wrist, right at the spot where her pulse was pounding. His voice grew husky. “Since the minute I saw you, Katie, I’ve been wanting to do this again.”
    He shifted closer on the settee and enfolded her in his arms, then bent to find her mouth with his. He was gentle, tentative almost, not at all the passionate, demanding lover she remembered. It was devastating.
    She felt a swirling inside her head and then her mouth opened to accept his deepening kiss. For a moment the past year and a half receded and she was back on a hillside m the early spring, in love for the first time in her life.
    He pulled her against him, her breasts hardening as they pressed into his chest. Her insides turned liquid and hot and her head fell back against his arm as his kiss became two, then three, then she lost count.
    “I never forgot this, sweetheart,” he murmured. “All this time, I’ve remembered the taste of these lips.”
    The sound of his voice helped clear the haze that had descended on her so abruptly. She pulled away, her cheeks burning.
    “You haven’t forgotten, either,” he said. When she refused to meet his eyes, he took her chin in his fingersand gently turned her face up to look at him. “Have you?”
    After a moment, she answered, grateful that her voice was steady. “They say a girl never forgets her first love.”
    “And I was your first, Katie. That was your precious gift to me. I was a cad for accepting it and then leaving you, but I’m here to convince you to forgive me for that. Is there any hope?”
    Kate sank back against the soft cushions of the set tee and sighed. “How could I ever trust you, Sean? You broke my heart once. Wouldn’t I be foolish to entrust it to you again?”
    He smiled. “Five minutes ago I might have answered yes, but not after those kisses. Now I’d have to say you’d be foolish not to give me another chance. Because you’re still in love with me, Katie Marie Sheridan. A woman doesn’t kiss like that unless she’s in love.”
    She didn’t bother to deny his assertion. Part of her had never stopped loving Sean Flaherty. But if she’d learned one lesson in the past eighteen months it was that sometimes loving is not enough.
    “Perhaps we can spend some time together and see how we feel,” she said after a long pause.
    Sean gave a whoop and leaned over to buss her on the cheek. “That’s my girl. That’s my sweet Kate.”
    She slid away from him across the silk seat. “I’ve told you, Sean, I’m not the same sweet little Kate I was when we met, but we’ll get to know each other again and see what happens.”
    “We’ll do this any way you want,” he assured her.
    She nodded firmly. “For one thing, we’ll have none of that