Ana Seymour Read Online Free PDF Page B

kissing business for a while. It muddles my thinking.”
    Sean grinned. “Nothing wrong with a bit of muddled thinking now and then.”
    Kate gave a reluctant smile. “Well, I prefer to stay clearheaded, thank you very much.”
    He stood and reached for her hands. “Fine. I won’t kiss you again until you ask me to. I promise.”
    She let him take her hands and pull her up to stand intimately close to him. The heat was instantaneous. She felt her cheeks flush again.
    Sean laughed, obviously aware of her reaction. “Come on, my clearheaded darling, let’s go find my daughter so I can get better acquainted with her.”

Chapter Three
    “D o you think I did the right thing?” Jennie asked, snuggling against Carter in their soft bed.
    “To go against your sister’s express wishes and write to Flaherty, putting her at risk of losing her child to his powerful family?”
    Jennie winced and buried her face in his shoulder. “You don’t really think he’d try to take Caroline, do you?”
    “I don’t even know the guy, honey. I think you were playing with fire, but I’ve learned my lesson about trying to make you change your mind when you get one of your notions.”
    His voice held laughter and a lazy, post-lovemaking indulgence. “I find that hard to believe, counselor,” Jennie said dryly. “But, seriously, maybe this time I’ve made a terrible mistake. Kate and I have always tried to take care of each other.”
    “And you’re still trying to take care of her, Jennie. That’s your problem. Your baby sister’s all grown-up now. It’s up to her to decide what she wants to doabout Flaherty. You’ll just have to trust her to make the right decision.”
    “I don’t want her hurt again, Carter. She deserves to be happy.”
    Carter sighed. “Perhaps you should have thought about that before you wrote the letter, honey. But it’s too late now. He’s here, and, personally, I think Kate is perfectly capable of dealing with him.”
    “Do you think she’s still in love with him?”
    “She hasn’t said a single kind word, and her eyes flash daggers when she looks at him, so I would say…yes.”
    Jennie pulled her head up to look at him. “That doesn’t make sense.”
    He pulled her on top of him and gave her soft bottom a loving pat. “It makes perfect sense. How many verbal daggers did you throw at me before I could get you to admit that you were crazy about me?”
    She smiled at him in the darkness. “I threw plenty. But that was before I fell in love with you.”
    Carter shook his head. “Nope. It was because you fell in love with me. The opposite of love is indifference, not hostility.”
    “So your theory is that if Kate is hostile, it means she still cares about him?”
    Carter pulled her a couple inches along the top of him, enough for her to feel evidence of his renewed arousal. “We can have a heck of a tiff, baby,” he said in a low voice, “and you still do this to me. The one thing I can’t be when I’m around you is indifferent. If Kate were calm and nonchalant, I’d say Flahertyshould start packing, but as it is. I don’t know. She just might weaken.”
    Jennie shifted her legs to fit her body more closely around him, eliciting a low growl from her partner. “If he hurts her again, I’ll personally take Papa’s shotgun and run him out of town. I swear.”
    Carter reached his hand up to pull her head down toward him. “I don’t want to talk about Flaherty anymore,” he said tersely. Then he proceeded to close her mouth with his own.
    By the end of the week it was obvious that Carter had been right. Kate was anything but indifferent to her former lover. She tried to pretend that her interest was casual, but Jennie could recognize the signs in her sister—the extra primping before he was due to call, the starry gazes out the window when she thought no one was around, the flushed cheeks at the sound of his knock on the front door.
    She hadn’t agreed to go off alone with him yet,