Beckett's Convenient Bride Read Online Free PDF

a way that was anything but reassuring. “Open your eyes,” she demanded in a quavering voice.
    No way, lady. I’m safer playing dead.
    She crept closer. He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping she’d be convinced and leave him alone. Nothing in the genealogist’s chart had indicated a strain of insanity in the Chandler genes, but then the lady genealogist hadn’t gone into any personal detail.
    â€œYou’re not dead. I saw your eyelids twitch. I hardly even touched you.”
    She hadn’t touched him at all, but only because he’d jumped out of the way just in time. She hesitated, but he could hear her breathing. She was still looming over him with that damned tire iron. The right tool in the wrong hands could be lethal.
    â€œDarn you, open your eyes!” she whispered fiercely. By then she was so close he could feel the heat of her body, feel her breath brushing his face. “I barely touched you, you can’t be dead,” she declared.
    He was having trouble regulating his breathing. It would be just his luck to have a sneezing spell. He felther knees press against his side, felt the soft pressure of cool fingertips on his throat, then on his chest.
    Yeah, I’m alive, he was tempted to tell her. Keep on touching me like that and I’ll show you just how lively I can be, headache or no.
    Fat chance. He was fighting on too many fronts to take on one more. She smelled like…cinnamon? Apples?
    Something equally innocuous…and equally tempting.
    She touched his forehead and jerked her hand away. He wanted her fingers back. They were cool, soothing, and God, he needed that. What the hell was he supposed to do now? None of this was in the script. If he opened his eyes or even so much as twitched a muscle, she’d probably cold cock him with that damned tire iron.
    â€œYou’re alive, I know you are. I don’t even see any blood, so you can’t be seriously hurt. But while you’re down I just want you to know that I didn’t see anything, not one blessed thing, so you don’t have to worry about me. Just because my car happened to be in the parking lot, that doesn’t mean I saw what you did. I was on the other side of the cemetery. I couldn’t even hear what you were fighting about.”
    Breathing through clenched teeth, Carson mentally assessed the damage. He was winded, but probably in no worse shape than before. Unless he slid into the ditch and drowned. If she didn’t stop pressing her knees into his side, that was a distinct possibility.
    What the hell was she talking about? A cemetery? Fighting? She sure as hell had seen him.
    â€œWell,” she said tentatively. “I probably shouldn’t leave you here in case another car comes. Besides, you’re blocking the intersection.”
    Tentatively, she picked up his hand and tugged. He felt something tickling his cheek and hoped it wasn’t alive,because the last thing he needed on top of everything else was an infestation of chiggers.
    â€œLook, I know you’re not unconscious, I can tell by the way you breathe.”
    He could have told her that his breathing would be a lot more convincing if she weren’t so close…and so damned female. Were pheromones considered hormones? His were supposed to be out on sick leave.
    He could sense her studying him as if he were something under a microscope. Thank God he wasn’t armed. Sometimes he carried when he was off duty, but not when he was this far out of his jurisdiction. Besides, this wasn’t that kind of a case. Hadn’t started out that way, at least. But who knows, with a crazy woman…
    â€œI didn’t hit you that hard. I didn’t even feel a bump,” she said defensively.
    He didn’t know what to say, and so he said nothing. If his head weren’t hanging lower than his feet, he’d have been content to stay right where he was for the foreseeable future.
    On the other hand, with