Black Jack Read Online Free PDF Page B

“I still think you needed time to heal further. The
    clinic in France . . .”
    “Mother, really.” Lilly smiled gently, consolingly. “I’m acclimating fine. I’m just getting
    my bearings, I promise.”
    “And you would tell me if it were otherwise?” her mother questioned, concern softening
    the hardness in her tone.
    “I promise I will,” Lilly lied.
    “The dress becomes you.”
    Lilly froze at the sound of the voice at her ear, slightly husky, rich and dark, like the finest
    black velvet rubbing against the senses.
    She knew that voice. It sank inside her, caressed against memories that chafed beneath the
    shadows and eased a sense of fear that had been riding inside her for the past months.
    She hadn’t realized how frightened she had been until that clenched, tight part of her soul
    seemed to relax marginally.
    “I think I prefer the jeans, boots, and thigh holsters you wore in Afghanistan better,
    though.”
    She felt his cheek against her hair as her heart began to race, to pound erratically with
    fierce anticipation. Her body suddenly became too sensitive, too warm, as a distantly
    remembered heat began to flare inside her.
    “Et.” The halting sound delayed her attempt to turn around. “Stay still, no need to turn
    around yet.” There was an edge of darkness in his voice as he gripped her hip with one hand
    and held her in place.
    There were too many sensations racing through her body now, too much heat and too many
    pinpoints of emotion that she couldn’t make sense of.
    “Who are you?” she hissed as she gazed around desperately, wondering where her mother
    had gone off to, wondering what she would think of the man standing much too close to her
    daughter.
    “You don’t remember me?” There was an odd note in his tone, one she couldn’t decipher
    quickly. “As much trouble as we’ve instigated together? I think I’m offended, Belle.”
    A sense of vertigo assaulted her at the chiding tone.
    “Evidently I don’t.” She fought to still her racing heart, to ease the harshness of her
    breathing.
    “I heard you’d been wounded. Evidently the rumors of lost memories is true.” The
    comforting tone to his voice did nothing to still the alternating emotions that were suddenly
    tearing through her. “Trust me, baby, you know me.”
    She believed it. She knew it. She could feel that knowledge heating her body.
    “Then I can look at you.” She kept her voice low, as he did, her gaze continually scouring
    the interior of the shadowed store for anyone that could be watching or listening.
    “Not yet. Turn around and I won’t be able to help myself. Your mother would find you in a
    very compromising position. She doesn’t seem the type to look the other way if she caught
    her daughter being seduced in a back corner of an antiques store.”
    Her mother would be absolutely mortified. Furious.
    “Do you remember Friendly’s Sports Bar?” he asked then.
    She shook her head slowly, though a ghost of a memory surfaced. A large dim room, a
    jukebox playing, the crack of pool balls and spirited laughter.
    “The corner of Franklin and Walnut Street,” he told her.
    “We’ve met there before?” She heard the uncertainty in her voice, the neediness, the hunger
    for information. Finally a prayer had been answered. Someone who knew who she was rather
    than who she had been.
    “Several times,” he assured her. “Tell me, Belle, how severe is the amnesia?”
    She couldn’t decipher the underlying emotion in his voice. Part concern, part something
    else that had her wondering not just who this man was, but what he was to her.
    “The past six years are gone,” she answered truthfully, though she wasn’t certain why she
    had. This man had her guard up, yet a part of her was reaching out to him, desperate to trust
    him. “Did you know me well?”
    His hands tightened at her hips. “I’ll let you decide that. Meet me tonight at the tavern,
    alone. No mother, no driver. You could ride that