Legends Read Online Free PDF Page B

and returned a minute later with two bowls of stew but only one spoon. “Poor, poor Douglas.” She set one bowl on the floor for an eagerly waiting Sam. Then she carried the other one to her chair by the hearth and began to eat.
    Douglas scowled at her. “Very funny. I said I’m hungry.”
    “You were speaking to some fat phantom named Jumbo, not to myself.”
    “You wouldn’t let me go hungry out of spite, would you?”
    She put a succulent-looking spoonful of beef and carrots into her mouth and savored it for a long time before she swallowed. “Apologize,” she ordered calmly. “Or do without supper.”
    “To hell with it.” He lay down on his bed and flipped the blanket over his legs. “Good night, Jumbo.”
    “Starve because of your bad temper, Kincaid.” Above the sound of his stomach grumbling, Douglas heard her soft, infuriating laughter.

    Elgiva couldn’t help herself. She edged closer until she was near enough to reach through the bars if she wanted and touch Kincaid as he slept.
    From a window near the fireplace a long block of morning sunshine poured across the cottage, bathing his chest and stopping short of his face. He had wrenched his sweater up during the night, and his blanket lay around his knees.
    Hot-blooded he was, like all of his Kincaid ancestors, Elgiva thought. Black-haired and dark-eyed the legends said; the men of the clan had been lordly, handsome warriors with a reputation for stealing the prettiest women from their rival clans. She and Douglas Kincaid most likely shared a bloodline, in some distant and convoluted way.
    She moved an inch more. She had dared fate in a similiar fashion as a child, when, during a family picnic by the ocean, she had explored the windcarved cliffs of Arragowan. She had heard that each time the surf pulled back, a brave watcher could peek down and see
An Uamh Ghabhach
, the Danger Cave.
    In 1417 her ancestor Malcolm MacRoth had been cornered there by a dozen Kincaid swordsmen. During the centuries since, the sea had crept closer to the cave, hiding it. Legend said that anyone who could glimpse the place in modern times would see Malcolm MacRoth’s ghost fighting the spectres of the Kincaids.
    She had wanted so badly to see that. Her horrified parents had found her stretched half-over the cliff’s edge, craning her neck to watch the rocks below the surf.
    Now she had a Kincaid to watch in the flesh, and she felt as she had when she was six, her heart pounding with fear and elation, her body refusing to move from a place of danger, her instincts telling her against reason that she would be all right.
    Elgiva gazed at his exposed stomach, and she wasmesmerized by the slow rise and fall of hard masculine muscles furred with black hair. A streak of silver hair grew down the center of it, disappearing under the waistband of his trousers like a guideline to his navel and parts beyond. It was definitely silver, not gray, and very attractive.
    Elgiva pressed her face between the bars, her eyes searching the thick hair on his head. There was no silver there, but perhaps he dyed his hair. No, she decided, recalling that he was only thirty-seven years old. Only three years older than herself. One of the youngest billionaires in the world. Certainly one of the least lonely ones, considering what she’d read about his ladyfriends.
    Almost all had been blondes. Small, delicate blondes. That was why she’d worn a blond wig to his party. She hadn’t been able to fake the small and delicate part, of course, but she’d won his attention anyway. Apparently, when Douglas Kincaid was in great need, any blonde in a low-cut gown would do.
    Feeling absurdly hurt, she turned her back. The dog came up, dipped his muzzle into the pocket of her long white robe, and snuffled for the piece of biscuit she’d hidden there. He and she had already developed this game of hide-and-seek. What a wonderful, intelligent animal he was, and so loving. How could a man such as Douglas