Lois Greiman Read Online Free PDF Page A

desk. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “I’m talking about life, Megs,” he said, and took a step closer. “Your life. I’m offering it to you in exchange for a small piece of information.”
    “I don’t know what you want.” Behind her, her fingers skimmed the surface of the desk. She felt smooth, unseen objects beneath her hand.
    “I want to know where to find him.” His voice was soft, but the words were gritted. “And that you know.” He nodded as if to himself. “Wheaton would not waste a prize like you. You’re clever. You care about him. And…” His gaze raked her nakedness. The light in his eyes sparked brighter. “And you are bonny.”
    Something cool and hard met her fingertips. She inched breathlessly along an edge.
    “No.” His tone was thoughtful, his eyes narrowed. “He will use you again. Believe me, Meggie mine, ’tis what he will do. He will use you and leave you to hang.”
    She merely stared, her mind racing along the edge of the unseen object, trying to conjure an image in her head.
    “He has abandoned you already.”
    She said nothing, and perhaps he took her reticence for disagreement, for he continued on.
    “Is he here now then? Bent on saving you?”
    The object was strangely shaped. Triangular almost. But not too large, and—Her breath stopped as her thumb brushed the point. It was narrow and deadly sharp.
    “Were he in your spot, he would give you up in an instant,” MacTavish said. “Believe me, lass. I know ’tis true.”
    She didn’t answer. Didn’t breathe.
    “He will sacrifice you to save himself.” He shook his head and stepped closer still. “Tell me where he has fled.”
    She remained breathlessly silent, then shook her head. “I do not know what you speak of.”
    He reached for her with a curse, and in that instant she struck, snatching the instrument blindly from the desk behind her and stabbing it into his chest.

Chapter 3
    P ain sliced MacTavish’s chest. He swore at his own stupidity and reached for the brass compass, but she had already snatched it out and dropped it like a writhing adder to the floor. Her gasp was one of utter horror—as if it were she who had been stabbed, and her eyes were tremendously wide, green as a mossy bay and filled with terror.
    Behind him, the door slammed open and footsteps thundered into the room. That would be Lieutenant Peters and his entourage, nosy as aging schoolmistresses and too bored to keep to themselves.
    She obviously noticed their arrival, too, for she was staring past his shoulder, her eyes wider than ever, her plump lips parted, and he realized without looking that his men had come armed and ready. He turned slowly, careful to step directly in front of her, covering her nudity.
    Five men stood in an arc before him. Peters was the closest. His saber was drawn, and in his right hand he held a pistol. The others were armed in similar fashion. Triton’s balls! You would think the girl was a gorging tiger shark instead ofa slip of a thing that barely reached his chest—which ached, by the way.
    “My lord!” Peters’s tone was breathless, his expression tense. “You are wounded.”
    Cairn glanced down at his chest. There was a hole some five inches below his left shoulder. Blood had seeped into the soft fabric of his tunic. There were things he missed about being a sailor; the coarse material of a seaman’s clothing was not one of them. “Aye,” he said, and scowled at the wound with some fascination. He hadn’t considered using a compass as a weapon before. Intriguing. “So I am.”
    “By her hand,” added Peters.
    “True.” Reaching toward the Grecian statuette, Cairn pulled the silken scarf from its shoulders and handed it to the girl behind him. “Cover yourself,” he ordered.
    The sheer fabric shook as she took it, and he almost smiled. So she was finally scared, but was it because of his too diligent bodyguards or because of the blood that he’d inadvertently smeared