Man of My Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page B

wants to blow my head off.”
    A bushy red brow shot up. “A friend, you say?”
    Devlin nodded. “My best friend, actually. It’s a misunderstanding that he’s too hotheaded to try straightening out just yet. So it was thought best for all concerned if I disappeared for a while.”
    “I see,” the squire said. He didn’t, but he went back to reading.
    Their hair was perhaps the only thing they had in common, father and daughter, though the squire’s wasn’t that bright copper-red that hers was, but was faded with age and liberally laced with gray. And he had freckles, a whole slew of them across his nose and cheeks. You’d think he might sport whiskers to hide some of them, but he didn’t.
    Devlin wondered if there were freckles anywhere on her body. There’d been none on those ivory, soft cheeks.
    What the devil was her first name?
    He wasn’t going to ask.
    The squire had to be reading the letter a second time through, it was taking him so long. Devlin couldn’t care less, for his mind was back on that dusty road, trying to come up with an excuse for his asinine behavior.
    He might not have pulled his hat down at the approach of that carriage, as Mortimer had told him to do, but he’d kept his eyes downcast, a most humble bearing to assume, he’d thought, rather pleased with himself for thinking of it. But now he had to admit it would have been infinitely preferable to have seen her from a distance first, rather than to just look up and have her right there before his eyes. One needed time to adjust to such radiance so that one did not make a bloody fool of oneself. At least she hadn’t noticed his slack-jawed astonishment, nor had her companions. All three of them had been staring at Caesar, long enough for Devlin to get his mouth shut, though that first question asked of him had needed to be repeated once before he’d actually heard it.
    Caesar usually did create something of a sensation, but then so did Devlin. It was the first time he’d been ignored entirely in favor of his horse, however, at least by females. And to actually feel annoyed by it, for God’s sake. Only then she’d given him too much attention, looked him over as if he were the prime stud, with the same thoroughness that Caesar hadgotten from her. On the one hand, he’d bloody well felt insulted to be examined like that, as if he were on an auction block with the bidding about to begin. On the other hand, he’d been hit with a jolt of pure lust.
    That in itself was a rather rare experience for Devlin. A man of strong appetites he might be, but he saw to them with such ridiculous ease, on such a regular basis, that he was usually too well sated to get aroused to the point of lust. But then women young and old had been thrusting themselves beneath his notice for as long as he could remember. It spoiled a man, indeed it did, to be the object of so much prurient interest.
    But the redhead’s interest didn’t strike him as being prurient, which didn’t explain his reaction to it. He had been offended and aroused by it. Whatever she had intended, however, such behavior was beyond unseemly, and so he’d thought to teach her a lesson by giving her back the same bold perusal. But instead the sight of her well-shaped breasts and cinched-in waist had increased the heat in his loins and probably fried his wits along with it.
    Was she spoken for?
    Devlin was having some difficulty sitting still in the chair he’d been offered. Every noise he heard beyond the study door made him wonder if it was her returning. Would she just burst in on her father to demand Devlin’s dismissal as she’d threatened? With that red hair, he imagined she did do things spontaneously,thoughtlessly, passionately…
    Devlin stifled a groan. He could not stay here. One of the reasons he had agreed to rusticate in the country had been the fact that he needed a break in his routine, and he could look on this sojourn as a sort of vacation, a time to put worries and