Memory's Embrace Read Online Free PDF

windows although the train seats had, of course, been removed, she encountered Joel. He smelled of soap and cigar smoke, and his clothes were clean, his hair neatly brushed. He had even shaved.
    Tess meant to scurry past him but instead she stopped cold, her stomach and heart waltzing with each other, forcing the breath from her lungs as they twirled, entwined.
    “Are you planning to attend tonight’s lecture?” she heard herself ask, with a dignity she wouldn’t have thought she could manage.
    His wonderful, arrogant mouth lifted at one side, in a half-grin. “To hear of the wonders of free love? Not hardly.”
    “Mrs. Hollinghouse-Stone is a fine speaker,” Tess said, in lofty reply. “She was here last month. She spoke about suffrage—”
    That wry, partial grin lingered, spreading to his eyes. “A subject dear to my mother’s heart,” he said quietly. “Not to mention those of my renegade sisters-in-law.”
    Tess wanted to ask about his mother and his sistersin-law, about his entire family, but she didn’t dare. She’d already learned that the topic was off limits. Besides, her throat was so tight that she couldn’t have gotten a word past it anyway.
    “Do you believe women should vote, Miss Bishop?”he teased, his voice deep and quiet, his powerful body awakening, by its very nearness, something that had slept secretly within Tess.
    She stepped back. “Yes,” she managed to reply.
    “And free love? Do you practice that?”
    Tess’s heart spun out of its dance with her stomach and careened off her windpipe. “Of course,” she lied, in a very shaky voice. How was she going to get past Joel Shiloh, in this dratted, narrow hallway, without touching him?
    He looked surprised and more than a little angry; in fact, some of the color drained away from beneath his tan. “You’re not serious?” he breathed.
    Tess drew a deep breath. In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought. She tried to remember what her aunt had said, at dinner the night before, about the philosophy in question. “Oh, yes,” she said, feeling worldly. “How can there be wars if everyone—if everyone—”
    He folded his arms, arched one dark-gold eyebrow, and waited.
    “If everyone loves each other,” she finished, with breathless triumph.
    “Love takes many different forms,” Joel pointed out, and he looked very displeased. “Are we talking about the same expression of that worthy emotion, Miss Bishop?”
    Tess wanted to die, but she couldn’t back out now or she would look the fool. She would again be a child in this man’s eyes, and she couldn’t bear that. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “I believe we are, Mr. Shiloh.”
    “In that case, I ought to take you across my knee,” came the infuriating response. And he made no move to step out of the way, so that she could pass.
    “I invite you to try, Mr. Shiloh,” she replied, with cold politeness. “If you do, I promise to bite off part of your thigh while you’re at it.”
    He threw back his head and shouted with laughter, and Tess jumped, startled.
    “P-Please,” she said, when her racing heartbeat had settled to a pace that allowed her to speak. “Let me by. I must help Juniper with supper and the refreshments—”
    He stepped aside then, his broad chest still shaking with amusement, but when she tried to squeeze by him, he suddenly shifted his weight, trapping her against the windows of the converted railroad car. Her breasts were crushed against him, and suddenly it seemed that her insides were melting down to form a throbbing pool in the depths of her femininity.
    “Mr. Shiloh—” she whispered, half in protest and half in pleasure. So this was what it was like, the weight of a man’s body! What a frightening, delightful pressure it was.
    His hands rose to cup her face and tilt it upward and her hair, hastily pinned, fell about her shoulders in gleaming brown cascades. His mouth came tentatively to her own, tasting and nibbling and