One Penny Surprise (Saved By Desire 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

his brow as he headed back down the path to where he had left the woman moments earlier. It didn’t take long to find her. He just followed the sound of the hideous racket she was making.
    “What is it now?” he growled as he stalked toward her. He didn’t bother to mask his anger and glared at her with all the bitter frustration he felt at having lost sight of the pick-pockets. “Do you not have a chaperone?” he demanded pointedly.
    Poppy glanced around them and shook her head, now blessedly silent.
    “Why are you out here all alone?” he demanded. The words ‘damned fool woman that you are’, hung between them but he didn’t give them a voice.
    Poppy shook her head. Over the last couple of minutes, the body had started to float back out to the river. Her stomach roiled alarmingly in protest as the macabre reality of her discovery finally sank in. She just couldn’t bring herself to go after it.
    “Oh God,” she whispered, staring in horror at the handsome man who was now glaring at her as though she had committed some heinous crime.
    “What is it?” he demanded when she didn’t seem inclined to answer any of his questions. When she merely stared at him, opening and closing her mouth like a stunned codfish, he shook his head and swore loudly even though he was in the presence of a lady. It was then that he realised she was pointing to something at the end of a stick.
    “What is it? It’s just a shirt.” Luke growled. He threw the white shirt someone had lost in the water a dismissive glance and tried not to stare at her now that he was close.
    She was incredibly beautiful; young, with an unlined oval face that was nothing short of perfection. The thin slash of her brows were high and arched over eyes that were the warmest amber he had ever seen. Framed by a thick fan of lashes that were nothing short of sensual, and combined with a long main of haphazardly coiled hair, the tendrils of which curled teasingly against her alabaster cheeks, she looked like an exotic goddess. He felt an invisible pull of something undefinable as he studied the slightly rounded curves barely hidden beneath a well- worn shawl that had seen better days. When his body began to react to her nearness he forced his attention back to the reason he was there.
    “Miss?” He eyed her ring finger and mentally heaved a sigh of relief when he found it empty. Until she corrected him, he would call her ‘miss’ and see what happened when she came out of the shock she appeared to be in.
    He frowned at the surface of the water when it was evident she was transfixed by the floating shirt, and not for the first time that morning dug deep for his patience.
    “It’s only a shirt,” he groused ruefully. His scowl deepened when she slowly shook her head.
    “It isn’t,” she replied all too calmly in a voice that was melodic yet husky with emotion.
    Luke fought the urge to roll his eyes, and kept his face bland as he edged closer and took a closer look, certain she was mistaken but willing to humour her for now.
    “Shit,” he swore when he realised that she was right. It wasn’t just a shirt. A fleeting glimpse of the back of the dead man’s head, together with a pale flash of a cheek in the water, made him close his eyes in a desperate attempt to prevent a second, more virulent curse.
    “You are seriously not having a very good day are you?” he murmured.
    He wasn’t averse to seeing, and manhandling, the deceased. He had seen many a good soldier cut down on the battlefields during the war, but he really wished that he wasn’t the one to have to deal with this one. Not when he had work to do to try to locate the pick-pockets who had been right under his nose. Unfortunately, there was nobody else around who could help her deal with this, and he couldn’t leave her just in case she ran away. It was clear from her all too pale cheeks, the trembling in her fingers, and the horror in her eyes that she was terrified and would be next to