Resurrection Read Online Free PDF Page B

fingers wide over her back. She felt his desire, hard as tamarack against her lower belly, but he made no move to claim her as a husband claims a wife, nor did he speak. He just stood there, holding her, and for Emmeline the experience was a homecoming in and of itself.
    She rested her forehead against his shoulder, and her tears wet his shirt. “I am so very afraid, Mr. Hartwell,” she confessed in a low and wretched voice.
    Gil cupped her face in his hands, the rough edges of his thumbs brushing the moisture from her cheeks. “Oh, darlin’,” he said raggedly, resting his chin on top of her head. “Of what? Tell me what scares you.”
    Emmeline expelled a deep, shuddering sigh. “You do,” she replied. “You and everything you make me feel. Dear God in heaven, Gil—to let myself love you again, and then lose you—”
    “Shhh,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere, ever again, unless you send me away.”
    Emmeline stepped back in his embrace, just far enough to look up into those impossibly blue eyes. “You said thatbefore,” she reminded him. “The day we were married. You mustn’t make promises you can’t keep, Gil.”
    He kissed her forehead, and an ancient and sacred yearning moved through Emmeline, weakening her. “You’re not ready to hear my promises,” he said, and there was grief in his voice, in his body, in his handsome face. Then, somehow, magically, he forced a smile, and closed his hand over hers. “Come and sit by the creek with me, Emmeline. Like you did when we were courting.”
    She allowed Gil to lead her past the ruined house and through the tall grass to the stream bank, and the sunlight danced like melted diamonds on the restless, whispering water.
    “Take off your shoes,” he commanded, beaming as proudly as if he’d created that pure, spring-fed creek himself, just for her amusement.
    A strange intoxication possessed Emmeline, as if Gil had cast a spell over her. Whatever had lightened the mood, she was grateful.
    She had worn slippers, instead of her usual practical black boots, with their many buttons, and she laughed as she kicked one away, then the other. The stream was ice cold, but she had always loved to wade in it and feel the smooth stones against the soles of her feet.
    She made her way to the middle, where the water reached to her calves, and stood there reveling in the sheer irresponsibility of what she was doing. Gil watched her from the bank, grinning, his arms folded, his hair gleaming like onyx in the sunlight.
    When Emmeline’s feet went numb, she made her way reluctantly to the shore and sat down in the grass to stretch out her legs and wriggle her toes. Now that the judge was gone, and it was just her and Izannah, there were many demands on her time. She couldn’t recall the last time she’ddone anything so frivolous as to wade into a creek with her skirts hiked up.
    Gil crouched beside her, and offered a bouquet of bright yellow dandelions, not yet turned to ghosts. She welcomed them as though they were orchids plucked from the Garden of Eden.
    He sat down and pulled Emmeline’s right foot onto his lap. She uttered a dreamy sigh as he began to rub that innocent extremity between his hands, restoring the circulation with such efficiency that she gave him the other foot as well. When she would have withdrawn, however, he took a gentle but firm hold on her ankles.
    Emmeline braced herself by putting her hands behind her on the soft ground, and watched this beloved stranger curiously. It did not occur to her to feel fear; if there was one thing she was sure of, in all the universe, it was that Gil Hartwell would never hurt her. Not physically, at least.
    Without speaking, he took the smallest toe on her right foot in his thumb and forefinger, and began to work it between them, his touch light and sure and sensual in a way Emmeline had not expected. He progressed, with infinite slowness, from one small digit to another, until he’d reduced all ten of them