Susan Johnson Read Online Free PDF Page A

have Ferguson count out the gold for you. Will that do?” He leaned back in his chair, looked at her with interest, and added in a needless aside, “I’m good for it. Rest easy.”
    Even living back in the mountains with her family in a secludedvalley, Empress had heard of the Braddock-Blacks. Who in Montana hadn’t? She reflected for a moment, torn between urgent necessity and blind instinct. Exhaling quietly, she said, “Very well. I’ll accept the bank draft until tomorrow morning.”
    “Thank you, darling,” Trey replied ironically, “for your exquisite faith.…”
    And this time she didn’t correct him.
    “So … here you are …” he said very slowly a moment later, handing her the check. His deep voice was rich with suggestion, but for a moment after his fingers released the check, he did nothing more, as if in deep contemplation. Then his hand, callused across the top of the palm like a working cowboy’s, dropped back on the table, and his dark brows rose slightly. “Should we?” He gracefully gestured toward the hallway leading upstairs.
    He saw her swallow once before she replied in a curiously unsure voice, “Yes … all right.” And she hurriedly stuffed the check into her shirt pocket.
    Trey rose and, walking around the narrow table, pulled her chair back as she stood. Looking down at her from what appeared to be an enormous height to Empress’s suddenly frightened mind, he offered her his arm. Shaking her head, she looked away. Tactfully he suggested, “Perhaps you’d like to go on ahead. It’s the second door on the right at the top of the stairs. I’ll send a maid up with bathwater for you.”
    “Bathwater?” Empress queried in a tiny voice. She could feel the strength of his presence, the concealed energy lightly controlled, even though he hadn’t touched her.
    “And a robe,” he added. “I’m not partial to your range clothes.”
    Empress drew herself stiffly erect for a moment to offer a sharp retort to the slur on her attire but immediately thought better of it. After all, he was paying her $37,500 in gold tomorrow morning, and visions of how that fortune would aid her family stifled the words in her throat. Her blood was as blue as his, bluer if quarterings mattered, which they didn’t, out here on the rough frontier where survival depended on gold—on her—at the moment. Not on any aristocratic background,however fine its pedigree. “Will you be long?” she asked to cover the flurry of her insecurities and trepidation.
    “No,” he said, his tone low and heated. “I won’t keep you waiting.”
    Striding back into the parlor, Trey conferred briefly with Lily, who immediately sent a maid scurrying off. Then he pleasantly accepted the good-natured masculine teasing directed at him. Ignored the black hatred of Jake Poltrain’s drunken gaze, and drank another half bottle with his cousins before he excused himself and ascended the stairs.

H e knocked once before he opened the door and walked in with a loose-limbed grace that accented paradoxically both his leanness and his power.
    Empress was stepping out of the tub into a large towel held by the maid. Lambent firelight gilded her slender form and glistened sleekly down the silky length of her hair. Trey’s breath caught in his throat. Her slim, full-breasted body was framed by the large white towel all lush, opulent curves and satiny flesh, like a golden Venus. An experienced man, he considered himself beyond surprise apropos of beautiful nude women, but even he was struck by the perfection that had been hidden under the plain, mannish garb.
    With a nod of his head he dismissed the maid, his eyes never leaving the arresting beauty of the young, naked woman before him, bewitched by the powerful sense of innocence she evoked. Perhaps it was the setting. One didn’t expect such delicate purity in a brothel. Or maybe it was the white lilac fragrance wafting toward him from her damp hair and skin. The scent was