Sweetwater Seduction Read Online Free PDF Page A

cream-colored flannel nightshift which, mercifully, was roomy enough to completely disguise the feminine figure beneath it. To make her dishabille complete, she was still wearing her reading spectacles!
    Despite her best efforts to prevent it, Miss Devlin felt a blush rising up her neck. By the time it had stained her cheekbones she possessed the appalling knowledge that if she didn't say something soon, the stranger would somehow divine her confused feelings.
    “I'm Miss Devlin” was all she could manage. To her dismay, the voice she heard was throaty, almost seductive. There was nothing the least bit schoolmarmish about it.
    “Somehow you're not what I expected,” he replied.
    The grin that split his face gave Miss Devlin the goad she needed to get hold of herself. He certainly wasn't admiring her beauty; more likely he was ridiculing her appearance. Stunned at how totally she had succumbed to the mystery surrounding this dark stranger—who was openly laughing at her—Miss Devlin sought to gain control of the situation by taking the offensive.
    “I don't allow guns in my house,” she said in an icy voice.
    The stranger looked down at the Colt .45 tied low on his right leg and then back up at Miss Devlin. “My gun goes where I go,” he answered in equally daunting tones.
    “Guns kill people,” she said.
    “Yes, they do,” he agreed.
    “I abhor violence.”
    “I'm a peaceful man.”
    Miss Devlin's mouth puckered. She arched her neck and looked down her nose at the gunman through her reading spectacles. It was a pose guaranteed to cow even the most argumentative man into submission. And to a point, it worked.
    “I don't go looking for trouble,” the stranger amended.
    “But somehow trouble always finds you,” Miss Devlin retorted, angry, but not sure why. “I've always suspected men like you wear guns in a futile effort to disguise your hebetudinous natures. And now I'm sure of it.”
    The word
hebetudinous
rolled off Miss Devlin's tongue with all the ostentation of the wise preaching to the foolish. It wouldn't be the first time she had called a man stupid to his face with a word he couldn't understand. She was certain
hebetudinous,
spoken with just the right note of condescension, was exactly what she needed to put this dark-eyed stranger in his place.
    To her amazemen the gunman retorted, “I've always suspected women like you use big words when they know they're in the wrong. And now I'm sure of it.”
    “Why you vainglorious, supercilious—”
    “Use all the big words you want. Because I'm not the least bit
hebetudinous,
ma'am. Pardon me, that's
Miss
Devlin, isn't it?”
    She retreated.
    He advanced.
    Miss Devlin stared in disbelief at the look on his face. She could have sworn he was actually
leering
at her.
    Eden was shaken and hard-pressed not to show it. This stranger simply ignored the verbal no trespassing signs she had posted all around her. Under the circumstances she wasn't sure how to handle him—assuming he could be handled. Maybe conciliation was the better route. She decided to give it a try.
    “Perhaps I was too hasty in my condemnation of you. I—”
    “I wear a gun because I need it for my work,” he continued inexorably. “And I use it only when I have no other choice.”
    Miss Devlin had been too concerned with the stranger's intimidating presence to concentrate on what he was saying. All at once it sank in. “My God! You're a hired gun?”
    The stranger shrugged. “It's how I make my living.”
    “Surely no one asked you to come to Sweetwater.”
    The stranger remained silent, and Eden felt an awful sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She wasn't aware that her hand gripped her gown in front, bunching the soft material so her full breasts were outlined for the stranger's frankly interested gaze.
    “Who hired you?” she demanded.
    He