Sweetwater Seduction Read Online Free PDF Page B

whiten with mortification. And yet, to her utter horror, she found it impossible to utter the words of apology she knew were necessary.
    “Get out of my house,” she grated in a voice that was a mere whisper.
    “I thought there might be more to you than met the eye,” he said, rubbing his cheek. “You know, you should learn to control that educated tongue of yours. It's likely to get you into trouble someday.” With a wink and a roguish grin he turned on his heel, spurs jangling, and strolled out the door.
    “Oh, you—” Miss Devlin couldn't think of an epithet harsh enough for the scoundrel who had just sauntered away from her. She was used to having the last word, but since nothing (decent) came to mind, she settled for slamming the door hard enough after him to leave the windows rattling.
    Miss Devlin looked down at her hands and realized they were trembling. What a horrible, despicable man! He was sure to cause trouble in Sweetwater. Why, that stranger—whoever he was—had already shot a man. Then he had sauntered in and out of her home, insulting her and threatening her, and—and never even told her his name!
    She thought of the awful things he had said about her. Imagine calling her a
straitlaced, stiff-necked, stuffy old spinster.
She was no such thing! Well, perhaps at twenty-nine she must own up to the spinster part, but she was none of the others.
    Besides, there were perfectly good reasons why she had never married. And no one could say she hadn't led a perfectly fulfilled life all these years without a man by her side. Why, she most certainly had!
    Besides, if Miss Devlin hadn't rushed into marriage it was because she had learned from bitter experience that having a husband didn't necessarily ensure happiness. She had seen firsthand the pain and suffering that could result from loving the wrong man. Just such a tragedy had left Eden orphaned at eleven when she had buried her mother, a woman who had made the mistake of marrying in haste and for love. That was enough to give anyone pause for thought. Miss Devlin had simply taken twenty-nine years to think about it.
    It wasn't that she hadn't dregetting married
someday
. And lately, when she lay alone in her bed, she admitted she might have missed something by denying herself a husband and children all these years. With her thirtieth birthday looming on the horizon, she had begun actually making lists in her head, weighing all the advantages of marriage against the risks.
    That was how Miss Devlin had come up with the notion that she might avoid her mother's mistake if she simply didn't fall in love with the man she planned to marry. Of course, Eden intended to like him a great deal. But that wasn't the same thing. As long as she didn't love him, she would never be vulnerable—he could never break her heart. All this assuming, of course, that she could find some man willing to marry her whom she also liked well enough to take for a husband. So maybe she had earned the unflattering title of spinster, but it was a title she was not averse to seeing changed.
    “Miss Devlin?” Bliss's tentative inquiry from the bedroom door called Miss Devlin's attention back to the matters at hand. She squared her shoulders and turned to face Bliss.
    “Why don't you come out here and sit down at the dining room table with me, Bliss. It's time we talked about what you're doing out of bed in the middle of the night.”
    There was enough scold in Miss Devlin's voice to make Bliss quail. Nonetheless, she lifted her chin and replied, “I had to come. There's something I have to tell you.”
    “What's so important it couldn't wait until Monday?”
    Bliss paused dramatically and then blurted, “I'm going to have a baby!”
     
     
    Burke Kerrigan spent the entire ride to Sweetwater mulling his reaction to the enigmatic Miss Devlin. There was a certain kind of woman he