The Devil and Ms. Moody Read Online Free PDF Page A

on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle with a stranger in black leather. It was a risk, and somehow that made every second of the ride more breathtaking. Adrenaline flowed in her veins.
    She kept her head up and her eyes open this time. Her body absorbed the motorcycle’s grinding velocity and its reverberating power, loving the speed, though the fear never left her. And finally, high on the adrenaline, she pulled the rubber band off her ponytail and let her hair fly free the way his did.
    Only his naked stomach remained a troublesome issue. She couldn’t get used to the way muscles rippled and flexed under her fingers when he moved. Even when he didn’t move! She certainly didn’t have the option of placing her hands higher, or lower.
    “We’re ten minutes away,” he called back to her.
    Ten minutes? Where had the time gone? Edwina felt a certain disappointment in knowing the ride was nearly over. But it was quickly replaced by a growing sense of purpose. She had a missing heir to find, and the man she was hanging onto might be able to help. If she could collect her wits and think of a way to pitch the idea to him.
    When they rolled up to her hotel a few minutes later, she slid off the bike quickly before he could dismount.
    “Thanks for the lift,” she said, smiling as she fingered the chrome on the handlebars. She’d always been abominably bad at flirting, but her femaleness was the only bargaining chip she thought he might respond to.
    “No problem,” he said.
    “And for showing me how to drive your bike.”
    “No problem.”
    She stopped fingering the handlebars and met his curious emerald gaze.
    He leaned back casually, continuing to observe her as he propped his boot on the handlebars and flicked back his long black hair with a toss of his head.
    Mr. Easy Rider, Edwina thought. Sexy. Cocky. A man with the kind of inborn arrogance that women loved. Probably had to beat them off with a stick.
    “Will you come up to my room?” she asked.
    “Your room?”
    “Yes, I have a proposition to make you.”
    “What’s your name?” she asked, stationing herself at a balcony window across the small hotel room from him.
    “Is it relevant?” He shut the door behind him and leaned against the doorframe, looking indolent and intimidating all at once.
    “The barmaid at Blackie’s called you Diablo.”
    “I’ve been called that, I’ve been called worse.”
    “Diablo, then ... I need your help.”
    He dismissed her with his eyes and began a slow, deliberate inspection of the room, opening closets and drawers, checking out her bathroom. When he got to her opened suitcase at the foot of the bed, he sorted through it dispassionately and then stopped with a look of disbelief.
    “Now what the hell is this?” He lifted a two-foot rubber rattlesnake by its tail and dangled it in the air.
    Edwina managed a quick dismissive shrug. “Doesn’t everybody carry a rubber snake in their suitcase?”
    He had just discovered her fallback plan. She’d learned through Chris Holt’s high school yearbooks that Holt had two quirks in high school—a fear of snakes and an avid interest in astronomy. She’d packed the rubber toy, thinking she might use it to flush Holt out if all else failed.
    “This could get interesting,” he said, dropping the snake back into the suitcase. He resumed his sorting, and a moment later, with an intrigued glance at her, he hooked a pair of lacy white bikini panties on his index finger. Very skimpy panties. Not the sort of thing a woman with sensible shoes wore.
    Edwina felt her stomach go tight. “Did you hear me?” she said. “I need your help!”
    “I heard you.” He turned to her, his green eyes oddly luminous. “Do you know what diablo means?”
    “ Devil , I guess. In Spanish.”
    He considered the panties dangling from his finger and then dropped them back in the bag. “And do you think the devil, Spanish or otherwise, makes a habit of helping uptight, uptown women?”
    “He might,”