The Legacy Read Online Free PDF

fingers across one bare shoulder. Velvet. The urge to crawl inside her scented velvet skin was almost overpowering.
    He closed his hand around her arm and pulled her against him. Everywhere her soft, curving body touched his, he felt heat. A muscle clenched in his jaw. He was going to take her.
    In the next instant, he released her, unsure why.
    Sanity. Training. A sense of self-preservation.
    Whatever the reason, he was intensely grateful— and fiercely disappointed. “Good night, Caitlin.”
    “Good night.”
    A few minutes later, in his room, he carefully settled himself on the bed and covered his eyes with his forearm. Maybe if he couldn’t see, he wouldn’t be able to think. And if he couldn’t think, he wouldn’t be able to remember. But his senses were working overtime, and he could still feel her skin against his fingertips.
    Damn whatever this thing was between him and Caitlin. Something in him ignited whenever he came near her, and she obviously felt the same way. It was almost as if each of them had exactly the right elements within them to strike sparks off each other. But sparks led to fire, and fire led to danger.
    Slowly he lowered his arm. He couldn’t let anything happen between them. No matter how much he wanted it. No matter how much she wanted it.
    He was in no position to get involved with anyone right now, much less Caitlin Deverell. He just had to keep reminding himself: Caitlin wasn’t the reason he was here.
    And when the pain came and he couldn't sleep, he told himself it was from his wounds, not from wanting her.

Two
    Lord, how she’d wanted Nico to kiss her last night, Caitlin remembered as she left the elevator on the first floor the next morning. She’d wanted it so much that when he’d told her good-night, she’d felt as if he’d inflicted a wound deep within her.
    Nice going, Caitlin, she told herself, and so much for all your caution. She clicked her tongue in disgust. She should have saved herself a lot of time and trouble and agreed to let him stay as soon as he’d asked her the first time. And then, after all her turmoil, she’d spent most of her night trying to put yesterday and Nico DiFrenza into perspective.
    She’d been spectacularly unsuccessful.
    All her instincts were telling her that there was more to him than met the eye. Secrets. Parts that he wasn’t showing. But deep inside, she felt a powerful pull toward him that she didn’t understand and couldn’t seem to fight.
    A new feeling sparkled inside her, a feeling that was part excitement, part dread. She felt as if she were holding a hand grenade, and she wasn’t sure who held the pin: she or Nico.
    She sighed loudly, unaware that more them one stare followed her, curious at her unusual selfabsorption. She felt nothing but impatience with the day’s work that awaited her, but her list of things to do was long, and the first order of business was to speak with her foreman. She found him supervising several workers in the main drawing room. A huge room, it involved painstaking work to restore the original Art Nouveau style of the elegant swirling movements In the wood, metal, and marble surfaces. “How are things going, Mr. Haines?”
    “Fine, Mistress Caty. Just fine.”
    His response brought her back to the reality at hand, and she hid a smile. Jeb Haines, a tall mam with steel-blue eyes and a shock of gray hair tucked under a cap, had lived all his life in the small town five miles beyond the gates of SwanSea. Like so many of the men who were working here now, he had known her almost from the first day of her life. Mistress Caty had been his pet name for her, and he was a man set in his ways. But she didn’t mind. The continuity of SwanSea and the people around it comforted her. “No problems?”
    “Not any more than what you’d normally expect.” He squinted at a young man perched high on a ladder, who was methodically and patiently stripping away several layers of varnish from the carved molding.