The Rock Read Online Free PDF Page B

as the softly rounded curves above and below. Her breasts were firm and generous, her hips slender, and her legs long.
    Ella had always been beautiful, even as a child. But it had become so commonplace to him that he stopped thinking about it. The last time he’d seen her at a just-turned-sixteen, she’d still possessed the vestiges of the girl who’d traipsed all over the countryside with him and Jo. But the woman standing before him didn’t look like she’d ever traipsed anywhere—she floated. She didn’t look real; she looked like a figment from a faerie tale or an ice princess from the lands of the Northmen. Refined, sophisticated, and utterly untouchable. She looked nothing like the girl he remembered.
    Thom didn’t second-guess himself very often, but he did so now.
    It was only when he looked down on her wrist and saw the faint edge of brass that he felt some of his confidence return. She still wore the bracelet he’d given her right before she’d been sent away. She hadn’t forgotten him.

2

    T HOM WAS GRATEFUL to be hidden in the shadow of the roof, as it gave him a moment to recover from the shock. But his voice still came out as a question when he spoke. “Ella?”
    She turned at the sound. For a moment the icily perfect facade cracked, and he glimpsed the expression that he remembered, the broad smile and twinkle of girlish delight that had always lit her eyes whenever she first saw him.
    “Thommy!” she exclaimed, the single word uttered in the familiar sweet voice filled with happiness.
    He felt a rush of relief that was quickly doused when her expression changed to one of distress. She bit her lip. Something he’d seen her do countless times before, but now the sight of those tiny white teeth digging into the plump pouty lower lip provoked a very different reaction in him.
    “You shouldn’t be here.”
    He stepped out of the shadows. “Why not?”
    Her eyes widened as he came toward her. “Good gracious, Thommy, what happened to you?”
    He frowned. “What do you mean?”
    She took a few steps back, her hands fluttering nervously. “You . . . you,” she sputtered accusingly. “You’re huge! You must be as tall as your father.”
    “Taller,” he pointed out, stopping in front of her, feeling a little bit like a horse at market as her eyes looked him up and down.
    “And your shoulders . . .” She let her voice drop off, as if unable to find the right word. Her eyes lifted to his. “What have you been doing this whole time? Lifting all those rocks you like to climb?”
    Thommy frowned back at her, not sure how to react. What had she expected? That he would be the same stripling lad she’d left behind five years ago?
    Suddenly it hit him. Hadn’t he been having the same thoughts a few minutes ago about her?
    Maybe they both had changed. But in appearance—not in what mattered. Inside he was the same. Was she?
    One side of his mouth lifted. “I’ve grown up, El. I’m not an eighteen-year-old lad anymore.”
    He’d wanted her to see that, but it seemed he need not have worried. She’d noticed. Although right now she didn’t appear very happy about it.
    “Surely you didn’t think I’d look the same?” he asked.
    She stared at him with that same frown on her face that she’d had when he’d accidentally ruined a Christmas surprise she’d had for him by showing up early one night on the roof. She’d been halfway through setting up a special picnic of his favorite sweets on a plaid, replete with a candle and wernage. The sweetened wine tasted like syrup, but he’d choked down a glass to please her.
    Finally the frown fell, and she seemed to compose herself—the nervous fluttering stopped. “Which is why you shouldn’t be here. We aren’t children anymore.”
    Something in her tone bothered him. It was as if she was trying to put distance between them—as if she was trying to forget.
    “Yet here you are, too,” he said.
    She looked up at him, unable to deny the