The Wedding Ransom Read Online Free PDF Page A

but I won’t.”
    “But I’m not dressed.”
    “Yeah,” he replied. He licked his lips. “I know.”
    Her expression steamed, filling with such outrage that Rafe wouldn’t have been surprised to see the mud begin to boil. Swallowing a laugh, he said, “I have some questions, Miss St. John, and this looks like the perfect opportunity to ask them. Your modesty makes you a captive audience, so to speak.”
    Her eyes narrowed, glinting like light on a bowie knife. “You are no gentleman, Rafe Malone.”
    “Sure, I am. That’s what they call me, you know. Gentleman Rafe Malone—on account of the polite way I treated the folks I robbed during my highwayman days.”
    She gave a loud, unladylike snort. “Times have changed, haven’t they?”
    Rafe couldn’t hold back soft laughter. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Miss Maggie. The buccaneers never stopped talking about you.”
    “All those tired old stories, I’ll bet.” Maggie closed her eyes, losing some of her starch at the mention of the old men.
    Rafe didn’t answer at once, his mind busy recalling the tales the pirates had related. As much as they’d seemed to enjoy yammering on about their Maggie, they hadn’t liked answering Rafe’s questions. He’d all but pulled teeth to learn that the woman’s parents were dead, and he never did get a straight story about how she came to live with the freebooters. The old men flatly refused to talk about it. Rafe thought that was strange.
    Of course, some of the things they had bragged about were pretty damned peculiar, too. “Did you really scar the cheek of an English earl?”
    She shrugged. “A girl doesn’t grow up with grandfathers such as mine without learning to carry and wield a knife when necessary. The man deserved it. He was entirely too free with his hands.”
    Rafe touched his face with a muddy finger. At least he knew she carried no concealed weapons at the moment. He recalled the image of her full, high breasts and thought,
No, her weapons are all out in plain view.
    Maggie’s voice softened, and despite the sting in her words, her love for the pirates rang loud and clear. “Pay them no mind, Malone. My grandfathers don’t always tell the truth, especially when they speak about me.” Petulantly, she added, “I guess they wore out their tongues so much talking
about
me that they couldn’t bother to talk
to
me when they came home.”
    “Actually, they did more worrying about you than storytelling,” Rafe told her. “When one of them finished fretting on about you, another started right in. Each one of the old men peeked in your room to check on you right after we arrived. The boy who works for y’all told them you’d felt poorly and bedded down early. That really got the old men flustered, almost as much as hearing you’d stayed here at the hotel instead of going to the boy’s home like you’d promised you would.”
    She groaned softly. “I never actually promised I’d stay at the Liptons’. I swear I’m going to wash Billy Lipton’s big mouth out with the strongest dose of Bliss water I can find. He had no business telling them any of that. I was tired, that’s all. I replaced some shingles on the roof yesterday and that’s hard work. Now they’ll baby me for a month.”
    In the increasing light of dawn, Rafe studied Maggie St. John intently. During the trip from the hill country, he’d gathered from different things the corsairs had said that she suffered from an illness of a sort. Outwardly—and it had been Rafe’s good luck to see quite a lot in that respect—the woman appeared to be the picture of health. If Gus was right and she intended to tag along on the treasure hunt, then Rafe needed to know the true state of her well-being. Abruptly, he said, “They told me you’re sickly.”
    Her head came up and her shoulders squared as she visibly bristled. She rose from the mud, his shirt clinging to her breasts like a second skin. Damn, but the woman was put