Too Sinful to Deny Read Online Free PDF Page A

stepping outside into a brisk Bournemouth dawn. Usually the muted colors dancing in the waves’ reflection brought him peace. Today the pale pink glow looked like so much blood seeping up from the dark horizon to stain the wounded sky.
    Timothy, you jackass. If only you had been in a brothel.
    The incongruous scent of jasmine clashed with the salty air. Unbelievable. Rather than stop when he quit the house, the chit had actually trailed him right out the door and into the Beaunes’ rock garden.
    Evan revised his initial opinion. Either Ollie’s houseguest was a cloister-raised schoolgirl who’d somehow missed the significance of the pistol altercation, or she was looking for trouble. Why else would an attractive young woman follow an armed man into the half-lit outdoors?
    Men could be dangerous. He should know. He was one of the bad ones.
    Evan made his way down the steep, twisted path to the beach, jumping the final few feet, as was his custom. He glanced up in time to see the top of a blond head disappear from the edge.
    Either she was smart enough to wait for him to walk away before continuing to pursue him, or she had enough common sense to give up altogether and go back inside the house.
    He wasn’t more than thirty yards farther down the beach when an avalanche of falling sand indicated a certain houseguest planned to break her neck tracking him to the shore. That answered the question, then. Smart . . . but without a lick of common sense. The deadliest combination of all. Just look at Timothy.
    Evan sighed and turned back.
    There was nobody else around to save her if she came tumbling headfirst off a fifty-foot cliff. He’d catch her, throttle her, and be on his way. Just a minor delay.
    She was more than halfway down before she noticed his presence. Most likely because that particular path was a suicide risk even for those born and raised in the area, and her gaze had never strayed far from the next step. For some reason, however, she glanced at the beach . . . and saw him.
    He hadn’t moved. He was accustomed to holding perfectly still for hours on end. Perhaps she’d caught his scent on the breeze, although Evan couldn’t imagine he smelled like anything more the sea itself. Or perhaps it was his appearance that arrested her. His boots had stopped squishing, but he was still flecked with sand and seaweed.
    In any case, the wide-eyed blonde had frozen on the jagged edge, arms outstretched for balance. If she stared at him instead of her feet for much longer, she really would hit the beach face-first. Of course, turning back around on a disintegrating sand path the width of a man’s hand would prove its own unique challenge.
    If her panicked expression was any indication, she was weighing those precise odds.
    “Either go back or keep coming,” Evan shouted at last, impatient to be on his way. “But it’d be much easier to catch you from twenty feet than fifty.”
    Her gaze never left his face, but she didn’t respond.
    She was a pretty thing, all right. Pretty annoying, yes, but also pretty attractive, if one’s preference ran to slender blondes with high cheekbones and expensive taste in Parisian daywear. If it weren’t for the bronze-rimmed spectacles and the rather precarious way she wobbled on the narrow path, she could easily pose for a fashion plate.
    He hated that look.
    Such women symbolized everything that was wrong with the world today. Shallow, pretentious, self-centered. Women whose thoughts—when they had them at all—were focused on the ensnaring of a husband and the spending of his money. Evan much preferred his bachelordom, thank you very much, and the ability to take his pleasure wherever he fancied, without fear of the parson’s trap. The last thing he needed, at this or any moment, was to waste time with a London debutante.
    Never mind that certain parts of his anatomy begged to differ.
    “I probably won’t bite,” he called up, when it appeared she was willing to stand there