Against Her Rules Read Free Page B

was that it was dangerous to spend
too much time around Campbell Scott.
      “How
about you stay here tonight and I’ll get it all freshened up for you and you
should be good to switch tomorrow.”
      Elsie
had to get out of the room. There was something about the way he was looking at
her that made her doubt her initial thoughts that he considered her an idiot.
Truth be told, he was looking at her in a way that made her feel rather warm in
all the right places. She left him standing in the room with a promise to get
him straightened away and hurried down the stairs. What did it matter if she’d
left him in the wrong room? She’d just switch it over in the book downstairs.
And then she’d go get that cottage aired out.
      There
were instincts that a woman knew to trust, and this one told her that it was
for her own mental well-being that she get him installed in that cottage
without delay.
    ––––––––
      C am
found it rather entertaining watching the parade of people marching back and
forth from the cottage where he was to spend the next few weeks. He had no real
idea why the beautiful Ms. Walsh had decided she wanted to expel him from the
inn, but he did take some measure of delight in thinking that perhaps she was
as attracted to him as he was to her. And perhaps a secluded cottage might be
more appropriate for any intimate meetings. Because he’d decided there was more
on the agenda for this trip than just sketching some kittiwakes and turrs.
      There
weren’t many women that he’d wanted to seduce from the moment he’d met them.
None of them stirred in him the thoughts the petite Ms. Walsh did. She was
small and delicate, and he imagined that a night with her would be an exercise
in gentleness. His last couple of partners—he hated the word girlfriend for a
man his age, although he supposed to really consider a woman a girlfriend one
would need to spend more than a night or two with her—were tall, strong,
Amazonian types that matched him move for move. And while that was enjoyable,
it was a long time since he’d been with a woman who made him feel like the
dominant partner in the bedroom. Given their sheer difference in size, he
couldn’t imagine anything but him being in control with her.
      As
he spent the afternoon playing out fantasy after fantasy in his mind, he also
paid attention to the way she directed the men lugging furniture out of the
cottage and hefting new pieces in. He watched a floral patterned single
mattress that looked as if it had been repeatedly squat by a seven hundred
pound sumo wrestler get moved into a shed and a large pillow-topped mattress
get squeezed through the door as its replacement.
      Out
came a ratty sofa.
      In
went a leather recliner.
      Other
ratty pieces were removed, only to be replaced by more elegant and masculine
items. She must have been gutting a room somewhere in the house to have such
things readily at hand.
      Had
he been another man, perhaps he would have felt a little bit of guilt at the
amount of work she was going through in order to get the cottage ready for him.
But since she was the one to suggest moving him to what she had to have known
was a work-in-progress, he was content to watch the lengths she was willing to
go to in order to make him comfortable. And no small part of him thought of
perhaps other ways she’d be willing to go out of her way in order to satisfy
him. Yes. Coming here was just what he needed.
      When
he’d accepted the commission to work on this bird project it was because his
sister had asked him to do it as a personal favour to help her impress her boss
at the publishing house she worked for. It turned out the man was batty for
birds, and if Daphne could pull off this project, complete with the
hard-to-hire Campbell Scott onboard, then a nice promotion was in her future.
He hadn’t worked on a collection of animal pieces in several years. These days
he was more likely to be working on vanity portraits of