And One Wore Gray Read Free Page B

his voice seemed as if to touch her. To rip along her back, to pierce into her heart and soul and bring both fear and longing.
    It was then that she suddenly began to run. She couldn’t look back. She had to reach the house.
    She picked up her skirts and scurried across the dusty yard toward the rear porch. She leapt up the steps, ran across the wood planks and through the back door. She leaned against it, her heart leaping.
    “Callie!”
    His voice thundered out her name again. She gasped arid jumped away from the door, for he was hammering it down with the weight of his shoulders.
    He had warned her.
    There would be no place to run.
    No place to hide.
    She backed away from the door, gnawing on her knuckles. There had to be some place to hide!
    He couldn’t strangle her. It might be war, but Rebel soldiers didn’t strangle Yankee women. What would he do to her?
    She didn’t want to know.
    “Daniel, go away! Go home, go back to your men, to your army—to your South!”
    The door burst open. He stood there staring at her once again, and there was no taunting in his eyes now, or in his smile.
    “What? Are there no troops close enough to come to your rescue once you’ve seduced me into your bed this time?”
    She had never, never seduced him!
    There was a coffee cup upon the kitchen table. Her fingers curled around it and she hurled it at him. “Go away!” she commanded him.
    He ducked, ably avoiding the coffee cup.
    “Go away?” he repeated. “How very rude, Mrs. Michaelson! When I have waited all these months to return? I lay awake nights dreaming for a chance to come back to your side. What a fool I was, Callie! And still, I suppose I did not learn.”
    He stepped into the kitchen, swept his hat from his head, and sent it flying onto the kitchen table. “Well, I have come back, angel. And I’m very anxious to pick up right where I left off. Let’s see, where was that? Your bedroom, I believe. Ah, that’s right. Your bed. And let’s see, just how were we situated?”
    “Get out of my house!” Callie snapped.
    “Not on your life,” he promised. He smiled again, a bitter, self-mocking curl. “Not, madam, on your life!”
    He strode toward her, and a sizzling fear suddenly swept through her. He wouldn’t really hurt her, she assured herself. He’d never really hurt her. Not Daniel.He’d threaten, he’d taunt, but he’d never really hurt her….
    But she couldn’t let him touch her. She couldn’t want him again. She couldn’t fall again!
    “Don’t!” she warned.
    “This is one invasion of the North that is going to be successful,” he warned her, his tone bringing shivers down her spine. He smiled, relentlessly coming toward her, his eyes ruthless as they fixed upon hers.
    Callie knocked a chair into his path. He barely noticed.
    “Don’t, damn you! You have to listen to me—” she began.
    “Listen to you!” he exclaimed. She heard the sound of his fury explode in his voice. “Callie, time is precious! I have not come to talk this night. I listened to you once before.”
    “Daniel, don’t come any nearer. You must—”
    “I must finish what you started, Callie. Then maybe I can sleep again at night.”
    He reached for her arm and the fire in his eyes seemed to sizzle through the length of her. She didn’t know him anymore. Or had she ever really known him? In his eyes she could see the effect of his days in the prison camp and even the days beyond. She had not imagined that he might be so ruthless. She still did not know how far he could go.
    “Daniel, stop!” she hissed. She jerked free of his hold upon her arm, turned, and ran.
    He was on her heels, not racing, just following her.
    Relentlessly.
    She stopped and found a vase and tossed it his way. He ducked again, and the vase crashed against a wall. She tore through the parlor, looking for more missiles. A shoe went flying his way, a book, a newspaper. Nothing halted his stride.
    She reached the stairs, and he was there behind