Delilah's Weakness Read Free Page A

chair to dry. "At the time it didn’t seem important. What difference does it make? You needed help and as I said, I’m the only one here." She had moved to stand beside him, leaning over him to peer at his scalp. She felt rather than heard his chuckle as his shoulder bumped gently against her stomach.
    "What difference?" he said. "
Vive,
as they say,
la difference!
Ouch." He had tried to turn his head to bring his eyes in direct line with her bosom. Her fingers, tangled in his hair, restrained him none too gently.
    "Hold still," she snapped, almost suffocating with that strange emotion. He had apparently washed his hair in the sink while she was outside. It was wet, but no longer sticky. "That cut needs attention." She frowned as she stepped away from him and picked up the stained towel. He had bled quite a lot. "You really ought to see a doctor." She gazed at him, chewing perplexedly at her lower lip.
    And he looked back at her, as relaxed and comfortable as if he had dropped in for coffee. He reached inside his jacket and took out a pack of cigarettes, and Delilah made a quick, involuntary motion of protest. She stifled it instantly, but he noticed it anyway.
    "Sorry," he said as he tucked the cigarettes back into his jacket. "I won’t if it bothers you."
    Delilah shrugged ambiguously, guilt struggling with gratitude and the grudging beginnings of liking. She hated the smell of cigarettes. It clung to the wool in her rugs and blankets and was impossible to get rid of. But on the other hand, he was a guest in her house, and injured, and she was denying him his own comfort. And his sensitivity and courtesy were oddly unnerving.
    She gave a soft laugh and rubbed her palms nervously on her upper arms. "Look, I’m sorry, but I don’t know what to do with you. I’m not very experienced at dealing with the victims of plane crashes—"
    "Please. That was a perfectly executed emergency landing."
    "—in my pasture.
Emergency landing?
Well, couldn’t you have found a less populated place? You could have wiped out my flock! Everything I own––" The last word was a choking sound; she hadn’t known she was going to cry. Her voice had simply escalated with each sentence until she was very close to that tension–relieving shout she had longed for. The tears seemed to go along with it.
    The man’s dark eyes crinkled sympathetically. "I’m sorry. From up there it looked like the best place. Are they okay?"
    "Yes." She sniffed grudgingly, touching her nose with the back of her hand and then reaching absently for a tissue. "I think so. I’ll have to check more closely in the morning. They’re only a week or so away from lambing," she explained in muffled tones, beginning to feel thoroughly ashamed of herself.
    His straight, dark brows dipped, and he made a low whistle. "I don’t blame you for being upset. Do you really live here all alone? Run this place by yourself?"
    "I own it," Delilah said stiffly.
    Again that low whistle. The brown eyes seemed to be laughing at her, though the beautifully shaped mouth was carefully somber. "Big job for a little bit of a girl."
    Genuine anger coursed through her, wiping out the other, more confusing emotions. "In the first place, I’m not a
girl,
I’m a woman. And if I hear one more arrogant, insufferable man tell me a woman can’t make a go of it in the sheep business, I’ll––"
    "Hey, take it easy." He was laughing at her, but sympathetically and without a trace of arrogance. "I didn’t know I was probing an open wound. Speaking of which—"
    "How did you figure it out?" she interrupted as a much–delayed thought occurred to her.
    "What?"
    "That I wasn’t ‘anyone’s son’?"
    He smiled, the same heart–squeezing smile he had bestowed on her through rivulets of blood. On a clean face it had an almost angelic beauty. She suddenly found it a chore to remember to breathe.
    "Instincts," he said, his voice acquiring a new resonance that raised goose bumps on her arms. Then he