Memory's Embrace Read Free Page A

been snooping?
    His bright blue eyes moved over her with a look of mingled amusement and appreciation, and then he extended his hands to lift her down from the bed of the wagon. His fingers lingered, it seemed to her, at her waist, but the time was so brief that she might have imagined it.
    “The fire is going and the coffee is ready. Be careful—the cups are metal and they get hot.”
    Having made this announcement, he moved past her to climb into the wagon and shut the door. Tess didn’t move until she heard a drawer open and close and realized that he was changing clothes, too. Her face hot again, she bolted toward the inviting fire.
    There, she warmed her hands and ran outspread fingers through her thick hair, trying to dry it. She noticed for the first time that a mule was grazing near the wagon, its long ears down. As if to acknowledge Tess’s instant surge of sympathy, it gave her a mournful look and brayed.
    “Poor thing,” she muttered, starting toward it, but the reappearance of Joel Shiloh stopped her, distracted her so completely that she forgot all about the mule. He rounded the wagon at a bound, wearing clean, dry clothes, grooming his hair with the fingers of both hands as he moved.
    Tess found herself wondering distractedly whether his hair was brown, like her own, or blond, or some color in between the two. Because it was still wet, it was impossible to tell, though she could see that it was slightly too long.
    He joined her at the fire and, after tossing her one look of good-tempered reprimand, crouched to take the coffeepot carefully by its wooden handle and fill thetwo mugs he had set out. He held one out to Tess, without rising.
    She took the coffee, letting go of her borrowed trousers in the process, and very nearly disgraced herself. “Why do you leave your poor mule out in the rain?” she asked, while grappling to catch the waistband without dropping the cup.
    Joel Shiloh took a leisurely and ponderous draught of his coffee, and Tess had the distinct feeling that he was hiding another smile. Finally, he answered. “Last time I put him inside the wagon, he complained that the bunk was too narrow for the both of us.”
    Tess lowered her head to hide the grin that had come, unbidden, to her lips.
    Mr. Shiloh sighed philosophically and went on sipping his coffee.
    “Why were you throwing dishpans and coffeepots at God, Mr.—Mr. Shiloh?”
    Her hesitation over his name brought Joel’s eyes slicing, sharply, to Tess’s face. He rose slowly to his feet, both booted now, his coffee mug cupped in both hands. “I don’t think that’s any of your business, Miss Bishop,” he said coldly.
    Tess was as stricken as if he’d slapped her; she felt the color drain from her face. “I’m sorry—I—I guess you’re right—”
    He looked exasperated, distracted. And quite miserable. “Finish your coffee,” he snapped, “and I’ll hitch up the wagon and take you home.”
    “No!”
    He stared at her, that butternut eyebrow arched again. “No?” he repeated.
    Tess regrouped, realizing that she had protested tooquickly and too earnestly. “I mean, I have my bicycle and it really isn’t that far—I can make my own way home.”
    “Nonsense,” he said, and unaccountably he flung his coffee into the fire, where it sizzled and snapped. “Simpkinsville is five miles from here, and you’ve got that camera to carry. Besides, it might rain again.”
    Tess felt her shoulders slump a little. If it weren’t for the flat tire on her bicycle, she could get home just fine, rain or no rain, camera or no camera. But pushing the contraption all that way in another downpour was a disheartening prospect to say the least. “Derora will murder me,” she muttered.
    “Who, pray tell, is Derora?” He was being deliberately caustic, and Tess was hurt.
    “She is my aunt—although it’s none of your business,” she pointed out stiffly.
    “Touché,” he said, with a gruff laugh, lifting his empty mug in a