R Is for Rebel Read Free Page A

menace. She loved riding out onto the grounds of Dunlear at five in the morning in late winter, watching the hoarfrost disappear as the low mist began to burn off and the horse’s steady breathing played an earthy symphony. She planted trees with the gardeners on the estate. She dug ditches. She did not fret.
    When she’d fallen in love with Tully, it had been a whirl of mutual desire and joy. Tender, sweet, passionate for many, many years. Abby was not a second-guesser by nature. Forward momentum, water over the gills, and all that.
    Odd then, that she was standing in the middle of a rusticated stone building in the middle of the Caribbean at midnight with a glass of scotch in each hand, suddenly paralyzed by a whispering fear. Abigail was just beginning to realize that for someone who had always seen herself as a wild thing, she had been, up until now, rather tame in the emotional risk department. She was unaccustomed to the dips and spikes of adrenaline that accompanied nearly all of her thoughts about Eliot. For a decade, Abby had been in a loving, ardent relationship and had never once had a single moment of this creeping feeling of terror.
    Her feelings for Eliot felt dangerous.
    The irony wasn’t lost on her. Abby’s ostensibly wild life with Tully suddenly felt like a misty morning, while a fling with the ostensibly conservative, buttoned-up Eliot Cranbrook felt like a monsoon.
    Was Eliot going to kiss her? Did she want to make the first move? Did she want him to? Maybe just out of curiosity?
    She hated herself a little when she thought of it like that, reducing Eliot to a curiosity. Then she swept away the small guilt with the probably more insulting thought that he wouldn’t much mind how she reduced him if it involved even half of what she had in mind after the kissing.
    The sound of a single, soft, muffled laugh coming from Max and Bronte’s room finally shook Abby from her thoughts and she made her way through the overgrown bougainvillea hedge and carefully down the mismatched stairs. Her rubber flip-flops made a little slap against the heel of each foot as she proceeded, turning this way to avoid a large palm frond, and then ducking under a riotous pink hibiscus that was dropping its nightly blooms. She stepped out onto the sand and saw the outline of Eliot’s strong shoulders and the soft waves of the moonlit sea beyond his silhouette. She kicked off her flip-flops and felt the powdery sand beneath her feet; the faint scent of night jasmine came from somewhere off to her left.
    Her stomach did that slow-motion flip-and-roll again, and her mind embarked on a string of obsessive if-then scenarios: If he turns to look at me over his right shoulder, then he will be a terrible kisser; if he turns toward me over his left shoulder, then he will kiss better than, well, than anything I could imagine; if he puts his hands in his pockets, then…
    It’s just stupid Eliot, she tried to convince herself, but her nerve endings seemed to have a very different opinion. Just look at him! her libido screamed. He’s everything delicious! Abby had to confess that over the past few months, she had fallen into the very sexist and enjoyable habit of Objectifying Eliot-the-Man. It was wrong… but he was so easy to objectify, she rationalized. Those dark, dark blue eyes: sparkling, humorous, dreamy. That leonine hair: caramel brown for the most part, with those golden threads in the sunshine, thick and grab-able, like riding bareback and using the horse’s mane to hold on. Those damned shoulders: like a Bavarian lumberjack from a bloody fairy tale. Everything about him exuded strength. Whatever needed taking care of, Eliot would take care of it.
    Handily.
    She wanted to get her hands on him. She wanted to mess him up a little.
    Who knows how long she stood there staring at (yearning for) his muscled back, thinking giddily that this was going to be the first time she kissed a man . She felt