Tears of the Renegade Read Free

people were still standing around, staring at them and whispering. She caught the bandleader’s eye and gave another discreet nod, a signal for him to slide straight into another number. Then she let her eyes linger on her guests, singling them out in turn, and under the demand in her clear gaze the dance floor began to fill, the whispers to fade, and the party once more resumed its normal noise level. There wasn’t a guest there who would willingly offend her, and she knew it.
    â€œThat’s a neat trick,” he observed huskily, having followed it from beginning to end, and his voice reflected his appreciation. “Did they teach that in the finishing school you attended?”
    A little smile played over her soft mouth before she glanced up at him, allowing him to divert her. “What makes you think I went to a finishing school?” she challenged.
    His bold gaze slipped down the front of her gown to seek out and visually touch her rounded breasts. “Because you’re so obviously…finished. I can’t see anything that Mother Nature left undone.” His hard, warm fingers slid briefly down her back. “God, how soft your skin is,” he finished on a whisper.
    A faint flush colored her cheeks at the husky note of intimacy that had entered his voice, though she was pleased in a deeply feminine way that he had noticed the texture of her skin. Oh, he was dangerous, all right, and the most dangerous thing about him was that he could make a woman take a risk even knowing how dangerous he was.
    After a moment when she remained silent, he prodded, “Well? Am I right or not?”
    â€œAlmost,” she admitted, lifting her chin to smile at him. There was a soft, glowing quality to her smile that lit her face with gentle radiance, and his heavy-lidded eyes dropped even more in a signal that someone who knew him well would have recognized immediately. But Susan didn’t know him well, and she was unaware of how close she was skating to thin ice. “I attended Adderley’s in Virginia for four months, until my mother had a stroke and I left school to care for her.”
    â€œNo point in wasting any more money for them to gild the lily,” he drawled, letting his eyes drift over her serene features, then down her slender, graceful throat to linger once again, with open delight, on her fragrant, silky curves. Susan felt an unexpected heat flood her body at this man’s undisguised admiration; he looked as if he wanted to lean down and bury his face between her breasts, and she quivered with the surprising longing to have him do just that. He was more than dangerous; he was lethal!
    She had to say something to break the heady spell that was enveloping her, and she used the most immediate topic of conversation. “When did you arrive?”
    â€œJust this afternoon.” The curl of his lip told her that he knew what she was doing, but was allowing her to get away with it. Lazily he puckered his lips and blew again at the fine tendril of dark hair that entranced him as it lay on the fragile skin of her temple, where the delicate blue veining lay justunder the translucent skin. Susan felt her entire body pulsate, the warm scent of his breath affecting her as strongly as if he’d lifted his hand and caressed her. Almost blindly she looked at him, compelling herself to concentrate on what he was saying, but the movement of those chiseled lips was even more enticing than the scent of him.
    â€œI heard that Cousin Preston was having a party,” he was saying in a lazy drawl that had never lost its Southern music. “So I thought I’d honor old times by insulting him and crashing the shindig.”
    Susan had to smile at the incongruity of describing this elegant affair as a “shindig,” especially when he himself was dressed as if he had just stepped out of a Monte Carlo casino…where he would probably be more at home than he was here. “Did