The Judge and the Gypsy Read Free Page B

attention away from the man beside her and back to her plan. According to the information Niko had gathered by following the judge and eavesdropping on his conversations with his friend Jake, she should have four or five days to reach the halfway point on the trail. Five days later the judge would meet Jake Dalton, who would drive him on into Asheville. She had ten days to complete her plan, and she had no intention of failing. She owed that much to Tifton, to the laughing, happy boy who’d died because of this man—this vigilante judge.
    Rasch was content to study her as she napped or pretended to, until he was certain that she wasn’t up to something else under cover of sleep. By that time they were well into the foothills of the mountains. “Do you plan to sleep all the way?”
    Savannah opened her eyes and gave him a half-amused, half-sultry look. “Maybe.”
    “That’s easier than talking.”
    “Yes. Thank you for the ride.”
    Her voice was vaguely musical. There was a breathlessness, a baffling hesitation in the way she paced her breathing between words, almost as if she were rehearsing lines she’d never read before.
    “I probably should have taken you back to town. But it’s time I learn why you’re haunting me.”
    “Haunting you?” She hadn’t expected the direct approach. She laughed uneasily, her confidence wavering. “Am I?”
    The sound of her laughter seemed to ripple across the silence. “Yes, dammit. Since I first saw you on the patio, you’ve been driving me crazy.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She forced her gaze away from his strong face to his hands, which gripped the steering wheel with an unsettling intensity, and wondered for a fleeting second what they would feel like caressing her flesh. What was happening to her? She couldn’t back down now. She’d learned enough about the judge to know that he couldn’t accept not knowing. That would be the key to her reaching him. “Until now,” she said as evenly as she could, “we’ve never met.”
    He didn’t believe that for a minute. But he could see that direct confrontation wasn’t going to work. “Technically you’re correct.”
    He smiled, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “We have never met. I’ll accept that, for now. Let me ask you another question—where did you come from?”
    She knew that his gaze saw through her, probed her inner recesses and aroused unwonted and disconcerting feelings within her, and she protected herself by looking away. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It only matters where we go from here, doesn’t it?”
    She’d been prepared for disbelief, questions, accusations. But the curious, calm acceptance by the man beside her was unexpected, and therefore intriguing. Who was becoming bemused?
    Judge Webber wasn’t especially tall, but he gave the illusion of height and strength. He hadn’t shaved that morning, and there was a shadow of stubble across his chin that enhanced his virility. His dark blond hair was neatly cut, but his tendency to run his fingers through it kept it permanently tousled.His masculinity filled the cab and threatened to engulf Savannah.
    In his courtroom, where she’d disguised herself so that she could watch from a back seat, his piercing gray eyes were often hidden behind thin black-rimmed glasses. Today they were unveiled, and she could feel the brunt of their disturbing penetration.
    There were other differences today as well. From a distance she hadn’t noticed the strong beat of his pulse, exposed by the open button on his shirt, the way an unruly lock of hair fell across his cheek, the tightening of the muscles in his upper arms when he turned the wheel. From a distance she hadn’t noticed his disquieting maleness. Perhaps this wouldn’t be as easy as she’d thought.
    From the first she’d liked his voice. There was a resonance there, a boldness that said he was willing to enter a debate and give it his best shot. But he