Wild in the Moonlight Read Free

personally, okay?” she said. “It’s not that I’m not glad to see you. It’s just that you’ll have to excuse me a minute while I throw up.”

Two
    O nce Violet disappeared from sight—presumably to find the nearest bathroom—Cameron leaned against the kitchen counter and clawed a hand through his hair. Talk about a royal mess. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
    Nothing usually rattled him. Normally people got a higher education to earn a better living. Cameron had pursued a Ph.D so he could enjoy a footloose, vagabond lifestyle. He was used to jet lag. Used to time changes and strange beds. He had no trouble getting along with people of all different backgrounds and cultures.
    But this blonde was doing something to his pulse.
    â€œBe careful with my sister,” Daisy had warned him—which, at the time, had struck him as a curious thing to say. His only interest in Violet Cameron was business. Still, whether he’d wanted to hear it or not, Daisy had filled in enough blanks for him to understand why she was so protective of her younger sister. Violet had apparently been married to a real, selfish creep. “Something happened in that marriage that I still don’t know about. Something really bad in the last year. I still can’t get her to talk about it,” Daisy had told him. “But the point is, Violet was always extra smart, in school and life and everything else. It’s just since the divorce that she’s been…different. Fragile and nervous about men.”
    Since that conversation had at the time been none of his business—and none of his interest—Cameron had pretty much forgotten it. Still, he’d definitely imagined a shy, quiet, understated kind of woman. A true violet in personality as well as name.
    Now he wondered if Vermont might secretly be an alternative universe. Granted, he’d only been in the state for a couple of hours—and on the Campbell property even less than that—but Daisy’s description didn’t match anything he’d noticed in reality so far. Violet was as shy as neon lights, as nervous as a lioness, and as far as IQ…well, maybe she was smart, even ultrasmart, but who could tell beneath all those layers of ditsiness?
    He heard a door open and instinctively braced.Seconds later Violet walked back in the kitchen. When she spotted him leaning against the counter, she seemed to instinctively brace, too.
    Considering that Cameron had always gotten on well with women, it was a mighty blow to his ego to make one sick on sight. At the vast age of thirty-seven, though, he never expected to respond to a woman with a tumbly stomach of his own.
    The old Vermont farmhouse seemed sturdy and serious. At first glance, he’d thought the base structure had to be at least two centuries old. The brick surface had tidy white trim and a shake roof; the plank floors were polished to a high shine. He’d been drawn to the place on sight; it looked practical and functional and solid, nothing frivolous.
    Only, then there was her.
    Standing with the light behind her, she could have been a fey creature from a fairy story. The first thing any breathing male was going to notice, of course, was her hair. It was blond, paler than sunlight, and even braided with a skinny silk scarf, it bounced halfway down her back…which meant it had to reach her fanny when it was undone. Her face was a valentine with warm, wide, hazel eyes, sun-kissed cheeks and a nose lightly peppered with freckles.
    She wasn’t exactly pretty. She just had that something. Some kinds of women just seemed born pure female. They were never as easy to get along with—much less understand—but they seemed to radiatethat female thing from the inside out. Nothing about her was flashy or sexy, but she was sensual from that pale, shiny hair to her soft mouth to the rounded swell of her breasts.
    She seemed to be wearing old