Wild Midnight Read Free

horseman was dressed in a T-shirt of a faded dark gray color, the knitted cotton clinging to an expanse of muscled chest and broad shoulders. He wore ancient patched jodhpurs and battered western-style cowboy boots. Where the sunlight hit his thick brown hair, it illuminated sun-bleached streaks that looked almost gilded. But it was his face that riveted one’s eyes.  
    Without moving from his slouching sidewise seat, the horseman nudged the big black out from under the trees.  
    Rachel found herself gaping. At the same moment she knew with a quick, perceptive rush that the man who faced her, eyes glittering, was accustomed to the effect he produced. The hard, cynical quirk of his mouth confirmed it.  
    This was no ghost, she thought for a wild moment, but it might as well have been. The man on horseback was just as unreal.  
    Somewhere Rachel had seen pictures that stuck in her memory—the handsome, idealized cowboys of a Frederick Remington painting, even the hard-faced purity of the young heroes of military recruiting posters—and they had been brought to life in this man’s mask of near-perfect virile beauty. The short, straight nose, strongly carved high cheekbones, and wide, graceful mouth might have been put together with an artist’s unerring eye for quicksilver strength and a particularly masculine sensitivity. But the chiseled features were flawed by a mouth that had hardened from youthful recklessness into something resembling indifferent cruelty. And the eyes—  
    They were, Rachel saw, stunned, a shade usually described as hazel, with flecks of gold in their gray-green depths, the irises startlingly marked by clear black rims. Fascinating eyes, quietly murderous.  
    They were staring at her just as intently. “I know who you are,” the voice said, “you’re Mrs. Whatsername.” The horseman rested the reins against his mount’s neck and leaned forward. The strange gaze traveled from the top of Rachel’s dark red hair and her flushed face, to the open neck of her work shirt and the full thrust of her breasts. The look dropped, and lingered at the front of her jeans where they strained into wrinkles over her crotch and thighs. “The woman with the tenant farmers.”  
    Rachel scarcely heard him. The phrase “being undressed by someone’s eyes,” suddenly had new meaning. The gaze that raked here with such practiced detachment was openly speculating what it would be like to have her. In the crudest of sexual terms. In bed. And didn’t care if she knew it. The jeweled look held a flicker of interest as she stiffened.  
    “Brinton,” Rachel managed between rigid lips as she went red to the roots of her dark auburn hair, “Mrs. Brinton.” She resisted the need to pull down her shirttail but she was painfully aware of her bedraggled appearance. “Someone has closed off our road so that we can’t get in.”  
    He kept staring. “You’re a Mennonite or something.” Then, with a touch of impatience, “Where’s your husband?”  
    Rachel’s blood was pounding in her temples. She raised her hand to her shirt collar, positioning her arm across her breasts.  
    “I’m a Quaker.” It was no more than a whisper.  
    Rachel Goodbody Brinton was twenty-six years old, an appealingly pretty, medium tall woman with a rather old-fashioned, lushly curved figure, now only partly concealed by a muddy chambray work shirt and jeans. And with a redheaded temper she usually managed to squelch, with the aid of her firm peaceable convictions. And she was a widow, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the word. Whether she was married or not was none of this man’s business. She was still amazed that she could feel so humiliated by a mere look, and find so little to do about it.  
    “We have a load of tomato plants in the truck that must be planted today or they’ll spoil.” She hated the way her voice sounded and the fact that her face was blazing. “We must get through the gate.”  
    “Go