Bride of the Wolf by Susan Krinard Page A

snapped.
    “The way you talk says plenty,” he snapped back.
    “Because I have an education? How is that proof of prosperity, Mr. Renshaw? In fact, I have known what it is to—”
    She clamped her lips together and blushed. He saw pain in the hollows under her eyes and in her pinched lips. Pain he had noticed before but didn’t want to see.
    Who in hell was she? And what exactly had she “known”?
    “Mr. Renshaw,” she said suddenly, the way someone does when they want to change the subject in a hurry. “There is another issue we must discuss. Where do you propose to sleep tonight?”
    The question caught him by surprise. She must have noticed the other bedroom and realized it was his. It made sense that she would want him out of the house right away.
    But there was that sense of something hidden that Heath had felt before; it was in her voice and in her eyes, crouching behind her propriety, clawing its way closer to the surface and shredding what was left of the Madonna’s mask. An unexpected wildness in the brown eyes that glanced at him and quickly away.
    He flared his nostrils to take in her scent, so subtle under the stronger smells—laundered cotton, the lingering fragrance of soap, a hint of perspiration. And another he knew as well as he did every bend and twist of Dog Creek.
    The truth caught his body before his mind. His cock hardened, straining against his britches, and his breath came short.
    Rachel was aware of him. Not just as Jed’s foreman, someone she didn’t like or trust, but as a man. Male toher female. Her scent gave her away sure as the smell of bluebonnets announced the coming of spring. She was thinking about things no married woman should. Things he had decided a prim-and-proper lady like her would probably never think about at all.
    And he was thinking the same, even though she wasn’t pretty, couldn’t be trusted and thought he was beneath her.
    When she ought to be beneath him , her legs wrapped around his waist…
    Heath cursed under his breath. Didn’t matter who or what she was. He couldn’t stop his body from reacting. He’d never been inclined to fight what it needed, even when he wanted nothing as much as to stay far away from anything with tits.
    Once, years ago, he’d make the mistake of touching a woman like her. Her kind always denied that kind of wanting because it went against what they wanted to believe. Females like Frankie expected nothing but money from a man. They were as honest as any woman could be; they knew what they were and didn’t try to pretend any different. He could leave their beds and never have to look at them again.
    If he ever got into Rachel’s bed…
    Heath didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to feel anything for Rachel Lyndon. Not even mindless animal lust.
    He grinned at her. “That an invitation, Mrs . McCarrick?” he asked.

Chapter Five
    S EEING HER FLINCH didn’t help nearly as much as Heath thought it would. She went so pale that he thought she was going to swoon, and he almost got up to catch her.
    She didn’t swoon. The color rushed back into her face, and her eyes went so cold that they could have covered the range in ice.
    “I see I have been mistaken in assuming that you were worthy of my husband’s trust,” she said.
    If a man had said that to Heath, he would be looking at a broken jaw. But Heath had never come close to hitting a woman. Not even the ones who’d tried to kill him.
    “I’ll be movin’ out of the house tonight,” he said, getting up.
    She set to rocking the baby, pretending Heath didn’t exist. That rankled more than any spiteful thing she could have said.
    “Did Joey tell you about the hands?” he asked, just to make her look at him again.
    The poisoned air between them cleared away, and it was all businesslike the way it should have been from the first. “He mentioned something about their leaving,” Rachel said without taking her eyes from the kid. “It will be difficult to run the