The Men of Pride County: The Pretender by Rosalyn West Page B

to be. He taught me all the lessons I’d need to survive in life … but he never showed me how to enjoy it. You did.” His hand tightened on her shoulders to bring her around to face him. He still wore theimpenetrable look, but the husky quality of his voice woke a shiver inside her. “I’ve never known anyone like you. I’ve never had anyone express an interest in what I felt.”
    “Surely, your friends—”
    “I never had time for friends. I never even had a dog. No wonder yours dislikes me so. I’ve no idea how to act around him, just as I’ve no notion on how to behave with you.”
    “But you’re a gentleman—”
    “Who knows how to be gallant and flattering and shallow and shut off to the things that really matter. I haven’t a clue about what I’m feeling inside right now. I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know what to say to you.”
    She placed tentative fingertips upon his chest to sample the tension and thunder there. Quietly, she advised, “Say what’s in your heart.”
    He made an uncharitable sound. “Have you ever tried to read in the dark? I’m blind to what’s in there.”
    “Then what is it you want to do? Not what’s expected of you, but what you want to do?”
    He seized her upturned face between his palms and bent to snatch her lips in a bruising kiss, one that echoed the angry frustration she’d heard in his tone. One that gentled to a heart-tearing tenderness when she swept her fingers through his hair and melted against him.
    “I want this,” he told her with a soft savagery. “I want to feel like this forever.”
    “You can,” she encouraged, with words, withher quick reinforcing kisses. But his hands were lowering, dropping back to her shoulders to push her away.
    “But I have to leave.”
    “And I’m not going anywhere.”
    He searched her expression intently. “You’d wait for me.”
    “Forever. I want to keep this feeling, too.”
    He drew a shallow breath, indecision on some mighty scale warring behind his suddenly shuttered gaze. He touched her cheek and toyed with the awful homemade crop of her hair. And then a smile softened his sober features and Garnet felt her heart give way.
    “I’ll be back as soon as I’m able.”
    Not trusting her words to escape the thickening in her throat, she simply nodded.
    She sent him off after a final cup of coffee with a day’s supplies and a scorching kiss. And then she settled in to wait. For however long it took him to return to offer her the future she desired.
    He rode hard and fast, but no amount of speed, no degree of cold or exhaustion, could tether the lightness in his heart or erase the scent of her from his nose or the taste of her from his mouth. It was madness, he knew. Craziness, he was certain.
    It was treason.
    He reached the Confederate camp early the second day. Still wearing the federal uniform, he put up his hands as if in surrender so the sentrieswouldn’t shoot him. He asked to be taken to Brigadier General Hobbs. After some amount of discussion, he was able to convince the wary corporal that he wasn’t a Union assassin seeking a chance at their Intelligence leader and was taken to the brigadier’s tent.
    The general lifted a brow at the sight of the perforated Union coat and waved the enlisted man out. Without asking leave, Deacon crossed to the general’s sideboard to pour himself a healthy glass of whiskey, another action that peaked Hobbs’s curiosity.
    “Are you all right, Reverend?”
    “Fine, Joe. I’ll be glad to get out of this particular color and home to see my family.”
    Joe Hobbs regarded his Intelligence agent with a grim impassivity. Sinclair was perhaps the best man he had in the field: quick minded, coldly unscrupled, and totally reliable. He worked under the code name “Reverend,” since those involved in espionage seldom cared to use their own names at the risk of endangering their families. Sinclair was close to his, but Hobbs didn’t relish the idea of losing