A Wanted Man by Susan Kay Law Page A

brush of pink along her cheekbones, a very faint sprinkle of brown-sugar freckles across her nose. Unable to resist, he brushed his finger across the delicate ridge. Her eyes widened. It was wildly improper, an employee touching the daughter of one of America’s richest men. And that bare touch with her was a hundred times more exciting than far more intimate caresses with another. “You’re showing some color already. You’re so pale, you’ll burn to a crisp in no time.”
    Her skin tones were prized in the East. The whiter, the more delicate, the better; the mark of a woman whose life did not require exposure to the sun, who had no need to work in the fields or the gardens. But she’d been beyond that, pallor instead of merely fashionably pale. She looked healthier like this, with a bit of color to make her eyes sparkle. “And I would not,” he went on, “want to face Mrs. Bossidy if I bring you back marked by the sun.”
    She sighed in surrender. A sound he’d dreamed of, too often, drawing from her another way. It hit him like a roundhouse punch, driving the air from his lungs and restraint from his brain, and he took a step back in case he’d be tempted to touch her again. Because next time, he knew, he could not confine himself to her nose.
    She left her stool, fluffed her skirts—frothy yellow things, frilly as a daffodil—and settled gracefullydown upon the blanket in the shelter of the wide-striped umbrella.
    “I’m taking a break,” she said. “Join me.”
    Ladies did not ask their servants to join them. He might not know much about wealthy society women, but he knew that. Laura—Miss Hamilton, he reminded himself; it would be so much better if he could think of her in formal terms—did, however; she treated Mrs. Bossidy and Hiram and Erastus more like family than staff. But they were servants, all of them, even though he played at the role rather than assumed it in truth.
    “But you never take a break,” he said. For a lady of leisure, she worked steadily, putting in more hours in a typical day than a mill employee. Wielding a pencil and a paintbrush was not the same as swinging a hammer or a scythe, of course, but she was far more diligent than he would have guessed. She was not a dilettante.
    “I do today,” Laura told him. She saw no further point in attempting to work that afternoon. She could not concentrate when she knew he was only a few feet away, watching her with those predatory eyes. She could never quite decide if she were prey in truth or merely a curiosity. “Sit.”
    He hesitated. Odd, because Sam never hesitated.
    “Oh, come on.” She patted the blanket.
    “I’d rather not.”
    “You’re not a good employee, ignoring my requests.”
    “Never claimed to be. I am, however, an excellent bodyguard.”
    “I’ll sketch you,” she said. Let it go , she told herself. The man, for whatever reason, didn’t want to join her on the blanket. But it was becoming all too clear to her that she would not be able to give her work her full attention until her curiosity was appeased. Surely it wasprimarily his air of mystery that kept her interested. Once that layer was stripped away he’d be exposed as just a man, like so many others, and she could stop thinking about him all the time. “I’m quite famous, you know. People beg for this opportunity. Are you really going to refuse me?”
    Finally, he sat down, on the other side of the blanket, as if putting as much space between them as possible while still appearing polite. She would have been offended if there wasn’t such a wary glint in his eyes.
    But why should he be wary of her?
    She propped her sketch pad in her lap, drew a long, sweeping line across it. “Where are you from originally?”
    “Does it matter?”
    “I suppose not.” Charcoal rasped across the page, a bare whisper beneath the hiss of the wind.
    “Ohio.” It was ridiculous, he decided, not to tell her immediately. He was so accustomed to keeping to himself,