Midnight Rose by Shelby Reed Page A

even when he returned his attention to the gardeners. She couldn’t help herself. Even concealed behind the shadowed lenses, his gaze shivered through her on a wave of hot awareness. She hadn’t seen him since two days ago when he nearly shattered her with his knowing kiss, his skillful hands on her breasts, the way his tenderness touched her like a thousand fingers, permeating straight to the very marrow of her bones.
    Mike was right. Gideon had the ability to unleash a wildness in her she hadn’t dealt with in years. She needed to avoid him, to put distance between them while she figured out if their attraction was merely unruly entertainment, or something deeper.
    As she gazed down at him, the hard tug in the vicinity of her heart served as a warning. One step closer to the fire and he’d burn her alive.
    She tore her gaze away and headed inside.
     
     
     
    The soft bong of Westminster chimes rang the late hour, bringing Gideon out of his trance as he stared at the paper he was writing. “Where’s Jude?” he asked Martha, glancing up from the presentation he was scheduled to give at nearby Putnam College the following morning. “It’s after ten.” “Ms. O’Brien took him for a walk.” She peered at him over the lenses of her thick, round reading glasses, her mouth puckered. “He needs fresh air, she says. Doesn’t matter if it’s day or night, all fresh air is the same. It won’t kill him, she says. He needs to toughen up, she says.” Gideon raised a brow at her. “You wouldn’t be in disagreement with her, would you, Martha?” “Not me.” She sniffed and looked back at the bills laid out before her. “I happen to think she’s good for Jude, but that doesn’t mean the ‘fresh air and good cheer’ speech doesn’t get under my skin. It’s enough to make me feel guilty for working inside.” “How long ago did they leave?”
    “Right before you came in from the greenhouse.”
    The sudden, urgent need to look upon Kate’s face seized Gideon with frantic fists. He hadn’t had the chance to speak to her since returning from the garden convention earlier that afternoon. Despite the distraction of the last two days, he’d battled the sultry thoughts drifting through his mind, even as he reached for her with his senses, over forty miles, tracking her from bed to breakfast to lessons, every rhythmic push of blood through her veins resounding in his ears until his own heart beat in tandem.
    He rose from the game table where he and Martha worked, pushed in his chair, forcibly pacing himself to keep from tearing through the house to the foyer and out the door.
    Martha looked up at him, openmouthed. “Where are you going?” He paused, a helpless smile of anticipation creeping across his lips. “Out to play.” Outside, the night was moonless, indigo and cool. The undulating symphony of frogs and other night creatures caressed his ears as he descended the steps, his preternatural vision knifing through the dark, ears finely tuned for the sound of his son’s breathing. There. Laughter. It halted him in mid-step. Jude’s laughter. Jude’s joy. Gideon saw them, fifty yards from where he stood, standing at the edge of the pond with a bag of bread while a gaggle of geese glided toward the promised feast like phantoms on the water.
    With silent steps, Gideon walked partway down the drive and paused in the shadow of a weeping willow. Leaning his shoulder against the gnarled trunk, he watched them, his son and the woman who called to his past, to the man he was born to be. A surge of emotion rose swiftly in his chest, fingered around his throat and squeezed. He wanted this, the woman and the boy and the laughter. He wanted to embrace it and draw it in to him, absorb it, make it real. But he walked a razor-thin line between truth and someone’s sick joke of reality. His existence was folly. Sometimes when he thought about it, it seemed too ludicrous to be borne.
    “Watch where you step,” Jude warned