Surrender by Heather Graham Page B

sir,” Grayson agreed.
    “If the enemy so much as comes near her, it’s the enemy who will suffer.”
    “Yessir, that’s true,” Grayson said, quickly pouring brandy from a decanter in the handsome parlor of the general’s Washington town house.
    Angus accepted the brandy with an absentminded nod of thanks.
    “I’m going to tan her hide, Grayson.”
    “Yessir.”
    “And if the enemy comes near her, if any man touchesa single hair on her head, I’ll kill him. So help me God, Grayson. I’ll kill him.”
    “Yessir,” Grayson said again.
    “I’ll bring half the armed forces out against him!”
    “As you say, sir.”
    “If she’d only married Ian! I thought that was going to happen, didn’t you, Grayson?” He looked at his servant and friend with anxious eyes. “I was so sure that was the way the wind was blowing. But then, there he ups and marries some little girl from his home state, and Risa’s her best friend and godmother to her old beau’s child!”
    “Now, that’s the whole point, General. She’s with friends Down South. Probably just as close as a pea in a pod with some McKenzie relation! Happy as a lark.”
    “I pray that’s so, Grayson,” Angus said. He sighed deeply. He was a military man. Matter of fact. He believed in knowledge, strategy, and statistics.
    But damn! If he didn’t just have a strange, sick-gut feeling!
    There was a war on.
    And even as a little girl, well …
    Risa just never had learned to surrender.
    Morning … and she was close to a McKenzie. So close she could see the texture of his cheeks, and through the open collar of his white shirt, his chest as well.
    Dark hair grew on his chest in rich sworls. It, too, was touched with a glimmer of red.
    Risa was just as tired by daylight as she had been during the long night. She had barely moved. Ever since he had shackled her to himself, she had been in a raw panic. He’d just been tired. He had doused the lamps, and laid down, dragging her along with him—suggesting that she sleep.
    Sleep!
    With him on the narrow bed, doing her very best to see that she didn’t touch him, that she barely breathed, that her fingers didn’t brush his …
    Seconds had crawled along like hours. She felt now that she had spent the entire night wide-awake, staringat the ceiling, aware of him beside her, eyes closed, seeming to sleep as deeply as a dead man.
    Yet now, as she opened her eyes and inched away from him, aware of his peace as he slept, and equally aware of his musculature and supple speed should he awaken, she wasn’t quite sure that she had managed to stay awake all night. If she had slept, she hadn’t slept much. She remained exhausted.
    His eyes were still closed. She watched the steady rise and fall of his chest. She studied his features, noticing their distinctive beauty, yet shivering again at his resemblance to Ian. Ian …
    Could she really remember Ian? Yes, very tall, very dark, very handsome. Principled. Loyal to the core. Honorable. And here was his cousin. The renegade. Muscled flesh very bronze against his white shirt. Features strong, and intriguing. Hair so deep a color, just touched with fire. Eyes …
    Blue. Staring at her.
    She stared back, swallowing, absurdly guilty at the way she had been studying him, then angry with herself for feeling so guilty. She was the wronged party in this situation.
    “Sleep well?” she demanded irritably.
    “Did you?”
    “Not a wink, you wretched Confederate.”
    He smiled suddenly, startling her.
    A handsome smile … even though there was a disturbing light in his eyes as he watched her. He seemed to look at her with a mocking regard that was far more amused than malicious; she realized he had probably been awake some time—aware that she’d been watching him.
    She inhaled sharply, anxious to be away from his scrutiny. “Could you possibly let me free? I need to stretch my legs and—”
    “Go right ahead.”
    She frowned. “But—”
    He lifted his arm. She saw that