The Moon and the Stars by Constance O'Banyon Page A

myself to beg mercy from you,” she stated mutinously.
    He clamped his jaw tight and left her for a moment. When he returned, he handed her a bottle of liniment. “As I told you before, you will want to rub this on your body wherever you ache—it will help with the soreness. You should put some on your wrist as well.” He paused as if he did not know what else to say to her. “I am not in the habit of mistreating women.”
    â€œYou just singled me out for that honor?”
    She glared at him as he walked away, and he turned back to her in time to see her fury. He actually smiled, which only made her angrier.
    â€œI will make camp just over there,” he told her, nodding to a glade of trees. “Come on over when you are ready. I am sure you must be hungry.”
    She watched him until he disappeared from sight, trying to decide if he was the cold-blooded killer she imagined him to be, or if he had a soft side and really cared that her wrist was hurt.
    The pain in her backside reminded her that she would have to take her trousers down to apply the liniment. After the deed was awkwardly accomplished, she followed the smell of bacon frying. She was hungry and willing to endure Wade Renault’s company as long as he gave her something to eat.
    After she had eaten her fill of bacon and beans, she watched him douse the campfire. Her gaze followed him when he spread a blanket beneath the tree. “Don’t think I’m going to lie beside you,” she said, coming to her knees and then standing up and holding her body stiff.
    â€œMadame, we are in perfect agreement on that,” he remarked as he unfurled a second blanket several paces from his, and smoothed it. “It has always been my habit to sleep alone.”
    She stared into the darkness and flinched when she heard an owl hoot in a nearby tree. “Are there very many wild animals out here?” she asked in a shaky voice.
    â€œOf course. This is their habitat.” He unbuckled his gun belt and placed it beside his blanket. Then his hands went to the leg buckles on his chaps, and he slowly began to unbuckle them one by one. Erotic thoughts coursed through her mind. She became fascinated, wondering what pleasure those hands could stir alive in a woman if he so chose.
    She felt her face flush. There should be nothing intimate about the way a man removed his chaps, but heperformed the deed in a manner that sent her heart slamming into her throat. He was the most masculine man she had ever known. It sounded trite, but he was like a work of art.
    Angry with herself, she looked away when he eased himself down on his blanket and stretched out his long frame.
    She heard him cock his rifle, and knew he had placed it close at hand. “You should not concern yourself about wild animals—I always hit what I shoot at.” He spoke without conceit, merely stating a fact.
    She reluctantly settled on the other blanket. “I just bet you do.”
    â€œIf you are not sleepy, why do you not tell me about yourself, Madame Caroline Richmond Duncan?”
    â€œLovely weather we’re having,” she said, unwilling to share any part of her personal life with him.
    â€œI know what you are doing, madame.” Amusement laced his voice. “You do not want to talk to me, so you resort to speaking about the weather.”
    She liked the sound of his clipped accent and found herself wanting to know more about him. “It isn’t that I have nothing to say,” she said, swinging her head in his direction and offering him her most haughty glance. “It’s more that I was taught if I was ever in the company of a person that I didn’t particularly want to converse with, I should mention the weather.”
    There was an amused twinkle in his eyes. “Anyone will concede that you are a properly brought up Southern lady.”
    â€œThere are clouds in the distance,” she said in an uninterested way.