To Seduce a Rogue by Tracy Sumner Page A

shallow nicker in response.
    * * *
    Adam tilted his head to study her. The insane pull of a smile threatened as he noticed her tongue clasped in concentration between her even, white teeth.
    Sensing his scrutiny, she lifted her gaze. “I’m going to stitch now.”
    He made no comment, just nodded.
    Sitting back, she glanced at him once more. She looked pale, though in the dim light it was hard to tell for sure.
    His gaze fixed on her hands.
    Taber panted as she pushed the needle through his skin. A thin trickle of blood climbed over her fingers. She wiped it away with the torn cloth. Push. Pull. Push. Pull. She probed the inflamed area with her finger. Satisfied, she rolled her neck and sighed. “All done.”
    Adam pulled a trembling hand through his hair. He happened to glance at his boots, and saw they were covered in a mixture of blood, straw and mud. They had looked like this once before, the day he’d run through the field in search of Eaton.
    He closed his eyes and took a breath, drinking deeply of the summer night. Sounds called to him: the chirp of crickets, the hum of voices beyond the walls of the barn, the gentle breathing of the woman beside him. Her light touch slipped across his arm. Slipped into his heart.
    He shoved to his feet and opened his eyes to find hers fixed upon him.
    “Why do you do that?”
    Her simple question pressed a harsh laugh from him. “ What ?” “Why...” She tapped her finger against her lips. “Why do you run away all the time?”
    He groaned and knelt beside her. Like a coward, he didn’t get too close. Still, the distance wasn’t enough to obscure the fragrance that was Charlie’s alone. Roses and a natural, sweet redolence that rolled over him as relentlessly as waves over the shore. Fighting the attraction he felt for her, he focused instead on the pine straw beneath his boot and the way it crackled when he shifted.
    “I’m not...running.” He grasped a piece of straw and drew a circle in the dirt with it. “You just get so close. I don’t want anyone to get that close.”
    “Chase, is it “ -she halted- “is it because of Eaton? This afternoon, you didn’t finishing telling me.”
    He did not speak for a time, just twisted his hands together, wishing he had never come to Edgemont, wishing she would leave him alone and let the grief consume him. His eyes began to burn, and he blinked. “Why, sometimes, why do you call me Chase?”
    “I don’t know.” She wound a piece of cloth around her finger. “You just don’t seem like an Adam to me.”
    His hand twisting stopped and he smiled. “My father liked the name Adam. It was his uncle’s name. Uncle Adam was a hard man, my mother always said; she detested him.” He laughed and flicked mud from his boot. “We spent summers at an ocean cottage when I was a boy. My father was too busy to come with us, but little did we know then how nice that made it. The first summer in my memory is of running down the dunes, sand sticking between my toes, the heat shoving me toward the water’s edge, my mother’s strong voice calling to me: Jared. Jared.”
    “And your father?”
    “When we returned home, he was furious. My brother, only six or seven at the time, had taken to calling me Jared, too. I had taken to the name myself. In fact, I pitched a fit when anyone called me Adam. My father included.”
    He met her gaze as his smile disappeared. “My father never relented. He was the only person in my family to address me as Adam after that. That’s the reason for my byline. I started writing under my full name, but after my father’s first eruption, he asked that I change it to A. Jared Chase. Did not want to tarnish Uncle Adam’s name.” He dusted his hands on his thighs. “He seemed to have forgotten my uncle was a gambler who died a penniless drunk.”
    “Why do you let people call you Adam then? I mean, if you don’t like it?”
    He took no time to think about this at all. “Charlie, haven’t you noticed