“Of course I will,” she said. Her face and clothes were drenched and now splattered with mud. Yet never had she looked more beautiful, more desirable.

Her cheeks colored beneath his gaze, telling him she shared his thoughts. Fighting the impulse to take her in his arms again, he needed every bit of willpower he had to walk away and follow his men.

32

Emily ran into the house calling Peggy Sue’s name.

She had just come from the bunkhouse and was soaked to the skin. Water sloshed from her boots and dripped off her hat. She found the housekeeper cleaning silver in the dining room.

“Rusty’s been hurt.”

Peggy Sue gasped and dropped the spoon she’d been polishing.

Emily quickly assured her that he’d be all right. He was conscious but still dazed and had an egg-size bump on the back of his head. “I need you to sit with him just to make certain.”

She would have stayed with him, but she had the feeling he would prefer Peggy Sue by his side.

Peggy Sue jumped to her feet. “Where is he?”

“In the bunkhouse.” Emily caught Peggy Sue by the arm. “Try to keep him awake as much as possible.”

Peggy Sue nodded and raced out of the room.

Satisfied that Rusty would be in good hands, Emily ran upstairs to change, her wet skirt flapping against her legs. Her hair was limp and her arms sore from fighting the fire. But that wasn’t what caught her attention when she gazed at her image in the mirror.

Beneath her sopping-wet clothes, her body felt on fire. Her cheeks were flushed to a rosy pink, and a bright inner glow burned from the depths of her eyes. She touched her lips with her fingertips. Did she only imagine they were still swollen from Chase’s kiss?

She couldn’t believe it. He’d kissed her. He’d kissed her!

And she had kissed him back.

She filled the porcelain basin from the pitcher with shaky hands and splashed water on her heated face. Her lips still burned with the memory of his kiss, and a strange tingly feeling rushed through her limbs. Her body ached with a newly discovered need, and a knot of feelings whirled within. Was this how it felt to be in love? To be truly, fully, and completely in love? Nothing she had experienced in the past compared to how she felt at that moment.

She reached for the towel and buried her face in it. She had been in love before, but never had she felt quite like this.

His name was James Watkins. At the time, she’d thought she was the luckiest girl alive. He was handsome, successful, witty, and smart. She had been the envy of Boston’s debutantes.

The day he’d placed the two-carat diamond betrothal ring on her finger, he’d promised her the moon. He’d vowed to love her forever, and fool that she was, she’d believed him.

Yet he’d been the first to bail out on her after the Fields & Fields scandal broke. He had political ambitions and said he couldn’t afford to have his name linked with hers. Her uncle’s arrest made her a liability. Those were his exact words. A liability.