“Okay,” she said, “that’s it. You have two minutes to get out of here.”
“Really,” he said, his voice a smooth purr of amusement.
“Look, don’t push your luck. You interrupted my shoot, ran off my horse——”
“Your star, you mean.” He smirked. “Horace, the Wonder Horse.”
“Laugh if you like. But if we can’t find Horace…”
Eve’s words came to an abrupt halt. What if they couldn’t? What if the damned horse was gone for good? A chill settled in the pit of her stomach. Could Francis finish the film anyway? She already knew the answer, knew what would happen to Triad.
“Frankly,” the man said, his smirk deepening, “I think old Horace is probably in Mexico by now.”
Eve felt her mouth begin to tremble. “I bet you think this is pretty damned funny.”
“What I think, madam, is that I’ve stumbled into the middle of a fiasco.”
She stepped forward, her face turned up to his. “You’re the fiasco,” she said, her voice trembling along with her lips. “If we don’t find that damned horse—if we don’t find him…”
All her bravado seemed to vanish. Zach frowned. Tears were rising in those blue eyes, turning them the color of sapphires.
“Oh, hell,” he said. “Dammit, don’t cry!”
“I’m not crying,” Eve said fiercely. “I never——”
But she was. Zach muttered a short, sharp word under his breath and did the only thing he could.
He reached out, drew her into his arms and kissed her
LATER, when he tried to make sense out of his own behavior, Zach would tell himself his brain must have gone on a holiday. Otherwise, why would he have taken this ill-tempered, sharp-tongued, dust-begrimed vixen in his arms?
Not that his brain had shut down altogether. If anything, it was working overtime, delivering enough sensory messages to put him on overload.
He heard the crowd’s shocked gasp, heard the smothered exclamation of the woman just as his mouth found hers, then felt her stunned resistance, followed quickly by her indignant struggles. He was even aware of the amused tut-tut of a little voice inside his head as it asked him just what, exactly, he thought he was doing.
The problem was that the voice asked the question a fraction of a second too late. By then, Zach’s mouth had closed over Frances Cranshaw’s mouth. And the little voice faded to a whisper.
She tasted sweet, like the nectar of a flower. And cool, like a swift-running mountain stream. But mostly— mostly, she tasted like a meal for a starving man, and he had the sudden crazy thought he’d been hungry all his life.
Until now
Heat coiled in his belly, then shot through his blood. His arms tightened around her.
Stop it, the voice insisted. Let her go. She doesn’t want this—see how she’s fighting you? And you don’t want it either. You don’t know this dame, you don’t like her, and you’re sure as hell not the kind of man who goes around forcing women.
But he didn’t let her go. He drew her closer, bent her over his arm, one hand slipping up to cup the back of her head, his fingers twining in the silken spill of her golden hair while his mouth moved against hers, offering, asking…
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