Immortal Bride. Lisa Childs
platinum-blond locks across her face and around her shoulders. She wore a linen vest, sleeveless and low cut that revealed the shadow between her breasts, and pants in the same pale blue of her eyes. The wind molded the linen to her curves, revealing more than it covered.
“You are the most beautiful trespasser I’ve ever had,” Damien remarked with an appreciative whistle, drawing her from her contemplation of the lake.
Startled, she jumped and then turned toward him. And her eyes widened with surprise and something close to recognition, as if she knew him even though they had never met before.
The same sense of recognition jarred him. She looked like a legend, the spitting image of the woman whose story had been passed from generation to generation in his family. She looked like the woman whose tears over her murdered lover had created the lake. And whose supernatural ability to resurrect the dead had brought the Indian warrior—whose mission had been to kill her—back to life. A life they had shared on the rocky shore of the Lake of Tears.
“I’m not trespassing,” she insisted, her chin lifting with pride and indignation.
Because the land had been hers first?
He shook his head, shaking off the fanciful thought he blamed on his cousin’s fascination with the past. If not for his having to visit Nathan, Damien would not have even thought of the legend. But he wouldn’t have met this woman, either. And, as a shiver of foreboding lifted the hair on the nape of his neck, he considered that not meeting her might have been a good thing. With a flash of prophecy to which he would never admit, he sensed that his life was about to change…because of her.
“Then what the hell are you doing on my property?” he asked, growling the question as he did when he wanted to intimidate someone.
She didn’t lower her chin. She only narrowed her eyes and met his hard stare, unintimidated. “I’m checking out the wedding package.”
“Wedding package?” He repeated her ridiculous excuse, almost disappointed that she hadn’t come up with something more plausible.
“Yes, wedding package,” she insisted. “The ad described it as a wedding ceremony on the shore of the beautiful Lake of Tears, performed by a real Indian shaman. And the reception in the dining room of the house.” She gestured toward the Victorian on the hill. “And a honeymoon in the bridal suite in the second story of the turret.”
Damien’s breath caught with a stabbing pain in his chest. Damn, now he knew why Nathan had insisted on a meeting. He’d hatched another of his hairbrained schemes. But this one…
How could his cousin have ever considered opening up the lake and the house to the public a good idea? How could he think Damien would go along with such a thing…? How would reducing their heritage to a reception hall honor their legacy, their people?
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Her question surprised him. In all of his thirty-six years, he had never met anyone, besides his cousin, who had been able to read his moods. Not even his wife, despite all the years they’d known each other, had ever really understood him.
“I’m fine,” he said, “just trying to figure out if you’re lying….”
Or if all the years of Nathan drinking the potions he concocted from the plants and flowers growing wild on the land had finally reduced him to madness…
Again the indignation flashed in her light-blue eyes. “I am not lying.”
“But why would you be checking out wedding packages—” he was going to kill Nathan; all the shaman’s herbs and roots and potions were not going to save him from Damien’s rage “—when you’re not wearing a ring?” He stepped close, caught her hand in his and held up her bare fingers.
God, her skin was silky…
“I gave the engagement ring back to my fiancé—my ex-fiancé.” She expelled a ragged breath and lifted her gaze to Damien’s. “But now…I don’t know….”
At the thought of her wearing another man’s ring, Damien tensed and tightened his grasp on her hand. “But you had some doubts….”
She nodded. “I’m not sure they were really my doubts, though, or…”
“If you had any doubts, you did the right thing,” he assured her, “by returning his ring.”
He’d had doubts, and now he wished like hell he hadn’t ignored them. But Melanie had fallen for him when he’d been a poor Indian kid on a college scholarship with nothing else to his name. And then she’d stuck by him through all those long, empty days and nights while he had been working to establish his career. Guilt gripped him, as it always did, when he acknowledged that he hadn’t been there for her when she had needed him most.
The blond-haired woman tugged at her hand, trying to free it from his. But instead of releasing her, he entwined their fingers. “So since you don’t intend to use the wedding package, you’re here under false pretences,” he pointed out. “You are trespassing.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked, her voice soft with challenge. “Call the sheriff?”
Even if the nearby village of Grayson had an active sheriff, calling him wouldn’t have been Damien’s first inclination. His first inclination of how to handle his beautiful trespasser had his blood pumping faster through his veins…in anticipation.
He shook his head. “Nope. My land. My law.”
“Hmmm…” she mused, pursing her full lips, “I don’t remember that law being on the bar exam.”
“Did you pass?” he asked, his tone doubtful even though he believed she would not have brought up the exam if she hadn’t passed.
Her chin rose a little higher with pride and a touch of arrogance that intrigued him as much as her beauty did. “First time.”
“So you’re smart and beautiful,” he concluded.
“Brilliant,” she bragged with a self-deprecating grin that mocked her own ego.
“And modest,” he teased.
She shrugged those sexy bare shoulders. “I don’t have time for modesty.”
“In that case maybe you decided to trespass in order to skinny-dip in the lake. So don’t let me stop you.” He released her hand but reached for the buttons on her vest.
She grabbed his wrists, her breath coming fast through her parted lips. “Don’t! Don’t—”
“Oh, would you rather I go first?” He stepped back and pulled his shirt over his head, dropping the black cashmere onto the rocky shore.
Her eyes wide, she stared at his chest. “I—I—uh…” she stammered then slid the tip of her pink tongue across her bottom lip.
“I hope you’re more eloquent than that in court.” He reached for his belt.
“Don’t!” she yelled again. “Don’t take off anything else. I’m not here to skinny-dip.”
“Or for a wedding,” he reminded her. Because the Lake of Tears would become a wedding spot only over his dead body.
“I’m here because I’m curious about the lake,” she admitted. But she didn’t so much as glance at the water, her attention still focused on his bare chest.
“So let me satisfy your curiosity.” He stepped closer and she jerked her gaze to his face.
“A-about the lake,” she stammered.
“Of course. About the lake,” he agreed, unable to keep a grin from his mouth. “What do you want to know?”
“You don’t want to put your shirt back on?” she asked, her voice soft and wistful.
He shook his head. “It’s hot.”
“No,