Read Celeste Bradley - [Heiress Brides 03] for Free Online

newborn colt, ink-stained fingers and bitten nails, hair tumbling loose—
    Her hair had given up the fight against pins and gravity and fallen to her bosom in a heavy twisted rope. Curious, Graham reached to ease the twist. Abruptly he found his hands full of amazing silken red-gold. The sensation of her warm hair in his fingers sent an unexpected jolt to his neglected male senses.
    His eyelids slid nearly closed in drowsy sensuous pleasure. He let the rope of hair roll over his fist, winding the length until his hand rested just beside her chin. At the faint warmth from his fingers on her skin, she rolled her head until her cheek rested on his wrist and palm. A soft, sleepy sigh left her lips, wafting across the sensitive skin of his inner wrist.
    In the warm, enclosed space behind the curtain, he became aware of her scent as he never had before. She smelled wonderful, really. She smelled like sensible soap and sun-warmed skin and something else, something girlish and sweet, as if incorruptibility had a perfume of its own.
    Her eyelashes fluttered. Graham released her hair and straightened, closing his hand against the loss of that silken splendor. When she stretched and opened her eyes, he stood a proper distance away, grinning down at her in his usual affable way.
    After all, it was only Sophie. He was simply overdue for a visit with Lilah, that was all.
    “Gray? What are you doing here?”
    He tilted his head instead of answering. “You’ve never cut your hair in your life, have you?”
    Startled, she reached to feel that her hair had fallen. She reddened as if she had something to be ashamed of and sat up quickly. She seemed so discomfited that Graham politely pretended to be interested in the view from the window until she’d pulled herself together. Once her ginger-spiced locks were tightly wound onto her head, however, he had the inexplicable desire to pull it all down again.
    He cleared his throat.
Don’t be a cad. She’d die of shock if you so much as hinted at such a thing
. His Sophie was completely unaware of the world and all its evils. He meant to keep it that way, even if he himself was one of those evils.
    Now she was looking at him expectantly. That’s right, she’d asked him a question, hadn’t she?
    Abruptly, he didn’t want to tell her about his family and the title. He wanted to pretend that nothing had changed, just for a few moments more. He’d been so very comfortable with Sophie just the way things were.
    So instead of answering her—again—he reached for the first of the pages that rested on her lap. He blinked at the flowing, lovely script there. Had he expected something tight, cramped . . . repressed?
    Before he had a chance to actually read what was written there in German, she’d snatched it back. “Don’t look at that. It’s only notes.” She glared up at him. “I don’t like my translations disordered. You’d know that if you ever did anything with your mind other than waste it.”
    She was fussing at him now. He smiled, comforted by the familiar testiness of her tone. Most people werecharmed so effortlessly by his manner that he’d lost all faith in the world’s acuity. Only Sophie bothered to look closely enough to be accurately displeased.
    He smiled at her fondly, so happy to be “Gray, the useless layabout” again that he quite forgot to mask his grin with the usual layer of irony.
    She blinked in surprise, her eyes widening in wonder. Graham recovered quickly. He plunked himself next to her on the window seat, intentionally crowding her papers until she fussed further, safely distracted from his aberrant sincerity.
    “Go on, Sophie. What are you working on? Tell me a story.”
    She flicked him a suspicious glance while she rustled up her straying notes. “Are you serious or are you going to make fun?”
    He leaned his head back against the window embrasure and closed his eyes wearily. “Lover, I’m too tired to make fun. I just want to sit here in your