Read Cordinas Crown Jewel for Free Online Page A

thing.
    She’d have to find a way to send him payment for the night’s lodging—after she sold her watch.
    When he came back down, she had bowls and cups and folded paper towels in lieu of napkins on thescarred coffee table. There was candlelight, and the glow from the fire, and the good scent of hot soup.
    She smiled—then stared for just a moment. His hair was dry now, and she could see it wasn’t brown. Or not merely brown as she’d assumed. It was all shot through with lighter streaks bleached out, she imagined, from the sun. It curled a bit, a deep and streaky oak tone, over the neck of the sweatshirt.
    A gorgeous head of hair, she could admit, with a rough and tumbled style that somehow suited those bottle-green eyes.
    “You’ll feel better when you eat.”
    He was already feeling marginally better after swallowing one of his pain pills. The throbbing was down to an irritating ache. He was counting on the hot food smoothing that away.
    He’d have killed for a hot shower, but a man couldn’t have everything.
    “What’s for dinner?”
    “
Potage
.” She gave it a deliberately elegant sound. “
Crème de tomate avec pomme de terre
.” Laughing, she tapped her spoon against the pot. “You had plenty of cans, so I mixed the soup with canned potatoes and used some of your milk. It’d be a great deal better with some herbs, but your pantry didn’t run to them. Sit down. Relax. I’ll serve.”
    Under normal circumstances, he didn’t care to be pampered. At least he didn’t think so. He couldn’t actually remember ever having
been
pampered. Regardless, it wasn’t what anyone could call a normal evening, and he might as well enjoy it.
    “You don’t look like the type who’d cook—more like the type who has a cook.”
    That made her frown. She thought she looked like a very normal, very average woman. “I’m a very good cook.” She spooned up soup. Because it had interested her, she’d taken private lessons with a cordon bleu chef. “Though this is my first attempt over an open fire.”
    “Looks like you managed. Smells like it, too.” It was his idea of praise—as his anticipatory grunt was his idea of thanks when she handed him his bowl.
    “I wasn’t sure what you’d like to drink. Coffee, or the milk? There’s beer … and wine.”
    “Coffee. I took some meds, so I’d better back off the alcohol.” He was already applying himself to the soup. When she simply stood in front of him, waiting, he spared her a glance. “What?”
    She bit back a sigh. Since the man didn’t have the courtesy to offer, she’d have to ask. “I’d enjoy a glass of wine, if you wouldn’t mind.”
    “I don’t care.”
    “Thank you.” Keeping her teeth gritted, she poured his coffee, then headed to the kitchen. How, she wondered, did a man get through life with no manners whatsoever? She opened the wine, and after a brief hesitation, brought the bottle back with her.
    She’d have two glasses, she decided, and send him the cost of the bottle along with the money for lodging.
    Since he’d already scraped down to the bottom of the bowl, she served him a second, took one for herself, then settled down.
    She had suffered through countless tedious dinner parties, official events and functions. Surely she could get through a single stormy evening with Delaney Caine.
    “So, you must travel considerably in your work.”
    “That’s part of it.”
    “You enjoy it?”
    “It’d be stupid to do it otherwise, wouldn’t it?”
    She pasted on her diplomat’s expression and sipped her wine. “Some have little choice in certain areas of their lives. Their work, where they live. How they live. I’m afraid I know little about your field. You study … bones?”
    “Sometimes.” He shrugged slightly when she lifted an eyebrow. Chitchat, he thought. He’d never seen the point of it. “Civilizations, architecture, habits, traditions, religions, culture. Lapping over into anthropology. And bones because they’re