Free Grace Under Fire by Jackie Barbosa Page A

into glass doors, they oughtn’t keep them so clean!
    Breathing a mental sigh of relief, she reached the table upon which the lemonade bowl stood without tripping or bumping into anyone…or anything. If she could simply down her refreshment here without having to transport it elsewhere, she might avoid the ignominy of yet another mishap involving spilt liquids. After pouring herself a full glass, however, she realized it was not to be. The music had ceased and a queue of thirsty dancers was building behind her.
    Drat and blast!
    Balancing the cup carefully in one hand, she stepped away from the table and toward the ever-growing throng of people lining the walls. Upon seeing her and noting the full glass clutched precariously between her fingers, the sensible folks parted like the Red Sea in the face of Moses. A few, however, watched without stepping aside, among them two gentlemen Grace felt certain she had never seen before.
    If she had seen them, she surely would have remembered, for each was uniquely arresting. They stood side by side, and from a distance, one might have imagined them nearly identical in appearance. Both were tall and fit, dark-haired and strikingly handsome. But where one man had gentle brown eyes, the other had piercing blue ones. And the differences didn’t end there.
    Grace found her gaze drawn first to the brown-eyed man. The crease in his left cheek made him appear jolly and good-natured, a man who might be prone to easy laughter. And yet, there was an edge of danger to him, evident in the strong set of his square jaw and the slight, hawkish hook at the end of his nose. Her hand trembled as she realized his eyes were caressing her, lingering appreciatively at her lips, the curve of her neck, the swell of her breasts. A peculiar heat washed over her—not the embarrassed sort, with which she was intimately familiar, but an exciting, pleasurable, and utterly foreign sensation that settled, most outrageously, between her thighs.
    Feeling her face flush, she looked away, only to have her gaze caught and held by theblue-eyed man who stood next to him. He, too, studied her with an intensity that trapped her breath inside her lungs. This man’s countenance gave no hint of kindness or humor, though it was possible he was even more handsome than his companion. His long, narrow face was marked by sharp, high cheekbones and, more ominously, by a scar that slashed from his left temple to just below his ear. The sort of scar a man gained in hand-to-hand combat and survived only because he dispatched his opponent to the good graces of his Maker.
    She shivered, but she wasn’t cold. Oh, no, she was doubly hot, for Sir Blue Eyes licked his lips, as if anticipating something sweet and wicked. How did she know that? She couldn’t say, except that his eyes seemed to savor her as if she were a fine wine or a rich dessert.
    Her steps faltered, and lemonade sloshed over the rim of the cup and onto her hand. The cool stickiness of the liquid wrenched her from her entirely inappropriate thoughts, but it wasn’t enough to prevent what happened next.
    As she snatched her gaze away from Sir Blue Eyes and focused on maneuvering around the two distracting gentlemen, she tripped. How or on what, she couldn’t have said, for there had been no obstacles in her path. All she knew was that one moment she was upright, and the next she was tumbling forward, sprawling toward the ground, the cup flying from her hand as she strove to break her fall.
    And then, miraculously, the falling stopped.
    Warm arms cradled her tight against a solid chest. The cup clattered to the floor, and she realized the front of her gown was cold and wet. At least this time, she had spilled something on her own dress, not someone else’s.
    “I’m qu-qu-quite all right,” she murmured, not daring to look up and see whether it was Sir Blue Eyes or Mr. Dimpled Cheek who had caught her. Either one would make her knees wobble and her stomach