Free Flawless by Carrie Lofty Page A

well. “Here are your choices, Vivie. Push on or return to jolly old England.” She held her ground as he closed in, which made him smile. The fading warmth of the sun was nothing to the heat of her body defying his. “However, if you insist on reconsidering your position with every new challenge, we will endlessly repeat this conversation. I’ll lose my patience.”
    “You have no patience to lose.” Her chin lifted and her gaze plowed into his. “And we won’t have this conversation again. I’m here for the duration, Miles. I will have that bonus.”
    “Good. Here I was thinking you’d nullify our little arrangement. There would be consequences.”
    “You won’t force me,” she said.
    As if he would. As if her words would stop him if he wanted to.
    “Just because I’ve decided to keep from seducing you on a public train,” he said, “or in the midst of a surprisinglyviolent desert, doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten the terms of our cooperation.”
    “Neither have I.”
    “Good.” He swiped along her cheekbone, smoothing a streak of dirt she’d missed. Dragging downward, he tugged softly at her lush lower lip. She opened her mouth. No pouting now. Just expectation. Sparks fired in his blood—sparks that matched the fiery challenge in her luminous eyes. He pulled away, the pad of his thumb wet. “Tomorrow we’ll arrive in Kimberley and we’ll get to work. Then, Vivie, I will have my reward.”
    Thirty hot, long, miserable hours after the arrival of an army escort, the string of coaches and supply wagons rumbled within sight of Kimberley. Viv sat next to the window, with Chloe at her side and Miles on the bench opposite. Chloe had yet to speak beyond the bare necessities of communication, but at least she’d nibbled on a few pieces of dried fruit and a biscuit. Although the heat inside the coach edged toward unbearable, she curled along Viv’s arm and clung tightly, as if to a sunken ship’s last piece of flotsam. Her dark hair lay slicked with sweat against her temples and along the nape of her neck.
    Viv choked back her concern, as the girl’s misery became a physical mirror to her own internal struggles. Here was Kimberley, a speck of nothing in the middle of nowhere, yet a town that boasted unspeakable wealth and potential. Here would be Viv’s home for twenty months. Miles had done her a service by reinforcing her options in the clearestpossible terms: survive and prosper, or return to him a failure. She would need to submit to her marriage without even the leverage of wealth—subject to his impropriety, his wildness, his whims.
    Unlike Chloe, who had no recourse, Viv at least retained the luxury of choice. She would simply need to make the same choice every morning, every evening, and every time circumstances urged her to relent. Her father, born in the slums of Glasgow, had provided her with no other example. Neither had her mother, dignified and proud even on her last day drawing breath.
    “We’ll get her home and make a room to her liking,” Miles said, his voice unimposing. “Once she sees it’s not all dirt and violence, she’ll come to.”
    Wary of his concern, and worse still, of how he’d correctly guessed her unspoken worries, Viv only nodded. She was so used to enduring his polite provocations.
    He shrugged gingerly in return, his injured arm none so vigorous as its twin. Eyes closed, utterly indifferent, he behaved as if the sight of Kimberley rolling into view held no special appeal. Was he really so confident in their ability to succeed? Or would his arrogance be their undoing? Against all reason, she wanted it to be more than arrogance. She wanted him to be the man she’d seen at that way station—calm, quick, in command.
    His success will be mine.
    Then he’d claim his reward.
    A shiver wiggled down her back, its heat like fingers slowly stroking from her soles to her scalp. How did onedefend against a man who already believed victory a foregone conclusion? If they