Free Nobody's Saint by Paula Reed Page A

She might yet get away with her virginity intact. But he had to be good and befuddled. She drove her hands through her loose hair and lifted it from her back, causing the fabric of her bodice to stretch tightly.
    “‘Tis hot here, even at night.”
    Diego deliberately looked away.
    “A fortnight is plenty of time for me to try you down to your last nerve. Might I call you Diego, as you’re sure to be calling me any number of names?”
    “And I always thought the English allowed women too much freedom.”
    “The English think we Irish are barbarians. If it makes you feel any better, I’m the bane of my village, second only to my sister. Most Irish girls are far better behaved than I.”
    “What if I say that it would not be proper for you to call me by my Christian name?”
    Mary Kate smiled again and looked him straight in the eyes. Warm eyes they were, dark in the light of the lamp at the helm. “I’m sure to call you Diego anyway.”
    “Then I will call you Mary Katherine.”
    “Mary Kate, unless you think of something more descriptive at any given moment.”
    María Catalina , he thought, then shook his head. She was not Spanish. She was not what he was looking for. She was a manipulative little liar and entirely too forward. He already had all the casual lovers he needed.
    “I imagine I may think of something else from time to time,” he said.
    “D’you know that you smell of lemons?”
    “Of all the…have you no notion of decorum?” That was another problem. She made his head spin, the way she jumped from one thing to the next.
    “I certainly do! I was only wondering why that was. ‘Tis a clean, pleasant smell.”
    “Lemon verbena,” he explained tersely. “It is a plant that grows in Tierra Firme—the part of the New World that the English call the Spanish Main. You can scatter the dried leaves in your trunks, like lavender.”
    “I favor roses, myself.”
    It was out before he could stop it. “I noticed.”
    Mary Kate’s mouth curved upward into an expression of feline smugness.
    “You should go to bed,” Diego stated firmly.
    “But I haven’t apologized properly.”
    He looked at her, eyebrows raised skeptically.
    “I’m sorry,” she said.
    “Are you? For what?”
    “For having to lie to you.”
    “You had to lie. That is what you are sorry for?”
    “Aye.”
    Diego scratched his head. “Usually my English is very good, but I think that I do not understand.”
    “I’ve already told you why I lied. I have to get home to my family, and my grandfather had no right to do what he did.”
    “Then you are apologizing for lying?”
    Mary Kate chewed on her lip and narrowed her eyes in concentration. “Nay,” she decided at last. “I’m sorry you had to find out and get your feelings hurt.”
    Diego laughed out loud. “You are apologizing for getting caught ?”
    With an indignant humph, Mary Kate replied, “Certainly not! That weren’t my fault! How was I to know there was a letter? I’m sorry it upset you. You’re a good man, a fine man, the sort of man a girl admires, and I’m sorry to have caused you any grief. That’s what I’m apologizing for.”
    He was staring at her in open astonishment, and Mary Kate did nothing to disguise her conquering grin. If honesty was the way to this man’s heart, he was about to get more than he bargained for. “So now, I’m hoping we can be friends.”
    “I have had an Englishwoman for a friend. It did not work out well for me.”
    Instant understanding lit Mary Kate’s face, and Diego bit his tongue.
    “So, one of them cold English lasses broke your heart. Well, you’ve naught to fear from me. I’m Irish. You’ve yet to have yourself an Irishwoman, but you’ll see ‘tis very different.”
    Diego felt like he’d been hit by a forty-foot swell. Mother of God, was she offering what he thought she was offering? Looking at her in the lamplight, he was sorely tempted to take her up on it!
    “For a friend!” Mary Kate amended