Free Siege of the Heart (Southern Romance Series, #2) by Lexy Timms Page A

they’re desperate, they may make a mistake.”
    “We can’t just...” Solomon stared at her, at a loss.
    “What can’t we do, and why not?” Her voice was a warning, but he would not hear it.
    “I can’t let you walk into another battle.”
    “Now that you know I’m a woman, you mean.” Her voice was flat. Disappointment, weariness, anger—all were fleeting, if they had been there at all.
    “Well, yes.” Solomon began to pick his way towards her, and she moved to tighten her horse’s saddle, putting the beast between them as a shield.
    “I promised to help you, and I knew I was a woman the whole time.”
    “I didn’t! I would never have allowed it otherwise.”
    “ Allowed it?” Her voice rose now. “The war touches me just as much as it touches you, Solomon Dalton. I watched men die on the battlefield. I lost family. That is the fate of men and women everywhere. So who are you to tell us that we may not join the cause, when it touches our lives so deeply?”
    He had no answer to that.
    “I thought so.” She snorted softly. “Mr. Dalton, you saw me fight. You know I can. My life is mine to gamble how I choose.” She mounted up. “Are you coming with me to save your sister?”
    Solomon swung into the saddle himself, still too stunned to speak. How in the hell had he not realized the truth before? The features that he had mistaken for weakness were stunningly beautiful. Oh, she was no finely-dressed girl from about town, corseted and...
    Everything fell into place.
    “That’s how I didn’t noticed you!” He reined in his horse. “In the town. You were dressed as a woman. ”
    “Could you stop saying ‘a woman ’ with that tone of betrayal?” Her voice was sharp. She looked over her shoulder at him and reluctantly wheeled around to face him when he did not move.
    “Why should I not feel betrayed?” he asked her finally.
    “Why should you?” she shot back. Her brow was furrowed. “What, of all the things we have done, depends upon my sex? Do you think that some sort of feminine magic tracked down your lies? No! I observed, I followed you, I paid attention, the same as any spy.”
    “You were in disguise.” Wait, no, the pants were the disguise. He could not tell down from up anymore, it seemed.
    “Every spy is always in disguise, and what you so readily overlooked might have been spotted by someone else. Old ladies are particularly...observant.” Her face grew cold.
    “Someone found you out once,” he guessed.
    A sullen shrug was the only answer, but when he gave a crow of laughter, he saw a smile tug at her lips. She gave a sigh.
    “Mr. Dalton, I assure you that I am just as capable of a mad rescue mission as any man.”
    “Well enough,” Solomon said after a moment. His mind did not sit quietly with it, but the same mind pointed out that his companion had , in fact, proven herself. “But I have a good deal of questions.”
    “So do I,” she said softly, smiling over at him. Her look was so open, that the next words hit him like a punch to the gut: “Such as, for instance, why those soldiers called you Horace and why they seemed to recognize you.”
    He stared at her, his blood running cold. His instincts screamed that she was a predator, dangerous as a jungle cat and just as poised to leap. When she had told him that she used no feminine trickery, it had surely been a lie, for no man would smile like an angel and ask questions like a high inquisitor.
    Surely she was no angel, but a demon such as he had never faced, for even as he stared her down and fought the urge to pull out his rifle and shoot her, he wanted nothing more than to crush her in his arms and kiss her. His blood was heating, his pulse racing, and it was all he could do not to think of her with that linen shirt torn open and his mouth on her skin, her moans in his ears.
    He took a deep, shuddering breath, and had the sense that she knew exactly what he had been thinking. What he had not seen, for she was