Free Texas Tiger TH3 by Patricia Rice Page A

the press room with curiosity, hoping to see the newssheets as they rolled off the machine.
    Instead, she saw the wide bare shoulders of a half-naked man as he bent over some obscure piece of oily equipment. The sight caught her completely unaware, and she stared. She couldn't remember ever seeing a man's naked back before. Sweat streamed in rivulets down the hollow of his spine to a narrow place just above his trousers. The trousers rode low on narrow hips, leaving a gap where she could see the difference in skin color, tanned on top, much lighter below the belt.
    She gulped and flushed, but couldn't look away. His back was tanned and smooth and rippled dangerously as he wrenched at a bolt on the machine. The motion made her follow the line of broad shoulders to the bulge of muscular arms. Was that what men looked like beneath their shirts and cravats and waistcoats?
    She must have made some sound or movement to warn him, although how he could hear over the racket of the press was beyond her. Daniel glanced over his shoulder, and she was caught, even as she started to back away. A big grin sprawled across his face as he straightened and turned around.
    That left her even more speechless. Now she wasn't looking at his bare back, but his naked chest. How had she ever thought this man on the skinny side? True, his waist was slim and his hips narrow, but that only emphasized the width of the rest of him. She couldn't look at the rest of him. She hadn't realized men had nipples, too.
    She covered her eyes with her hand. "A shirt, please, Mr. Martin."
    Even over the bumps and thumps she could hear his chuckle. She wanted to melt right through the floor and die. Her cheeks were even hotter than the air in this stifling room, and there was a nervous twinge in her middle that made the imps that had danced there earlier seem innocent. Stiffly, she walked into the outer room, trusting he was finding some decent clothing.
    Even though she kept her eyes closed, she knew when he entered the room. She could smell him. Strangely enough, it wasn't an unpleasant odor. It stirred her senses in ways they had never been disturbed before. Georgina scowled and grabbed the paper he was rattling in front of her.
    Opening her eyes, she read the banner headline: SLAVERY STILL EXISTS! The subheads were sensationalism at its best, indicting Mulloney's without benefit of trial, but doing it in three-syllable words that made it sound legitimate.
    She could imagine the display at the newsstand, these headlines next to her photographs of the clerk looking bright and fresh at eight that morning and wilting wearily against the counter at six that night, the plush office with its upholstered chairs next to the barren counter without so much as a stool to sit on. There had also been a picture of the Mulloney estate next to one of the rundown shack of a worker in the final batch. She hadn't taken them. Daniel had made free with her equipment. But if it accomplished their objective, she couldn't complain.
    "Well, what do you think?" Daniel had donned not only a shirt, but spectacles as he glanced over another sheet. The shirt was only half buttoned and not in the right buttonholes, and he looked like a tousled little boy.
    Georgina wasn't fooled. She looked back to the story. "It's not enough. No one will feel sorry for clerks who work in a store as posh as Mulloney's and who don't even get their hands dirty. You'll have to go after the mill and probably the gas company. He has shares in the railroad, too, but I don't know if that will help. I still think my father's factory is your best bet. It's much easier for a reader to understand."
    Daniel looked at her over the top of his spectacles and the newssheet in his hand. "Lady, you're meaner than I am. Your boyfriend will be screaming bloody murder over those pictures and you're looking for more trouble?"
    Georgina threw down the sheet and glared back. "Just because I'm rich doesn't mean I'm heartless. I saw how