Free The Wedding Dress by Kimberly Cates Page B

retreating.
    But the theoretical analysis that usually took the edge off Jared’s sex drive wasn’t working nearly as well as it always had before. Not with the way Emma’s full breasts curved beneath her surcoat, her slim waist accented by the narrow gold-filigreed girdle. Long nights alone he’d dreamed of a woman’s body garbed like that, his hands stripping the layers away as if they were petals, with velvety feminine skin at the center. The only fantasies he’d let himself have since Jenny….
    Don’t think about her now. Don’t think about anything except the job you’re supposed to do here.
    “So you decided to join us after all, Dr. S. M.,” Emma said, her eyes dancing.
    Jared knew she was itching to have him ask what she meant by the nickname, but he wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction. He swung down from the stallion. Taking both sets of reins, he tied the horses to a low-hanging branch. “Angelica told me it was common among actors to say they ride when they really haven’t had much experience. I underestimated you. I won’t make the same mistake again.”
    Emma raked wayward black curls away from her face. One strand stuck to the corner of her bottom lip. Jared couldn’t help staring at it.
    “Before I read the script for Lady Valiant, my all-time favorite horses were the kind with candy-striped poles through their middles so they couldn’t go anyplace but around in circles. I’d taken a trail ride once with my stepfather and then there was the pony ride at the county fair back in Illinois.”
    Jared tried to tear his gaze from the rebellious curl, fought an inexplicable urge to take his own finger and smooth it away just so he could have an excuse to touch that impossibly perfect lip. He reined in the impulse as ruthlessly as he would have reined in a stallion scenting a mare in heat.
    “You learned to ride less than a year ago?”
    “My best friend back in L.A. is a brilliant equestrian. She gave me a crash course on her Dutch warmblood, Arlie. I think he’s the love of my life.”
    “Davey will be so disappointed.”
    “Yeah, well, Arlie and I suffered through a lot together during horse boot camp. I figure if Sam ever gets tired of the writing gig, she can be a gunnery sergeant. By the end of the month, my legs were so cramped up I walked like Festus in the Gunsmoke reruns my grandfather used to watch.”
    She demonstrated a bowlegged strut so foreign to her natural grace and elegance Jared was amazed. Never would he have guessed a polished woman like the actress before him would make fun of herself so freely.
    Jared found himself smiling back at her. “So why didn’t you call ‘hold, enough’ when Angelica was awarded the part? That was over a year ago. It’s obvious you kept riding.”
    She flushed, impossibly thick black lashes drifting down to hide her eyes. “Know the funny thing?” she asked in a voice he’d not heard before. She laid her cheek against her horse’s withers and slid her hand into the silky cove between the mare’s mane and neck. “I never expected I would love riding so much. The freedom of it, the feel of the wind. It’s not like motorcycles, you know? All noisy and spitting fumes in your face. On a horse, it’s just you and the quiet, the peace, of being out in the hills alone.” Her voice changed, a little wistful. “You’ll never know how much I needed that.”
    Midnight eyes peered almost shyly into his. He could feel her waiting for him to make some wiseass remark.
    Instead, he felt a strange kind of connection, a link he hadn’t expected. He spoke to her for the first time without anger or acid wit. “I think I can guess.”
    How many hours had he spent on horseback with no one but the wind and the sky and his thoughts?
    How strange that this exquisitely beautiful woman with her twenty-million-dollar paychecks and the world at her feet should feel the same thirst to escape as he did.
    And yet, how hard must it be for her to get that