Free Linda Needham by The Pleasure of Her Kiss Page B

the first boy shouted frantically, as Jared sloshed past the projecting boulder where the boy was perched. “Reel ’im in!”
    Reel him? Hell, the knob on the handle! He’d forgotten it was there.
    Not that reeling helped him much at all. He kept stumbling forward with the force of the current and the fish’s monumental struggle. He reeled in a foot or twoof line at a time, trying to stay upright while the children followed him downstream along the bank.
    “You’re gonna win if you bring him in, sir! You’re gonna win!”
    “Catch him!”
    “Woof!” The huge dog was loping alongside the stream now, keeping perfectly level with him.
    “Help the fish man, Grady!”
    “Don’t you dare, boy!” Jared shouted as he slipped on a stone and went down on his backside for an instant, stumbling upright in the current with the next step.
    Now the demon fish made a hard course for a shallow pool on the far side of the stream, away from the clamoring children and bounded by willow and thick with reeds, obviously trying to shake him.
    “Not while I still have a breath in me, old man!” Jared followed the fish, reeling in more and more line, unwilling to surrender a single inch as the beast tried to hide itself in the vegetation.
    “You’ve almost got him!”
    Damn right I do!
    Wet to his chin and now prepared to die for this particular prize, Jared threw himself into the reeds and onto the wrangling fish, holding fast to the fly rod and his pride.
    He struggled with the fish, reeling and reeling, hearing the children cheering him from the other bank.
    “The fish man did it!”
    “He caught him!”
    “I hope he wins!”
    “Woof!”
    Jared made a sweeping grab for the line where it had hooked the fish—a fat rainbow trout, he was certain—and then stood up, turning toward the opposite bank to display the beauty to his audience.
    But as he turned, he realized that the voices were gone, and the children.
    Vanished like some fairy clan.
    Everyone, that is, but his wife, who was standing in the sunlight on the opposite side of the stream, her hands shaping her hips, and a very odd look in her eye.
    He’d never felt so exposed in his life. So wet. So unsure of himself.
    How much had she seen?
    And what would she think of his “technique”?
    “Well, then,” she said, raising her hand to her brow, shielding her eyes from the sun, “you’ve got a lovely, large rainbow trout there, Colonel Huddleswell.”
    Trout, indeed. He was hard as hell for her, had a lovely, large erection, right here in the middle of an icy stream.
    Which she must not be able to see, because that was a heady grin lighting her lovely face.
    Enigmatic and amused.
    And beautiful.
    And, bloody hell, she was wearing a pair of trousers!

Chapter 7
    “W here the devil are your skirts, madam?” Hell, the woman was nothing but shapely legs and captured sunlight and clouds of untamed hair.
    Standing right there in the open, where any man could see her!
    “Where are my what?” Her lilting, laughing challenge hopped across the stream and slammed into his chest.
    “Your skirts! You’ve forgotten them!” His gut molten hot with a wild need to shield her from prying eyes and groping hands, Jared started across the stream, working hard against the current and the slippery stones, his catch flopping and tugging on the line behind him.
    “Don’t be ridiculous.” She stepped easily along the root-tangled bank, coming even with him. “I haven’tforgotten anything. It’s my custom to wear trousers on tournament day.”
    “Your custom?” Struck momentarily speechless, Jared stopped midstream and pointed at her legs with the tip of his fly rod, waggled it at her. “Replacing your…your skirts with britches is your custom?”
    She laughed again, lightly, plucking at the excess tweed of her britches tucked into her boot tops. “Great heavens, don’t tell me you’re a prig? I’m shocked! And you a man of the wide world.”
    “I’m hardly a prig.” He