Temptation Read online

  He was good. Temperance could see that now. He was good enough that he could purposefully throw himself off balance yet never lose control. As a kid, no one had ever been able to keep up with Temperance, but she could see that if she’d met an eleven-year-old James McCairn, he would have given her a run for the money.

  Now they were at opposite ends of the ballroom, and around them the children were watching in wide-eyed silence. She could feel that they were afraid. Was this a real argument? Or were these two adults pretending again?

  When Temperance looked up at James, she saw him move his chin downward in a quick gesture. It took only a second to know what he had in mind.

  “I’m going to murder you,” she yelled, then gave a couple of powerful strokes and went flying toward him. Could she pull it off? she wondered as she neared him. Had she understood his gesture correctly? Would he catch her, or would she go flying through the windows at the end of the room?

  But she trusted him.

  Seconds before she was about to run into him full force, she crouched down, tucked her head into her chest, stuck one leg out, then put her arms straight up in the air, and she was moving fast between his legs. James caught her by the wrists, and in one lightning-fast powerful movement, he then turned quickly, and instantly, they were both facing in the opposite direction and James was skating backwards, holding Temperance’s uplifted hands, her compressed body balanced on her one skate, between his legs.

  When James finally stopped against the opposite wall, Temperance didn’t move. Her head was down, her leg was still up, and her thigh muscles were screaming with pain. But she didn’t hear a sound from the children.

  “Are they still there?” she whispered up to James.

  “Scared,” he whispered back.

  But in the next second Temperance heard the sound of a single pair of hands clapping, and in the next, the room erupted in laughter and applause.

  After several minutes, when the sounds began to die down, hands grabbed her under the arms and she was pulled out from between James’s legs. When she tried to stand, she was stiff, both from the unaccustomed exertion and from her fear that the trick wasn’t going to work.

  It was Ramsey who’d helped her up, and Grace was beside him. “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life,” she breathed, looking at Temperance with eyes full of astonishment. “Did you two practice that?”

  “No,” Temperance said, her hand to her back. “We just—” Breaking off, she looked up at James. He was surrounded by children, each with a pair of skates in hand and wanting him to help put them on. Grace was still waiting for an answer. “We just—” What? Have a natural rapport so we can communicate with just tiny gestures given between us?

  Temperance was saved from answering by the door opening and Eppie and her younger sister bringing in the first of four trays full of food. With a collective squeal, the children ran toward the food, Grace behind them, so Temperance and James were alone at the far end of the ballroom.

  Temperance didn’t know what to say to him. In a way, what they had just done had been very intimate.

  “And what are you planning to teach next Sunday?” he asked; then they both laughed and the awkward moment was gone.

  “You have any horse liniment?” she asked, putting her hand on her hip where she was sure she was bruised.

  “Never need it myself,” James said. “Since I climb mountains and herd sheep and—”

  At that moment one of the older children lost control of his skates and slammed into the back of James. This time he went down in earnest, grabbing Temperance as he fell, so that she landed on top of him.

  Of course all the children thought this was more of the show, and with their mouths full, they laughed at the two of them.

  Temperance pulled herself off James, then looked at him as he stayed where he was, in a crumpled heap on the floor.

  “So?” she said, looking down at him, her eyes full of laughter.

  “In the tack room, third shelf down, on the right. But, first, get these things off of me.”

  Smiling, Temperance bent down, and using the key that was on a string about her neck, she removed his skates; then he sat there while she took hers off as well. By now the floor was full of children, all wearing skates and pulling each other about the room. Frequent thuds of children falling were followed by screams of laughter.

  Standing, James put his arm around Temperance’s shoulders. “Think anyone will miss us?” he asked, standing on one foot.

  She looked at the activity around them, with kids screaming, laughing, some eating, some scooting about on the skates. “Somehow, I don’t think so,” she said, then she caught Grace’s eye and Grace nodded, meaning that Temperance had done well.

  “Come on,” James said. “I know where there’s a bottle of wine and some cheese and something soft for our backsides.”

  “All right,” Temperance said, smiling up at him. His arm was about her shoulders, and one of hers was around his waist. Her other hand was on his hard, flat stomach muscles. Usually when a man offered her wine and “a soft place,” she ran the other way, and if he followed, she’d been known to use the steel point of her umbrella as a means to stop him. “Sounds wonderful,” she said, then helped him limp out the door.

  The “something soft” was a pile of straw that wasn’t too clean, and the wine and cheese was just that: a bottle of wine and a chunk of cheese. No glasses, no pretty porcelain plates, no candles; just sustenance.

  However, as soon as they were in the dirty tack room that smelled of horses and old leather, James sat down on a bale of straw and pulled his shirt off over his head. “Right there,” he said as he held out a bottle of wine to her, then pointed to the back of his left shoulder.

  It took Temperance a moment to realize that he wanted her to rub liniment into that area.

  All her life, she’d prided herself on being a “free spirit,” an enlightened person. So what was she to do now? Say to him that her sense of propriety didn’t allow her to pass a bottle of wine back and forth with a man? That she couldn’t be alone with a half-dressed man? And, besides, wouldn’t that sound absurd when, just ten minutes before, she’d been rolling between his legs?

  “What are you waiting for?” he asked impatiently.

  “For my mother to come storming in and tell me I’m doomed,” Temperance said.

  The look he gave her over his bare shoulder told her that he knew exactly her dilemma. His eyes turned soft and seductive. “You’re not going to turn coward on me now, are you?”

  Ignoring the bottle of wine, as she needed her senses to remain clear, she took the bottle of liniment down from a shelf, poured it on her hands, then began to massage his shoulder. His big, thick, muscular shoulder. On his warm, smooth, dark skin.

  Well, she thought as she tried to override her senses with her brain, she was once again experiencing lust and, as before, she was going to be able to say that she had overcome it. She had not given in to her baser needs and—

  “Care for a tumble in the hay?” James said with a lowered-lashes look up at her.

  That broke the spell by making her laugh. “So tell me about your late wife. If you never liked her, why did you marry her?”

  He grimaced, the invitation gone from his eyes. “For a housekeeper, you certainly are interested in things that aren’t any of your business.”

  “It’s none of my business to entertain the children of your village, either, but I did it, didn’t I?”

  “Oh? When I got there, it didn’t look as though you were being very entertaining. It looked to me like you wanted to run away and hide. Oh! Watch those nails of yours.”

  “Sorry,” Temperance said with no sincerity in her voice. “If you want to rub this on by yourself, just tell me.”

  “No, that’s all right. Lower, yes, yes, that’s the right place.”

  When she saw him close his eyes in what appeared to be ecstasy caused by her touch, she knew she had to either leave or talk