The Temptation of Your Touch by Teresa Medeiros Page A

“Her.”
    Angelica Cadgwyck gazed down upon them from her exalted perch, her lush lips quirked as if she were hiding some delightful secret that could only be coaxed from her with a kiss.
    “Ah,” Pippa said softly. “So our lady has already added another heart to her collection. Her appetites really are insatiable, aren’t they?”
    “Up until the moment Lord Dravenwood saw the portrait, I would have sworn the man didn’t have a heart.”
    Anne had seen the look on the earl’s face often enough on the faces of other men. Men who stopped in their tracks and gaped at the woman in the portrait as if they had been struck both mute and blind to everything but the beauty before them.
    As Anne had watched their new master succumb to that same old spell, she had felt herself disappear, winking out like a star at the approach of dawn. Sheshould have been pleased her efforts to make herself invisible had met with such success.
    Instead, she had felt a sharp twinge of disappointment.
    For the briefest blink of time, she had allowed herself to believe this one might be different. That he might be immune to such superficial charms. She couldn’t imagine what had prompted her to entertain such an absurd and dangerous notion. Perhaps it was the cynical curl to his lip, his droll sarcasm, or the way the grooves bracketing his mouth deepened when other men might have smiled.
    But the second she’d seen him surrender his heart—and his wits—into Angelica’s lily-white hands, she had known he was no different from any other man.
    As she gazed up into Angelica’s knowing eyes, she felt a pang of something even sharper than disappointment, something more akin to jealousy. Now she was being truly ridiculous. Angelica would serve them well, just as she always had.
    “Come, Pippa. I need to send Dickon up with some supper for our new master. The sooner he takes himself off to bed, the sooner he can make the acquaintance of the woman of his dreams.” She lowered the candle, robbing Angelica of her halo of light. As she herded Pippa toward the stairs, Anne stole one last glance over her shoulder at theportrait, barely resisting the childish urge to poke her tongue out at Angelica’s smug visage. “And his nightmares.”
    A NGELICA C ADGWYCK STOOD GAZING down at the stranger who had invaded her home. Even with his unshaven jaw and unruly hair, there was no denying he was a beautiful man. But she had learned the hard way that a beautiful face could hide a dark and destructive heart.
    She had hoped to catch a glimpse into that heart by coming here tonight, but he was no less guarded in sleep than he had been in wakefulness. His lips were pressed into a forbidding line, and the faint furrow between his brows made it look as if he were still scowling, even in his dreams. She was seized by a peculiar urge to touch him, to see if she could soothe that furrow away with the tender caress of her fingertip.
    But he was flesh and she was nothing more than a dream, deliberately fashioned to haunt the hearts of men.
    She was already beginning to suspect this man was no stranger to ghosts. He muttered something beneath his breath, then gritted his teeth and stirred restlessly, sending a lock of dark hair tumbling over his brow.
    Angelica reached out a pale hand toward him, yearning only to touch something warm and solid and surging with life before she had to go drifting back into the cold, lonely night.
    M AX HAD NEVER BEEN a man who dreamed. When he had confessed that to his fiancée, Clarinda had looked up at him with her dazzling green eyes and exclaimed, “Don’t be ridiculous! Of course you dream. All men do. You just don’t remember what you dreamed.”
    He’d given little credence to the notion until late that night in his bed at Cadgwyck Manor when he felt a woman’s cool fingers tenderly brush the hair from his heated brow. He groaned and shifted restlessly in the bed. That simple touch was somehow both soothing and arousing,