Irish Eyes (Stolen Hearts Romance) Read Online Free Page B

glanced at the young man glaring at him from a poorly patched wingback chair. “I’ve been known to have this effect on women.” Cameron winked at the woman’s overt scrutiny. “Not to worry, though. It tends to wear off once they become adjusted to my sparkling personality.”
    The man harrumphed his opinion of Cameron’s jest.
    “Darlin’, you’re ogling me like I was the ghost of Elvis come back to check into this little Heartbreak Hotel of yours. I don’t suppose you’d want to tell me why that is?”
    “I—we...” She fanned her flushed cheeks with an open hand.
    “Have we met before?”
    Her lips fell open as if to answer yes,’ but the long waves of her hair moved gently as she shook her head “no’ instead.
    Cameron smiled and leaned against the door frame, stealing a moment to study the woman he had sought out. Julia Reed. He’d had her profile and all pertinent information pulled up last night. Just a matter of a few keystrokes for a veteran agent such as himself and he knew more about her then she probably knew there was out there to know.
    She’d chipped a tooth when she was twelve, broken an engagement when she was twenty-one. In college her grades had been average but her commitment to causes made her a stand out. Sometimes she told people that she hadn’t gone to college to get a degree, she’d gone to get an education. She had no credit card debt. No gym membership. No husband, no kids—not even a dog depended on this woman. Yet, Cameron got the feeling anyone could depend on her.
    At least he hoped so, because he needed to depend on her—and before it was all said and done, she would need to depend on him, too.
    He stroked his chin and narrowed one eye as he took in a quick physical survey of her. The blurred picture from a five- year-old newspaper clipping certainly did not do her justice, he concluded, as a trained professional sizing up a potential suspect. Tall and lean with jet-black hair and a classic facial structure. He raised his knuckle to his lips, trying not to laugh at the stiff description that sounded like it belonged on a police report. Julia Reed would not be so easily summarized.
    Yes, she was tall and there seemed not an ounce of fat on her frame, but there was a fragility about her all the same. No husky Amazon here, but a willowy quality, strong yet flexible. Her long hair tumbled over her stalwart shoulders like waves over a rocky shore. The flickering overhead light shone across the inky blackness of her curls. Such hair, he decided, would go silver with age. Not gray or white, but silver—noble, dignified silver.
    This is the hind, of woman a man could grow old with, Cameron thought.
    For an instant he felt a twinge of longing for all that he could never have, all that he had vowed he would forgo until he cleared his family name. He couldn’t ask any woman to share the shame of the secret he hid. And yet, he had often wished that he could find a woman—perhaps a woman like Miss Julia Reed—and finally make a home.
    Funny that only a moment in the presence of this woman should reawaken those old dreams in him. He looked into the depths of those quiet blue eyes, and his heart skipped a hard, unsteady rhythm.
    Where had he seen that face before? he wondered. In a dream? No. For too many years he had seen only one thing in his dreams: his goal, his quest, the one reason he got up in the morning and performed a job that no longer held pleasure or promise for him. Except the promise that he might someday accomplish what he had sworn to do long ago—to right an old wrong and wipe away the shame that had covered his family name for three generations. That’s why he had come today.
    “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
    Cameron tore his gaze from the woman and blinked at the spindly-legged young man who had suddenly bolted up between them. He pushed off from the door frame with his forearm and stepped inside the room, which looked more like a storage shed