To Love a Wilde Read Online Free Page B

enough that the heat from his palm scorched the skin on her back. The kiss lasted littlelonger than a few seconds before he’d broken free, a deep frown settling over his handsome, chiseled features.
    Yasmine had been so embarrassed she’d wanted to crawl up into a hole somewhere and die. She didn’t need him to say a word—the look on his face, a mixture of anger and pity, said it all.
    She stumbled away and spun around, hoping to God he’d just leave and not say anything to her. Just leave. She felt a hand on her shoulder and swallowed down the melon-ball lump that had gathered in her gut and turned to face him.
    “Yasmine, I—”
    She held up a hand, stopping him before he could continue, and forced a trembling smile on her face. “I’m sorry, Holt, I don’t know what came over me … Can we just forget that I did that? Please?” The last word was barely above a whisper. She was so choked up with embarrassment she simply wanted him to go away.
    His eyes searched hers, concern darkening his blue eyes to a smoky gray. With a nod he patted her awkwardly on the shoulder and left her room.
    As soon as he did, Yasmine, in true teenage-girl form, full-on angst, cried herself to sleep.
    The next day, Jed packed up the truck and he and Holt headed off to get him settled into the dorms.
    That was the last time Yasmine was ever alone with Holt.
    Since then, on the occasions she came to visit her aunt, she made sure that Holt was nowhere around. Anything else would have been too mortifying.
    Yasmine settled back in the seat, and unable to resist, again cast Holt a sideways glance.
    When he’d taken her bags at the airport, she’d caught the way his glance had stolen over her and had barely refrained from patting her hair and checking her makeup. Tall, he stood at least a foot taller than she. Thankfully she’d opted to wear heels traveling, giving her the added inches so she at least didn’t have to crane her neck to see his face.
    He hadn’t removed his Stetson when he greeted her, and glancing up at him, her breath had caught at the back of her throat, as he was a living, breathing poster boy for raw, masculine cowboy if she ever saw one.
    Lord, the man was fine, she thought, expelling a long breath while mentally reciting over and over that she was an adult and no longer an adolescent with a schoolgirl’s crush.
    When he’d turned toward her after placing her luggage in the back, her self-affirming mantra reminding her of her sophistication flew right on out the window, and she felt like the shy, adolescent she had once been all over again.
    The fact that he had been checking her out just as much as she had him hadn’t escaped her attention. That had been just enough to boost her confidence and make her realize that
she
was the one in control.
    But in no way was she going to delude herself into thinking anything more of his casual appraisal than what it was. She was well aware of her attributes, without conceit. Although not as beautiful as thewomen he dated, she felt confident in the way she looked. She knew she’d changed some in both looks and attitude, grown up a lot, since the last time he had seen her, and the change no doubt was one he noticed. But that’s all it was.
    She inched closer to the door.
    And he was in for a big surprise if he thought she still held on to that silly schoolgirl crush.

Chapter 4
    “D o you like what you see?” Holt asked Yasmine, as she’d been staring out of the truck’s passenger window for several moments.
    Immediately he felt like an idiot, trying to come up with some lame attempt at conversation. In his desire to find something clever to say, to keep their conversation going, his mind had gone blank, the only thing surfacing being about the weather.
    If his brothers could see him now, the self-proclaimed love doctor fumbling trying to come up with conversation, they’d break their necks falling out laughing at him.
    “The weather, I mean,” he clarified, clearing