Читать книгу A Western Christmas Homecoming: Christmas Day Wedding Bells / Snowbound in Big Springs / Christmas with the Outlaw - Kathryn Albright - Страница 19

That night Rand couldn’t sleep. Neither could Alice, as far as he could tell. He couldn’t hear her breathing, and he suspected she was lying awake four feet away from him, wondering whether he was asleep. Being in a hotel room with her wasn’t like sleeping rolled up in blankets beside a campfire; this was far more dangerous.

The problem was he had surreptitiously watched her peel off that red dress and a silky-sounding petticoat, and then he’d kept right on watching right down to her lacy camisole and frilly drawers. By the time she crawled under the blue quilt covering her bed, his groin was swollen and he was plenty hard.

This is just plain damn crazy.

Now he lay awake, aching and feeling lonelier than he’d ever been in his life. He realized suddenly that nothing was going to help until two things happened. First, Dorothy’s murderer was caught. And second, he could hold Alice in his arms and kiss her for as long as he wanted.

But God knew that might never happen. Not the catching the murderer part, but the Alice part. He was sure of his ability to apprehend a killer; he was less sure about Alice. Lolly Maguire might want him to kiss her, but what about Alice Montgomery? What would Alice want?

He flopped over and closed his eyes again.

Alice listened to Rand toss and turn for another hour until all at once she couldn’t stand it one more minute. “Rand!”

He sat straight up in bed. “Yeah? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Everything.”

“Well, which is it, ‘nothing’ or ‘everything’? Or maybe it’s just ‘something,’ huh?”

She twisted to face him. “Rand, you are absolutely no help in a crisis.”

“What crisis? What are you talking about? We’ve barely started to solve your sister’s murder... What crisis are you referring to?”

“I’m...worried. And I can’t sleep.”

“Maybe you’re hungry.”

She had no answer to that. At midnight he had conducted her downstairs to the dining room, where she had devoured fried chicken and mashed potatoes and he had downed a platter of dry scrambled eggs and bacon.

“Actually,” she said hesitantly, “feeling hungry isn’t the problem.”

“But?” His voice sounded both sleepy and exasperated.

She couldn’t answer. She lay still for a long time, wondering what was wrong. She was feeling hungry for something, but it wasn’t food.

“I don’t know what’s wrong, Rand. Something is nagging at the back of my mind, but I don’t know what it is.”

“And this is your crisis, is it?” he said in a tired voice. “Something ‘nagging’?”

“Well, yes. I’m feeling restless and upset and confused, and I’m starting to realize how alone I am now that Dottie is gone. I feel lost, Rand.”

He groaned, and the next thing he knew she started to cry and he was sitting on the bed beside her. He pulled her upright and held her tight against him.

“Alice,” he breathed.

“Don’t talk, Rand. Just hold me and listen. All of a sudden I’m frightened. Not about play-acting as Lolly Maguire, I know I can ferret out information from the miners at the Golden Nugget that you can use to catch Dottie’s murderer. It’s something else, something I’ve never felt before.”