Come Near Me Read Online Free Page B

sides, balancing
himself rather precariously as he turned his head. He searched out
the direction of the scream through the trees, the location of the
female.
    If he’d had both feet firmly on the stone, he would
have been fine. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.
    A moment later, he was sitting rump-down in the
stream, his fists dug into the soft, muddy bottom, watching a blur
of green and white and vibrant, brilliant, dark red dance across
the stones, including the one from which he had lately,
reluctantly, departed.
    “Oh, my! Oh, my goodness! Did I push you?” On the
far bank, the blur of color resolved itself into the form of a
heartbreakingly beautiful young woman who was just now pressing her
hands against her mouth, ineffectually pushing back a giggle even
as she tried to catch her breath. “Well, of course I did, didn’t I?
I most distinctly remember feeling a bump as I flew over the
stones. I was minding my feet, you understand. I should have been
looking higher, shouldn’t I? Are you very wet?”
    Adam looked down at himself and the scant foot of
water he sat in, then at the female once more. The apparition. The
goddess. He resisted the impulse to shake his head, clear his
vision. “That, I believe, madam, would depend upon your definition
of the word,” he said without malice, lifting his hands slightly so
that the gentle current could rinse the mud from his fingers. “I’m
not soaked. Even drenched. Then again, damp may be too mild a
definition. Are you all right? Is someone chasing you? I thought I
heard a scream a moment before we, um, met.”
    “Oh. That.” The fantasy, fairy-tale princess—for
Adam could think of no other way to describe the beauty who stood
before him, stood over him—giggled in a very human way. It was a
very infectious giggle; he found himself stifling a laugh of his
own.
    Which was ludicrous. He shouldn’t be laughing. He
should be mad as fire. But all the fire he knew was there, in her
hair, and he longed for nothing more than to warm himself in its
heat. Except, of course, that he was already much too warm. Perhaps
approaching delirium. Another rather prudent dunk in the cold water
was probably what he really needed.
    “Yes, madam. That ,” Adam said, regaining his
feet and his scattered wits as gracefully as a wet, dripping man
can. Then, with the least amount of haste he could feign, he
completed his journey across the stream, ignoring the
stepping-stones as being too little, too late. He splashed through
the water without regard to his boots, to stand beside her on the
bank. “What was it? Bandits? Great woolly beasts? A bumblebee
trying to nest in your hair?”
    “It was Bumble, actually, but he’s gone,” she told
him, then shocked him to his toes as she ran behind a nearby tree,
only to reappear a few moments later holding one of her petticoats
out to him. “Here. Use this to dry yourself.” When he hesitated,
she waved it in front of his face. “Oh, go on. Don’t be a gudgeon.
It’s old as Moses, and you can’t hurt it. And get that spot of mud
on your cheek—the left one. Ah, that’s it. There! Don’t you feel
better now?”
    “Did—did you say Bumble ?” Adam finished
wiping at his cheek, drying his hands, and made to return the
petticoat, which made him feel even sillier than he had in
accepting it in the first place. Besides, it was warm from her
body, smelled of lavender, and his only other option was to beg she
let him keep it forever.
    He quickly rolled the garment into a ball and laid
it on the bank, wondering when it was he had reverted from a
gentleman of the world and into a stumbling, stuttering schoolboy.
Better yet, when had he last been called a gudgeon? When had anyone
last dared?
    The apparition in front of him pushed back a lock of
dark-red hair and nodded. “Why, yes. I did say Bumble. He’s one of
the marquess of Daventry’s bulls. His prize bull, I imagine.
Someone must have forgotten to latch the gate to his pasture,