Hello Stranger

“Touch me again,” Ethan growled, “and I’ll kill you with this.”

West drew his hand back instantly, his gaze falling to the utensil in Ethan’s grip. “That’s a spoon.”

“I know.”

The thought of her was deep inside him, at the center of every thought and sensation, as if he existed only as a vessel to contain her.

“In fact, it was ridiculous, how dashing he was, all brass and brawn. Only to you would I admit that when I heard his Irish brogue, I nearly began batting my eyelashes and simpering like the ingénue from some second-rate playhouse.”

“Of course.” She paused before adding wryly, “Although when I mentioned you to my father, he warned that you were dangerous.”

“I can be.”

Garrett gave him a superior glance. “Every man likes to think there’s a part of his nature that remains untamed and unsubdued.”

“You know all about men, do you?” he asked with an edge of mockery.

“Mr. Ransom, the male sex has ceased to be a mystery ever since my first course in practical anatomy, which included the dissection of a cadaver.”

Everything about Garrett Gibson was . . . delicious. The dissecting gaze, the voice as crisp as the icing on a lemon cake. The compassion that drove her to treat the undeserving poor as well as the deserving. The purposeful walk, the relentless energy, the self-satisfaction of a woman who neither concealed nor apologized for her own intelligence. She was sunlight and steel, spun into a substance he’d never encountered before.

Ransom, if you don’t mind, I prefer easing into a new topic with a transitional phrase or two