Excerpt of Deception by Kris Kennedy

England, 1294

.....Sophia awoke with two firm convictions: she needed to know more about Mistral Company, and she needed gowns. It was simply a matter of which should come first.

She stood in the great hall of the apartment, peering at the huge oaken coffers scattered about the room, then down at her body. Account books, or gowns?

She went to find Kier.

"Kier," she called out softly as she pushed open the door that led to the small outdoor portico, where he had slept last night.

She stopped short. Her heart almost stopped beating.

He was half–dressed, wearing only breeches. His shirt was off and he was engaged in some sort of physical exertion that made her knees feel watery.

His body was stretched out low over the ground, like a plank. He held himself up on the balls of his feet and one hand. The other was tucked in the small of his back as he lowered himself on his hand, very slowly, until the tip of his nose touched the earth.

Then, just as slowly, he unbent his elbow and pushed his body back up again.

She made a gasping, breathy sort of sound.

Birds were plentiful amid the greenery of the old Roman vineyard entangled on the hillside, and they sang riotously in the morning air. Sounds from the town and quay below floated up too, shouts announcing new wine, someone calling for additional rope, squawking chickens. Amid all this, the sound Sophia had made was such a small sound. Likely, Kier had not even noticed.

Without turning his head, he said, "What is it, Sophia?" He lowered his body down again.

She yanked her jaw shut. "I was . . . I thought to inquire . . ."

His hair, untethered, fell across his cheek as he turned to look up at her, one palm still overturned at the small of his back. He was covered in a magnificent sheen of sweat.

The perspiration covering her was not magnificent. It was hot and uncomfortable, but he, he looked like a Greek statue in the rain. His arms and back were contours of sculpted muscle. And his back . . . Good God.

She took a step back in horror. The valley of his spine and plains of his lower back were satiny–smooth, but across his shoulder blade and like a brand over the ridge of his shoulder, an entire swath of flesh was burned, scarred, puckered, searing white, folding back on itself like jagged teeth marks.

"Sophia?" he said curtly.

She tore her gaze up. "I was . . . perhaps . . . wondering . . . I mean to say . . ." She was babbling. Had she ever babbled before? "Your back—"

He pushed up off his hands and leaped lightly to his feet, and yanked a tunic off the bench behind him. "You are here to discuss my back?"

She snapped her gaze away. "Of course not."

"Then what?"

His rough–spun breeches hung loosely around his hips, draping down on one side, so she saw the flat bone of his hip. The drawstring dangled loosely before his . . .

"The books," she managed to say. She might have squeaked it.

He jammed the tunic down over his head, covering his chest and ridged stomach. She tore her gaze up. His sweat–damped head came out the top and the gaze he pinned on her was grim.

"What books?"