LITMIR.BIZ

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that the bruise was hardly noticeable.

      She’d gotten caught in the snarled traffic, and as a result had only arrived home a mere half an hour before, but the situation was well in hand. She’d plugged in her hot rollers, then stripped and taken a fast shower and washed her hair. By the time she’d blown her hair dry, the rollers were hot, and she’d set a few of them in her hair for lift and control. Makeup had taken an additional ten minutes. Now she took the rollers from her hair and deftly brushed it into a casually sophisticated style that swirled about her shoulders. A glance at the clock told her that she had twelve minutes left, ample time to get dressed.

      Tessa disliked hurrying, but she seldom had to hurry, because she had everything organized. Organization was insurance against haste. She knew where everything was, and had her routine well planned; if circumstances conspired against her and she was thrown off schedule, she would hurry, if work were involved, but she never hurried for personal reasons. Oddly, she was almost never late, as if the little gremlins who disrupted schedules realized that they wouldn’t get any satisfaction from watching her dash around madly, so they seldom bothered with her. At least, that was the explanation she’d worked out in her mind, and it suited her as well as any other.

      She sprayed herself lightly with her favorite perfume, then put on her underwear, her hosiery and her dress. The dress was cream-colored silk, with a slim skirt and a wrap bodice, and long sleeves to keep her arms warm in the April night. She slipped pearl studs into her ears, then fastened a single long strand of creamy pearls around her neck. Pale beige sling-backs lifted her a few inches higher, giving her a willowy, swaying grace. Just as she picked up her matching beige evening purse, the doorbell rang, and she nodded in satisfaction. “Right on time,” she told herself in congratulation, and she meant herself, not him.

      She opened the door to him, and as soon as she met his dark blue eyes she felt a sudden rushing warmth inside. Darn, but the man packed a wallop! All he had to do was smile and a woman was reeling on the ropes. But none of what she felt was in her lazy smile as she invited him inside. “Would you like a drink before we go?”

      “No, thanks.” He looked around her small, cozy apartment, full of comfortable furniture and warm lighting, with her many unrelated collections filling every nook and corner. “Nice. It looks homey.”

      With some people, “homey” would have been a polite way of saying “cluttered,” but somehow Tessa felt that he meant it. Andrew would have turned up his nose at the comfortable but definitely unfashionable decor, but then Andrew was very much concerned with keeping up his image. She sighed; she’d promised herself several times that she’d never think of Andrew again, but somehow he sneaked back into her mind at odd times. Why should she think of him now, when she was going out with a man who put Andrew completely in the shade? Perhaps her subconscious was dredging up Andrew’s memory in an effort to put her on her guard and protect her against a man who was so much more dangerous than Andrew had ever been.

      His car was a rental, but a luxury model for all that. She’d heard it said that Brett Rutland was Mr. Carter’s fair-haired boy, and perhaps he was. After helping her into the car, he walked around to the driver’s side and folded his long length behind the wheel. When she considered his height, she realized that he had to have a large car; a man with legs that long would never be comfortable in a sports model.

      “I made reservations for seven o’clock,” he said, and she caught a glint of amusement in his normally controlled expression. “You should be home by ten-thirty; can you stay awake that long?”

      “I might,” she drawled, not giving him an inch.

      A tiny smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

      “I’ll try to make sure you stay awake,” he said in a voice that almost purred with sensuality.

      Oh, she’d just bet he would! Probably the only time any woman had gone to sleep on him was in his arms, after the loving was finished.

      “What part of the South are you from?” he asked casually, as if he hadn’t read her file.

      “I was born in Mobile, Alabama. But when I was thirteen my mother and I moved to Tennessee to live with her sister.” Those were the bare facts; they didn’t tell of her mother’s long battle with ill health, the poverty they’d endured, the times when there simply hadn’t been anything to eat because her mother hadn’t been able to work. Finally her mother had given up and swallowed her stubborn pride and asked her sister to drive down from Tennessee to get them, and even then she’d asked for Tessa’s sake, not her own. It was just that her mother’s entire family had been against Tessa’s father, and they’d been proved right, for he’d walked out on his family when Tessa was too young even to remember him. Tessa’s mother had lived barely a year after the move, and after that there’d been only Tessa and Silver in the old farmhouse just outside of Sevierville.

      “What made you move out here?”

      “I wanted to see something of the country,” Tessa replied easily. She wasn’t about to tell him about Andrew. She’d hated the idea of leaving, but Aunt Silver had talked her into it. She wasn’t running, Aunt Silver had said; she was turning her back on a bad situation and walking away from it. Well, Andrew thought she’d run, but eventually Tessa had come to realize that what Andrew thought didn’t matter worth a hoot. If only Andrew hadn’t been a hot, rising young executive at the company where Tessa had worked!

      “Do you like it?”

      “Well enough. What about you? You have a bit of a drawl yourself, but I can’t place it.”

      He looked surprised, as if she wasn’t supposed to ask any of the questions. “I’m from Wyoming. My father and I own a ranch there.”

      “A real ranch? Don’t you miss it?” Her eyes had brightened with interest, and she’d turned in her seat to face him, a movement that made the draped bodice of her dress gape open just a bit, enough to allow his quick glance to caress the soft, beginning curve of her breast. He wanted to put his hand inside her dress and feel the satiny swell, to make her nipple pucker against his palm. The jolt of pure desire that hit him took him by surprise, and he had to force himself to concentrate on her question.

      “Yes, I miss it.” The admission surprised him, because he’d been ignoring the increasing need to walk away from the whole rat race and go back to what he’d grown up doing, ranching. Old Tom was proud of his son for making it big in the business world, and Brett had to admit that he’d enjoyed the challenge of it himself. But now…he was getting older, and so was old Tom, and when it came down to it there was nothing that gave him the satisfaction of a hard day’s work in the saddle. He wondered what this soft, sleekly sophisticated creature beside him would say if he told her that more and more often he wanted to go home, to Wyoming and the growing Rutland spread.

      “I’m going to go home, someday,” she said softly. “This isn’t going to be my permanent home. Home is an old farmhouse that needs a coat of paint, and a dilapidated barn behind it that even the old cow was afraid to go in.” She laughed a little at her memories, but they were good, warm memories, because Aunt Silver had filled that old farmhouse with enough love to completely shelter her young, confused niece. Aunt Silver had left the old farm now, though she still owned it, and moved to a modern house in Gatlinburg, but Tessa meant to fix up the old farmhouse and live in it someday. The best times of her life had been spent there.

      Looking at her now, Brett found it hard to believe that her childhood had been a deprived one. She looked as expensive as a woman from a moneyed, blue-blooded background, educated in a private school in Virginia. Why would she want to go back, if she had it so much better here?

      Tessa thoroughly approved of the restaurant he’d chosen; she’d never been there before, but the interior was dim and the diners were all discreetly isolated, while the music was low and pleasant. They were shown to a private little alcove, where a candelabrum with three tall white tapers was the only light. The table was small, and she found that when they were seated their knees bumped. Their eyes met across the table, and a slow, sleepy smile touched his lips and made his eyelids droop heavily. He spread his legs until they were

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