LITMIR.BIZ

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“Not to be forced into marrying you.”

      “That’s a foregone conclusion.” He puffed away on his cigarette. “Tell you what, society girl. If worse comes to worst and we have to go through with it, I’ll maintain that antebellum disaster for you, and you and Katy can spend summers there.”

      She turned her head and studied his unyielding profile. “You would?”

      “I would.” And he meant it, she knew. When he gave his word, he kept it.

      She pursed her lips. “We couldn’t just have a quick marriage and a quicker annulment? To satisfy the terms of the will?”

      “What would that do to Katy?” he asked suddenly.

      She drew in a slow breath and let it out. “Oh.”

      “Yes, oh. She’s so damned excited about having you here, she’s half crazy,” he said. “I told her,” he added with a cold stare, “that you were coming out here so that we could decide whether or not we wanted to get married.”

      “She’ll never believe you want to marry me,” she replied tersely.

      “Won’t she?” A mocking smile curled his lips. “I told her I was nursing a secret passion for you and hoped to win you over.”

      “You bas—!”

      “Uh, uh, uh,” he cautioned. “None of those unladylike words, if you please. You’ll embarrass me.”

      “Satan himself couldn’t do that,” she shot back. “Oh, Jude, let me go home,” she moaned. “I can’t fight you. I’m too tired.”

      “Then stop trying. You won’t win.”

      She laughed bitterly. “Don’t I know it?” She turned away and looked out the window at the flat horizon as they headed south out of San Antonio. Tears pricked at her eyes as she thought how far away from home she was. From her mother. A sob caught in her throat and tears burst from her eyes as the control she’d maintained so valiantly slipped and broke.

      “My God, you don’t even cry like a normal woman,” he ground out. “Stop that!”

      She shook her head and dabbed at the tears. “I loved her,” she managed shakily. “It’s only been two days, for God’s sake, Jude…!”

      “Well, all the tears in the world won’t bring her back, will they?” he asked irritably. “And in the shape she was in, would you really want to?”

      She shifted on the seat. He couldn’t understand grief, she supposed, never having felt it. His mother had died when he was an infant, and his father had never been demonstrative. He had been even more unapproachable than Jude, worlds harder. Which was saying a lot, because the Rawhide Man was like steel.

      She dashed the tears away and took a deep breath. “I don’t want to live with a coldhearted statue like you,” she said. “You’re…you’re like rawhide.”

      “But you’ll do it, if it comes to that. You’ll do it for Katy’s sake.” He turned onto the long road that led to the ranch.

      “I’ll run away!” she said dramatically.

      “I’ll come after you and bring you back,” he said carelessly.

      “Jude!” she ground out, exasperated.

      “Remember that summer when you were fifteen?” he recalled with a chuckle. “You went out into the brush with Jess Bowman, and I rode all night to find you. You were huddled up in his coat with a twisted ankle, and he was walking down the road trying to flag down a car.”

      “I remember,” she said, shuddering. “You broke his nose.”

      “I hit when I get mad,” he said. “He riled me plenty, leaving you out there alone at night with rattlers crawling and cougars on the loose.”

      “He couldn’t have carried me,” she protested.

      “I did,” he reminded her. “And I wasn’t as heavy in those days as I am now.”

      No, he’d filled out and firmed up and he was devastating. All man. She remembered that brief walk in his hard arms, the strength and power of his frame as he strode along. It was the safest she’d ever felt in her life—and the most afraid.

      “That was the summer after Elise died, before I got Katy away from her stepfather. The last summer, too, that you ever spent any length of time at the ranch,” he recalled. “That was when you started avoiding me.”

      She felt her cheeks go hot at the memory. She’d felt something that long-ago night that had haunted her ever since. And because it had frightened her, she’d avoided the ranch whenever possible, except for flying visits to see Katy. And the family reunions, of course, which came frequently during the year. Not that they were really family, but because of the partnership of her father and his, she was always included and expected to take part.

      “Why did you stay away?” he asked quietly. “We’ve had our disagreements over the years, God knows, but I’ve never hurt you.”

      That was true enough. She stared down at her hands, folded in her lap. “I don’t know,” she lied.

      He lifted a careless eyebrow. “Were you afraid I’d make a pass?”

      She flushed, and he threw back his head and laughed deeply.

      “You were fifteen,” he reminded her with a chuckle. “And you had even less to draw a man’s eye than you do now.” His eyes were on her small breasts, and she wanted to dive through the window.

      Defensively she folded her arms over her chest and lowered her eye to the floorboard, so embarrassed that she wanted to cry.

      “For God’s sake, stop that,” he growled. “You’d appeal to some men, I suppose. You just don’t appeal to me.”

      Was that conscience, she wondered numbly? If it was, it didn’t console her much.

      “I’ll get down on my knees and give thanks for that small blessing,” she said coldly.

      “You’re the one with the small blessings, all right,” he murmured wickedly.

      She half turned in the seat to glare at him, and he chuckled at her fury.

      “God, you’re something when you get mad,” he said with rare mischief. “All dark eyes and wild hair and teeth and claws. It sure as hell beats that so-elegant coolness you wear around you most of the time.”

      She regained her composure with an effort and stared at him calmly. “My mother raised me to be a lady,” she told him.

      “You’re that,” he agreed coldly. “But you’d be a hell of a lot more exciting if she’d raised you to be a woman, instead.”

      There was no reply to a blatant remark like that, so she turned her attention back to the darkened landscape and ignored him. Which seemed to be exactly what he wanted.

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