LITMIR.BIZ

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soft little chin. She was wearing a slinky black skirt with black high heels fastened around the ankle, displaying the sexy arch of her little feet. The black vee-necked blouse she had on was unusually tight, emphasizing her small, firm, rounded breasts in a way that made Judd ache in all the wrong places. A wide fringed black Spanish mantilla completed the outfit. It wasn’t expensive, and it was old, but it was sexy. He wasn’t used to seeing Christabel dressed like that. And suddenly he wondered why she was, and why she wouldn’t look him in the eye. He knew from long experience that she was hiding something.

      He propped a big booted foot on the bottom step of the porch and his narrow eyes fixed on her face.

      “All right, spill it,” he said tersely. “Why are you dressed like that, and why did you come running out the minute you heard me drive up? Are we going on a date, and you forgot to tell me?” he added.

      She lifted her eyes and glared at him. The sarcasm hurt. “Wouldn’t that be the day?” she asked with equal sarcasm. “As it happens, I’m going out dancing.”

      He didn’t react for several seconds. Then sudden anger hardened his lean face. “Dancing? With a man?”

      She straightened. “Yes. With a man.” Her smile was provoking in the extreme. “Go ahead, Judd, tell me you haven’t touched another woman since we married. Tell me you don’t date.”

      The expression on his face was impossible to read. He moved up the steps, towering over her. “Who is he? Some boy from school?”

      She realized with a start that what had seemed harmless and fun was becoming shameful and embarrassing. Her face colored.

      “Not a boy from school,” he guessed. His eyes narrowed again. “Are we going to play twenty questions? Tell me!” he said abruptly.

      “It’s Cash Grier,” she blurted out, disconcerted by the authority in his tone.

      Now he looked menacing as well as angry. “Grier is even older than I am, and he’s got a past I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy’s sister, much less you! You’re not leaving the house with a man like that!”

      Her self-confidence was wilting. She clutched her small purse to her chest. “I’m not running away with him,” she began, trying to recapture lost ground. “We’re going out for pizza and beer...”

      “You’re underage.”

      “I know that! I’m not drinking the beer, he is,” she muttered. “We’re going to dance and eat pizza.”

      His eyes slid over her very slowly. She felt as if he were stroking her bare skin and she felt wobbly on the unaccustomed high heels.

      “Where did you meet Grier?” he persisted.

      She threw up her hands and walked back into the house, leaving him to follow. Obviously, he wasn’t going to stop until he knew everything. She wondered what he meant about Cash’s past. Cash himself had hinted at something unpleasant.

      She tossed her purse and mantilla onto the big easy chair and perched herself on its wide arm, crossing her legs at the ankles. Odd, how intent his eyes were on them for a few seconds.

      “He came out here to talk to you about providing on-site security for the movie people,” she said. “You weren’t here, so I gave him coffee and pie and he asked me out.”

      He leaned against the doorjamb and stared at her from under the low-angled brim of his creamy Stetson. He looked elegant like that, and so sexy that she ached just looking at him. He had powerful long legs in nice-fitting jeans that did nothing to disguise the muscles in them. The .45 automatic he usually carried was in its new holster, replacing the revolver he’d used in the cowboy club shooting match. It sported the new maple handle and the Texas Ranger logo. His white shirt was taut against a muscular chest, a dark shadow under it giving hints about the thick curling dark hair that covered those hard muscles. The Texas Ranger star was on the pocket of that spotless white shirt. Usually he wore a jacket with it this time of year, but it was hot for early October. There was a faint line of perspiration on his top lip.

      “He isn’t taking you to Shea’s,” he said tautly.

      Her eyebrows arched. “Why not? Judd, I’m almost twenty-one,” she reminded him. “Most of my friends have been going there on Friday nights for years. It’s not a bad place. They just sell beer.”

      “They have fistfights. Once, there was a shooting out there.”

      “They’ve had two bouncers since Calhoun Ballenger almost wrecked the place protecting his wife, Abby, before they were married. That was years ago, Judd!”

      “The shooting was last year,” he pointed out.

      She sighed. “Cash is a police officer. He carries a gun. If anybody tries to shoot me, I’m sure he’ll shoot back.”

      He knew that. He also knew things about Grier that he wasn’t comfortable disclosing. The man would take care of her, certainly, but Judd didn’t like the idea of Christabel going out with another man. It bothered him that it did. “It doesn’t look right.”

      Her eyes met his, and she felt the years of loneliness making a heavy place inside her. “I go to school, I do the books, I check up on the boys while they’re working, I ride fence lines and help dip and brand cattle and doctor sick ones,” she said. “I haven’t been to a dance since my sophomore year of high school, and I don’t guess I’ve had a real date yet. I’m lonely, Judd. What can it hurt to let me go out dancing? We’re only married on paper, anyway. You don’t want me. You said so.”

      He knew that. It didn’t help.

      She got up from the sofa and went to him. Even in high heels, he towered over her. She looked up into his turbulent dark eyes. “I’m only going out for one evening,” she pointed out. “Don’t make me feel like I’m committing adultery. You know me better than that.”

      He drew in a long breath. Involuntarily, his lean hand went to her loosened hair and he gathered a thick strand of it in his fingers, testing its silky softness. “I’ve never seen you dressed like this.”

      “I can’t go out with a man like Grier wearing jeans and a sweatshirt,” she said with a gamine smile.

      He frowned. “What do you mean, a man like Grier?”

      She lifted one shoulder, uneasy at the contact of his fingers that was making her whole body tingle, and trying to hide it. She could even feel the heat of his body this close, and smell the spicy oriental aftershave he liked to wear. “He’s a very mature, sophisticated sort of person. I didn’t want to embarrass him by showing up in my working gear.”

      He frowned. “I’ve never taken you anywhere,” he recalled.

      She blinked, disconcerted. “You saved my life,” she pointed out. “Saved the ranch. Kept us all going, looked out for me and Mama while she was alive. You’re still shouldering the bulk of the responsibility for running things around here. You didn’t need to start taking on responsibility for my entertainment as well, for heaven’s sake!”

      He frowned at the way she put it, as if everything he did for her was a chore, an obligation. She almost glowed when she smiled. She had a pert, sexy little figure, even if she didn’t know it. She had such warmth inside her that he always felt good when he was with her. Was Grier, with his cold, dark past, reacting similarly to the brightness in Christabel? Was he looking for a place to warm his cold heart?

      She’d agreed to go out with the man. Was she attracted to him? He, of all men, knew how very innocent she was. She’d considered her paper wedding vows binding. He doubted if she’d ever really kissed anyone, or been kissed, unless you could call that cool peck on the cheek he gave her in the probate judge’s office a kiss. He thought about Grier, a ladies’ man if there ever was one, kissing her passionately.

      “No,” he said involuntarily. “Hell, no!”

      “What?” she queried, puzzled by the look on his face.

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