LITMIR.BIZ

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are you following me? You aren’t finished back there.”

      “You mean-mouthed, insensitive son of a bitch,” she told him. “Drive. I don’t want all those people watching us. Especially Laura. I might have known she’d hang around just to see if she could pick up something to worry Edith with.” She laced her fingers in her lap. There went another promise she’d made to herself—that she wouldn’t say anything negative about the people at Edwards House.

      “You better get out,” Guy said. He felt something he thought he had finally left behind, that mix of fury and arousal that ought to worry a woman. It worried him.

      Jilly turned sideways in her seat. “I told you to drive. I’ll get back soon enough—not that there’s much to do but make phone calls.”

      “They’re going to blow this into something. The two of us taking off in my car when I’m supposed to be goin’ to work and you’re supposed to be hangin’ around to deal with the formalities. I said goodbye in front of everyone.”

      “Nobody in this town has a reason to think we’re havin’ a lovers’ tiff, if that’s what you mean. It’s pretty clear we’re not lovers. But if you’re worried about your reputation, the sooner you go where they can’t see us, the better. Behind the old laundry is close enough, and it’s private.”

      He puffed up his cheeks, blew the air out and gunned the car. If she wanted him to drive, he’d drive. And she’d better not complain about the result. The tires shrieked forward, went into a spin on a patch of gravel, then lurched on and flew.

      “Slow down,” Jilly told him. “If you’re tryin’ to be cool in front of the gallery, you just blew it. There’s nothing like the sight of a man and woman arguin’ to make folks think they’re more than friends on the outs.”

      Guy gritted his teeth. His heart pounded. He had a monkey on his back and its name was guilt. If he couldn’t buck it off he was no good to anyone—surely not to this little woman with a big mouth but a gentle heart. “That’s the last order you give me. Got it?”

      “Got it,” she said, and laughed, she couldn’t help it. “If I thought you were as mean as you sound, you wouldn’t have to tell me to get out again. I’d do it now, moving or not.”

      “Just tell me what’s goin’ on.”

      “You’re the one who’s going to do the explainin’.”

      He swung the car hard left down an alley and Jilly landed against him. He ignored her pressure on his shoulder. When they straightened out again she buckled her seat belt fast. The abandoned laundry stood against the searing blue sky like an empty prison block, its windows boarded up. Guy drove the perimeter, through tall, crackling weeds and grass that flattened under the front of the vehicle and scratched against the windows.

      Into a neck-jarring, hidden rut, then out again—and he stopped with the bleached and brittle stalks reaching the roof and beyond.

      “There—I brought you where you wanted to go.” Darn it all, he was behaving like a spoiled kid whose date didn’t put out after the prom. Too bad. This was Jilly’s idea.

      “You make me so mad,” she said, and her voice broke pretty much as he’d feared it might.

      “I don’t want to. Just can’t seem to help myself.” He faced her, one knee pulled up and clasped in both hands. “You’re impetuous. You did the first thing that came into your head back there and walked off after me. And you know that wasn’t a good idea.”

      “Why? Because someone might think there’s something new going on between us?”

      He didn’t like what he was feeling. Or did he? If they didn’t go their separate ways, and soon, something was going to explode around here.

      “Why do I attract men who leave me convinced I’m not meant for love?”

      She could have said just about anything but that. He buried his head in his hands. “Am I supposed to answer that?”

      “Damn you, Guy.” She grabbed hold of his short sleeve and pulled on it. She pulled and pushed, gave a final shove and thrust open the door.

      Guy caught her by the arm, but anger could give even a fairly small woman a lot of strength. Jilly wrenched free and all but fell out. She marched around the back of the car and took off into the dead grass jungle, slapping herself a pathway as she went.

      “Damn it, Jilly,” Guy muttered, crossing his arms over the wheel. She hadn’t been thinking when she’d suggested he was attracted to her, but she was so right. She was wrong about the rest, about not being meant for love.

      He turned his head to watch her go—but she’d gone so far, so fast, all he had to follow was a line in the white brush that got a little wider, then waved together again in her wake.

      “You’ll break your fool neck,” he said, and burst out of the car on his side. He started walking fast, pushing straight ahead with his hands and forearms in front of him. He needed to run. One leap to look ahead and he saw he was right on course to catch up with her.

      Jilly choked on the dust and dry ends of grass gone to seed. They filled her nose and mouth and she coughed, then wiped the backs of her hands across her face.

      Get busy, get so busy you don’t have time to think about that ornery man. She didn’t have time for men in her life, anyway. She had a business to run and a house to keep up. And now she had to fix her car, if it could be fixed. That was an expense she hadn’t planned on and she didn’t want to think about buying another one.

      That Impala of Cyrus’s was a fixture in this town and he’d kept it alive—or friends had kept it alive years after it should have gone for scrap. The frame must be bent now. All her fault.

      This was getting her nowhere fast, this anger and rushing away toward nothing in particular. She turned and headed back, veering off toward the side of the building, figuring out how she’d get back to the café without having to see anyone on the way. She’d deal with reports later.

      Guy slammed into her so hard, he couldn’t stop them from falling. The best he could do was use his arms to stop her from taking his full weight. “Don’t you do anythin’ but cry anymore?” He snapped his fool mouth shut.

      “I’m not crying,” she told him, mortified, “the dust is getting in my eyes.”

      “Yeah, well, I’m sorry I walked into you like that.” He made a move to climb off her but she shoved her hands up, between their chests, and pummeled his shoulders. And while she hit him, she struggled to get up.

      Neither of them went anywhere.

      “Hey!” He caught hold of her wrists. “What’s gotten into you? The way you are, I don’t even know you.”

      “Why? Because I’ve got warm blood runnin’ in my veins and when it gets heated up I do somethin’ about it? How would you understand a person like me when you’ve got ice water runnin’ through you?”

      His insides hummed. Looking into her eyes, he said, “Are you trying to goad me, cher? Are you lookin’ for me to take you by force right here under the sky, in this stickery stuff where anyone might happen along? Does that thought excite you?”

      She felt her cheeks throb. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

      He clamped her between his thighs and there was no escape. “I don’t think I’m flattering myself at all. I think you need sex as much as I do. Difference is, I have control of myself and you don’t.”

      A kind of excitement closed her throat and scared her out of her mind. “Let me up.” Wriggling did her no good unless it was a good thing to feel hard evidence that he’d just lied about being in control.

      “Sure. Go right ahead. Get up.” But he wasn’t going to help her. Hell, no, not when he was in some kind of painful heaven with her right where she was.

      She went

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