LITMIR.BIZ

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      On a shudder, North pressed the cordless telephone tighter against his ear and bolted himself inside the stall with his pet llamas. Camels, he called them when he was feeling affectionate or worried, which was all the time, ever since Little Camel had been born so puny.

      Not that it was any quieter inside their stall. Not with that distressed cow in labor, bawling and fit to be tied again.

      “What was that you said, Dee Dee?” North demanded.

      He liked Dee Dee Woods even if she’d set her sights on him as a future son-in-law for all the wrong reasons.

      “I heard you’d be in town,” Dee Dee shrieked. “So, I called to invite you to supper.”

      The cow started kicking so loud North could barely hear her.

      “It’ll just be Sam and me…I promise!”

      “All right.”

      “Seven-thirty sharp.”

      He said bye and hung up.

      “Boys,” he shouted. “I was on the phone. Y’all were hollering so loud, I couldn’t hear myself think. I just did a very stupid thing.”

      “W.T. let go, and she kicked me—two hooves, square in the chest!” Jeff yelled back at him. “Get down here, King!”

      North was so mad he stayed put.

      Damn it. It was Jeff’s fault he’d said yes to Dee Dee Woods. Gentry deserved to sweat. Hell, droplets of the stuff were trickling from North’s wet black hair, soaking his denim shirt and blue surgical overalls as he considered sitting down to dinner in the Woodses’ house again.

      He’d said yes.

      Not to worry. You have a date with Maria on Saturday. You’re through with Melody.

      Just talking to her mother had brought everything back, especially that night.

      North stood alone in a stall, occupied not by a cow or horse, but by that unlikely pair of camels and wondered if he should call Dee Dee back and send his regrets.

      He began to frown in earnest as he stroked the mama llama. Then he eyed her gangly newborn more worriedly. The mother was dark brown with black patches on her face and rump. Her milk wouldn’t come, and the baby—an impossibly skinny runt who was all ribs and neck and match-stick legs—couldn’t suckle.

      For some foolish reason, even after nights spent chasing the Midnight Bandit, North had been getting to the barn at 4:00 a.m. to play nursemaid to the shy baby llama, warming bottles, cradling him, feeding him. Even so, Little Camel wasn’t putting on weight.

      Jeff yelled, “Time to play vet, King.”

      “See you later, Little Camel,” North whispered with more affection than he wanted to feel.

      The shy, scared baby reminded him of…

      He saw a little girl on the ground, her skirts hiked, her skinny knees torn and bloody; worse, her smoky-blue eyes dark with fear. Abruptly the king stopped that memory.

      His defiant boot heels echoing all the way to the rafters, North stalked across the concrete floor of his barn toward the scuffle of his men and the cow in that distant stall.

      It was late August and 113 degrees in the shade outside if it was a degree. Inside the barn felt like a sauna. He could almost feel the beige dust that coated his wavy hair and dark skin turn to mud and ooze under his collar.

      North was exhausted, on edge, but he forced himself to concentrate on the job ahead instead of on…on Melody.

      Damn her hide…or rather her silky, golden skin. And she was soft—he’d never forget how good she’d felt the first time he’d accidentally touched her and she’d jumped as if she’d been shot. Not that every nerve in his body hadn’t popped like sparklers, too.

      Why the hell had Dee Dee called? He didn’t want Melody on his mind. For months he’d refused to think about her.

      He didn’t still want her, still dream about her. He didn’t. Not after what she’d done. Not after what she hadn’t done.

      But if some idiotic part of him still did want her, that was the part he was trying damned hard to kill by working himself so hard. His misplaced affection for the wrong woman had jeopardized not only his pride and his heart, but also his family and their ranch.

      He had a position to uphold. When he married, if he married after what she’d put him through, it would be to a mature, sensible woman who understood ranching, who could contribute something of value to El Dorado, who would lend sanity to his hard life instead of chaos, who could make commitments and stick to them. He wanted a harmonious marriage to a woman, who could show a man she loved him in a warm womanly way, to a woman like Maria Langly, who had been born and bred to ranch life, just as he had.

      North was fighting for his ranch, his legacy and his world. His back was against the wall. He had no time to waste on a woman who’d never known for sure whether she wanted him, a woman who would never be anything but trouble.

      Unbidden came the vision of a long, cool slip of a girl in skintight jeans and a halter top. Melody did have the cutest and most mischievous smile and the softest honeyred, straight hair. She smelled good, too. And, boy, when that little exhibitionist hadn’t been driving him crazy, or turning him on, she sure had made him laugh. Nobody had ever been able to make him forget, at least for a little while, the ranch and the heavy responsibilities he’d assumed too young.

      She was cute. Trouble was, she knew it. She’d reveled in making him forget that he was supposed to be stern and tough, that as the largest landowner in south Texas, he was supposed to set an example for his men, for the whole damn ranching community in these parts.

      Hell, his granddaddy had taken him up on his saddle when he was five. They’d worked cattle together, and all the while the old man had been whispering that when he was a man, all this—meaning the cattle, the vast acreage—would be his responsibility. His father, Rand Black, had been a legend. North was determined to carry on his daddy’s legacy and support the people whose families had lived here for generations, who depended on him for their very livelihoods.

      Melody never bowed down and worshiped him like everybody else around here. So, why the hell had he loved this defiant brat since she’d been a young girl? She wasn’t even any good in bed. She was too uptight and skittish to be sexy in private. At least with him. No, she preferred public displays of wanton affection that drove him and every other guy who caught her performance wild. Always, she left him hot and hard and frustrated, and jealous as all get out. When they were alone, and he made a move, she got as scared and shy as his baby camel. He loathed everybody thinking she was hot and easy when that’s the last thing she was.

      Except for that last night.

      You’re not supposed to think about her or what happened, ever again. You’re supposed to work—till you forget her.

      So, how come you accepted a dinner invitation tonight in Corpus Christi from her mother?

      Because Dee Dee swore Melody’s in Austin and you won’t see her. Or talk about her. Because it was so hot and loud in the barn you hadn’t been able to think.

      Liar.

      You want to see Dee Dee’s most recent pictures of her on the fridge. You want Dee Dee to drop those annoying little hints…

      Forget her!

      North was trying. He’d all but imprisoned himself on his ranch. He had 800,000 acres of baking shin oak and prickly pear and thousands of head of cattle to protect him from that clueless she-devil, who had a lot of growing up to do up in Austin.

      North could hear his stressed cattle outside squalling as his men cut them from the herd and drove them into pens and chutes, some to be kept and fed, some to be vaccinated and tagged, some to be loaded onto the cattle trucks that were discreetly hidden in mesquite thickets.

      Tough

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