LITMIR.BIZ

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went wrong?” Luke’s voice was gruffer than he had meant for it to be.

      “I don’t know. How does that happen? It all seems right and then slowly you start to see it’s not going to work out, that it’s not a forever kind of thing, after all.”

      “Did you bring him home, to your parents?”

      “I did, once. They liked him.”

      “Where is he now?”

      “He went back to Kansas, where he was born and raised. His dad’s a vet, too, so he’ll be taking over the family practice.”

      “You’re still in touch with him?”

      She laughed that low, husky laugh of hers. “Luke Bravo, are you jealous?”

      Damn straight. “No.”

      She tipped her head to the side and her hair spilled over her shoulder, like a black waterfall. “No, I’m not in touch with him. It seemed better that way. Just to let it go.”

      A certain tightness in his chest eased away. “Where did you live before you came to stay with the Cabreras?”

      Another laugh escaped her. “Hold on a minute.”

      He scowled. “What?”

      “What about you? Any special girlfriends?”

      “No. No one special.”

      She smiled then, a slow smile. “Well. Okay, then.”

      He asked again, “Where were you born?”

      “California. Salinas. My dad was a farm worker. He died when I was five, stabbed to death in a bar fight. My mother tried her best to support us, working as a maid in a motel. She did okay for a few years. Then she got sick. My mom—Luz, I mean—was like a sister to her. They grew up in Corpus Christi together. Javier sent the money and we came to stay here.” She made a low, wondering sound. “Luz and Javier. Where would I be without them? They are my mother and father, every bit as much as my birth parents were. They love me and they raised me as a true daughter. They gave me a chance to go to college, to make a good life, to own my own house and pay my own way.” Tears shone in her eyes.

      He hadn’t meant to make her cry. “Mercy.” He rose to his feet. “Don’t cry…”

      She dashed the tears away. “Sometimes it’s good to cry, when there’s deep emotion.”

      “Good to cry…”

      “Yes.” She gazed up at him, the tears still there, glittering like diamonds in her eyes.

      He reached down a hand. She laid hers in it. He pulled her upward and wrapped his arms around her. He stroked her silky hair, kissed the smooth skin at her temple. She rested her head on his shoulder with a soft sigh. For several long, sweet seconds, they stood there by the table, holding each other close.

      But then she raised her head and captured his gaze. “I would like…not to say anything to anyone else. Not for a while. I’ll tell Elena to keep silent. And we could just see how it works out with us.”

      His heart leapt. He wasn’t sure about taking this thing with them public, either. But he wanted to keep on seeing her. He wanted it bad—so bad he ached with it. And now she’d admitted she wanted it, too.

      “All right,” he said. “For a while.”

      “We’ll…be together when we can. Just the two of us.” She stared up at him, her expression grave.

      “Yes.”

      Was it the coward’s way? Probably. But then again, time for just the two of them, what could that hurt? This was all so new. And they had no way to know where it would go from here. Right now, with her in his arms and the scent of her tempting him, it seemed impossible that what he felt would ever die. It seemed she belonged with him, forever. But it could end, just fade away, as it had with her and that guy from Kansas. It could turn out that there’d been no need, after all, to take the chance of stirring up trouble.

      She took his shoulders, pushed him away a little. “Here I am in your arms again. Somehow, lately, I always end up here.”

      He gathered her closer. “I don’t want to let you go.”

      She rose up on tiptoe and offered those rose-red lips to him. “Kiss me again, Luke. Kiss me a hundred times.”

      He took her mouth in a long kiss that stole his breath and sent the blood pulsing hot through his veins.

      When he lifted his head, she whispered, “I have a confession.”

      “Tell me.”

      “When I was a girl, I saw you once, in a parade, riding a white horse.”

      “I remember that parade. It was after Thanksgiving. The holiday parade…” It must have been before her mother died. He had spotted her, a skinny kid with huge black eyes, picked her out of the crowd because she seemed to be staring so hard at him. Later, he had asked around about her, found out she was staying with the Cabreras.

      She said, “After that, I dreamed forbidden dreams of you. I dreamed of this. I dreamed that you would be my lover.” She laughed. “Well, I was only twelve. Maybe lover is the wrong word. My sweetheart, I guess. My boyfriend…”

      Her loose cotton shirt had fallen down her shoulder again. He touched the glowing, silky skin that the shirt revealed, hardly daring to believe what her words seemed to mean. “What are you saying? What are you telling me?”

      “I’m saying I…I want you, Luke. Maybe I have since that first time I saw you. I’m saying…ah, this is crazy, huh? I don’t know what I’m saying. It’s only that when you touch me, when you kiss me…it’s like my little-girl dreams all come alive for me. At last.”

      It seemed only fair, only right, to make a confession of his own. “I remember you, too. Your black eyes that seemed to see right through me. Even when you were a skinny little kid, I noticed you. And then, about the time you turned sixteen…” He let the words trail off.

      She slid her hands to his shoulders and gave them a shake. “What? Tell me. What?”

      “I saw you once, with your girlfriends, at the rodeo.” His voice sounded rough to his ears. It was partly arousal. And partly a deeper emotion, one he wasn’t prepared to give a name. “You were laughing at something, your head thrown back, black hair shining in the lights. And then you saw me watching you. Your laughter stopped. Your face changed…”

      She gave a slow nod. “I remember that night. I felt so strange when you looked at me. Scared. And yet also very powerful, very much a woman.”

      “Mercy. You were sixteen.”

      “But I didn’t feel sixteen. Not when you looked at me the way that you did.”

      He ran a finger down the smooth flesh of her neck. “I knew I had to keep clear of you. I knew you were dangerous. And not only because I was twenty-one and you were underage. Not only because your last name is Cabrera.”

      Her dark eyes sparked with challenge. “But here you are, Luke. In my house. With your arms around me…”

      “Yeah, here I am. What the hell’s going on with us? Why is it I never want to leave?”

      “I have no answers,” she whispered. “Only more questions.”

      He bent his head, pressed his lips to the fragrant skin of her shoulder. She shuddered under that caress and he pulled her closer. He took her mouth again. She melted into him, as if her body knew his, had always known, as if there was some magical, absolute affinity between them, as man and woman, as if the attraction—the need—was bred in the bone.

      When at last he lifted his head, he waited for her to open her eyes, for her long, sooty lashes to rise. She stared up at him, dazed, red lips wet from their kisses.

      He

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