LITMIR.BIZ

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be damned,” Jerry Keith said, taking more pictures as Matt lunged for the camera. When the girls dropped the hose and looked over, Matt had it in his hand. Her cheeks reddening, Jane tried to cover herself with her hands. Grizzly started barking. Teeth bared, the animal lived up to its name and raced toward them.

      The boys scrambled up the nearest oak tree.

      Matt wasn’t concentrating on driving, when Jane screamed.

      “Watch where you’re going!”

      Instantly he came back to the present.

      “Red light!” she cried. “Stop! Or you’ll kill us in this thing!”

      He slammed on his brakes and the Porsche skidded to a halt as they hit the last red light before leaving town.

      She drew a deep, relieved breath but said nothing. He did the same.

      His feelings were overpowering him the way they always did when she was too close. Maybe it was her perfume that had him so crazy. What was it—roses? Or jasmine?

      Craving fresh air, while she continued her pout or whatever it was, he lowered his window. But the warm cedar-scented breeze just made him hotter.

      He’d tried to be nice. He’d paid for his sins in high school. Boy had he paid. He’d even asked her on a date. He hated rejection and he always had to win. Hell, he was out on a limb here. Nobody but Jane Snow ever made him feel this crazy.

      And then it happened.

      She’d glanced out her window again, so she didn’t see it coming. Thus, she didn’t flinch or pull away when he leaned closer, cupped her chin and crushed her lips to his.

      The second his mouth claimed hers, the same magic that had knocked him senseless under the mistletoe zapped him again, only harder. Must’ve zapped her, too, because her fingers came around his neck and threaded themselves into his hair. As she began kissing him back, he felt her breasts quiver and go soft against his chest. He pressed her closer into his hard body.

      “What’s happening?” she whispered, pulling back a little. Her blue eyes were soft and crushed and vulnerable.

      “This is what you’re so scared of, isn’t it?” he murmured. “You want me, too.”

      “This can’t be happening.”

      His big hands worked through her hair. Before she could cry out, pins showered onto her seat. Next came tangles of platinum-blond hair falling onto her shoulders. Out of the corner of his eye, he noted that the light changed but he was afraid to drive for fear he’d lose her.

      “Fire and ice. That’s what you are,” he whispered as he began kissing her again.

      He didn’t want to stop kissing her. Not ever. This was better than last Christmas. He’d never felt such mindless lust or need for anyone. Whatever it was, it lit an unquenchable fire in his being.

      The guy behind him sat on his horn.

      Somehow Matt managed to let her go. Breathing hard, he stepped on the gas and drove carefully, but the first chance he got, he pulled off onto the shoulder—to resume kissing or whatever it was they were doing.

      “Work,” she said. “We’ve got to get to work.”

      “Later,” he muttered, grabbing her again. “Kissing the enemy is way more fun.”

      “This is downright embarrassing,” she whispered on a raspy shudder.

      “Yeah, it damn sure is. You’re a witch, and I’m helpless in your spell.”

      “Don’t tease me.”

      “Can’t help myself, darlin’. Do you have a better explanation?”

      “I’m the one girl in town you haven’t slept with yet. You want to add another notch onto your gun belt, so you’re pouring on the sexual charm mighty strong.”

      “If you really think that, my reputation as a lover damn sure exceeds the reality. But don’t tell anybody.”

      He smiled down at her and for the first time, maybe ever, she smiled back. He caught his breath. His heart beat wildly. He wanted her to like him. He wanted it more than anything.

      He kissed her neck, and then the hollow of her throat. Barely conscious of what he was doing, he began un-buttoning her blouse, kissing the tops of her huge breasts until his mouth came to a lacy pink-and-black bra.

      “I never figured you for the sexy-underwear type,” he murmured. “Nice.”

      “Type. I’m not a type.”

      “Of course not,” he agreed, his mouth nuzzling a nipple. He’d spent years dreaming about her breasts. Years. “I’ve been waiting for somebody like you all my life.”

      “Somebody like me?”

      “Shut up and kiss me.”

      For once she obeyed him. Their mouths came together again, her tongue mating with his.

      “Let’s call in sick and go to bed,” he whispered.

      Before he could stop her, she slipped out from under him faster than if she’d slicked herself with butter. Opening her door, she flung herself out of his car just as Ol’ Bill Sinclair drove by on his way to the Gazette. When she began buttoning her blouse, the old coot tooted.

      “God, now everybody in town will know,” she wailed, turning red.

      “Get back in the car before anybody else sees you.”

      “Only…only if you promise not to touch me.”

      “Hell.” When he jumped out of the car too, she started to run back to town. “Okay. Okay.” He held up his hands. “I promise. No touching.”

      She turned and ran toward him just as he recognized Helen Geary’s giant beehive hairdo as she whizzed by in her brand-new red Caddy, her eyes out on stems. Helen, being Helen, honked at them too, of course.

      “I can’t believe this,” Jane moaned. “She’ll tell everybody.”

      “What the hell was that all about?” Matt asked once they were both in his Porsche again. He stared at her while she groped on the floor for her hairpins.

      “You tell me. You started it, Harper.”

      He turned the key in the ignition. “That takes me back to Red Rock Public School. That’s what you said after you tossed my cowboy hat back at me after you’d sat on it and squashed it flatter than a Frisbee.”

      “You started that one too, Harper. You shouldn’t have pulled the ribbons out of my pigtails.”

      “Did you know I still have one of those red ribbons?”

      “Just like you probably still have the negatives of those pictures.”

      He growled. “I don’t have them. I told you that already.”

      “Liar.”

      “There’s no use talking to some people,” he grumbled.

      Aware that she was warier than ever of him, he drove the rest of the way to Fortune TX in a tense, electric silence. He did nothing more to try to break the wall of ice between them. The traffic on the interstate was thick and fast, so he shifted and downshifted, paying attention to his driving instead of her.

      When he pulled into his space at the parking garage, she said in the frosty voice he was all too accustomed to, “Let’s not go in together.”

      “Right,” he said, his tone as clipped as hers. “Business as usual.”

      She’d disappeared by the time he had his shirt buttoned, his tie with the flamingos back on and his hair combed. He was about to get out himself when he noticed the corner of a manila folder under her seat. It must’ve fallen out of her briefcase. After picking it up, he couldn’t resist thumbing

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