The Men of Medicine Ridge - Diana Palmer [11]
The suddenness with which he pushed her away left her staggering, so weak that she could hardly stand. He’d moved away from her to lean against the wall, where one big hand pressed hard to support him. He was breathing as if he’d been running a race, and she could see the shudders that ran through his tall body. She didn’t know what to say or what to do. She was overwhelmed. She couldn’t even move to pull up her dress.
After a few seconds he took a harsh, deep breath and turned to look at her. She hadn’t moved a step since he’d dragged himself away from her. He smiled ruefully. She was, he thought, painfully innocent.
“Here,” he said in a husky tone, moving to pull up her dress and fasten it. “You can’t go inside like that.”
She looked at him like a curious little cat while he dressed her, as if it was a matter of course to do it.
“Natalie,” he laughed harshly, “you have to stop looking like an accident victim.”
“Do you do that with her?” she asked, and her pale green eyes flashed.
He mumbled a curse as he fastened the hook at the top of the dress. “Glenna is none of your business.”
“Oh, I see. You can ask me about my social life, and I can’t ask you about yours, is that how it works?”
He frowned as he held her by both shoulders and looked at her. “Glenna isn’t a fuzzy little peach ripening on a tree limb,” he muttered. “She’s a grown, sophisticated woman who doesn’t equate a good time with a wedding ring.”
“Mack!” Natalie exclaimed furiously.
“I don’t even have to look at you to know you’re blushing,” he said heavily. “Twenty-two, and you haven’t really aged a day since I held you in your bedroom the night of Carl’s wreck.”
“You looked at me,” she whispered.
His hands tightened. “Lucky you, that looking was all I did.”
Her eyes searched his face in the dim light. “You wanted me,” she said with sudden realization.
“Yes, I did,” he confessed. “But you were seventeen.”
“And now I’m twenty-two.”
He sighed and smiled. “There isn’t much difference,” he murmured. “And there still isn’t any future in it.”
“Not for a man who just wants to have a little fun occasionally,” she said sarcastically.
“You certainly don’t fall into that category,” he agreed. “I’ve got two brothers and a sister to take care of here. There isn’t room for a wife.”
“Okay. Just forget that I proposed.”
His fingers trailed gently across her soft, swollen mouth. “Besides the responsibilities, I’m not ready to settle down. Not for years yet.”
“I’m sure they’ll take back the engagement ring if I ask them nicely.”
He blinked. “Are we having the same conversation?”
“I only bought you a cheap engagement ring, anyway,” she continued outrageously. “It probably wouldn’t have fit, so don’t worry about it.”
He started laughing. He couldn’t help it. She really was a pain in the neck. “Damn it, Natalie!” He hugged her close and hard, an affectionate hug with bare overtones of unsatisfied lust.
She hugged him back with a long sigh, and her eyes closed. “I think it’s like baby ducks,” she murmured absently.
“What is?”
“Imprinting. They follow the first moving thing they see when they hatch, assuming it’s their mother. Maybe it’s like that with men and women. You were the first man I was ever barely intimate with, so I’ve imprinted on you.”
His heart jumped wildly and his arms tightened around her. “The world is full of men who want to get married and have kids.”
“And I’ll find one someday,” she finished for him. “Have it your own way. But if you really want me to find someone else to fixate on, I have to tell you that dragging me into dark corners and pulling my dress half off isn’t the way to go about it.”
He was really laughing now, so hard that he had to let her go. “I give up,” he said helplessly.
“It’s too late now,” she returned, going to fetch her purse from the floor. “You’ve said you don’t want the ring.”
“Let’s go inside while there’s still time,” he replied as he moved toward the door.
“Not yet,” she said quickly. She moved