The Men of Medicine Ridge - Diana Palmer [3]
“Viv’s would-be boyfriend got the Henry girl pregnant last year,” he said abruptly.
Her gasp made his eye narrow.
“You didn’t have a clue, did you?” he mused. “You and Viv are just alike.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Pitiful taste in men,” he added.
She gave him a look of mock indignation. “And I was just going to say how very sexy you were!”
“Pull the other one,” he said with amazing coldness.
Her eyebrows arched. “My, we’re touchy today!”
He glared at her. “What do you want? If it’s an invitation to supper for Viv’s heartthrob, he can’t come unless you do.”
That surprised her. He usually couldn’t wait to shoo her off the place. “Three’s a crowd?” she murmured dryly.
“Four. I live here,” he pointed out. He frowned. “More than four,” he continued. “Vivian, Bob and Charles and me. You and the would-be Romeo make six.”
“That’s splitting hairs,” she pointed out. “You’re suggesting that I come over to make the numbers even, of course,” she chided.
His face didn’t betray any emotion at all. “Wear a dress.”
That really surprised her. “Listen, you aren’t planning any pagan sacrificial rites at a volcano?” she asked, rubbing in the virgin sacrifice notion.
“Something low-cut,” he persisted, his gaze narrow and faintly sensual on her pert breasts under the sweater.
“Stop staring at my breasts!” she burst out indignantly, crossing her arms over them.
“Wear a bra,” he returned imperturbably.
Her face flamed. “I am wearing a bra!”
His black eye twinkled. “Wear a thicker bra.”
She glared at him. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you!”
He lifted an eyebrow and his eye slid down her body appraisingly. “Lust,” he said matter-of-factly. “I haven’t had sex for so long, I’m not even sure I remember how.”
She couldn’t handle a remark like that. They shared such intimate memories for two old sparring partners. She couldn’t fence with him verbally when he let his voice drop like that, an octave lower than normal. It was so sensuous that it made her knees weak. So was the memory of that one unforgettable night they’d shared. Warning signals shot to her brain.
He sighed theatrically when her cheeks turned pink. “So much for all that sophistication you pretend to have,” he mused.
She cleared her throat. “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that to me,” she said worriedly.
“Maybe I shouldn’t,” he conceded. His hand went out and pushed a strand of hair behind her small ear. She jerked at his touch, and he moved a step closer. “I’d never hurt you, Natalie,” he said quietly.
She managed a nervous smile. “I’d like that in writing,” she said, trying to move away without making it look as if she was intimidated, even though she was.
The barn door was at her back, though, and there was no way to escape. He knew that. She could see it on his face as he slid one long arm beside her head and rested his hand by her ear.
Her heart jumped into her throat. She looked at him with all her darkest fears reflecting in her emerald eyes.
He searched them without speaking for a long moment. “Carl would never have made you happy,” he said suddenly. “His people had money. They wouldn’t have let him marry an orphan with no assets.”
Her eyes darkened with pain. “You don’t know that.”
“I do know that,” he returned sharply. “They said as much at the funeral, when someone mentioned how devastated you were. You couldn’t even go to the funeral.”
She remembered that. She remembered, too, that Mack had come looking for her in her aunt’s home the night Carl had died. Her aunt was out of town shopping over the weekend, and she’d been all alone. Mack found her in a very sexy pink satin gown and robe, crying her eyes out. He’d picked her up, carried her to the old easy chair by the bed, and he’d held her in his lap until she couldn’t cry anymore. After a close call that still made her knees weak, even in memory, he’d stayed with her that whole long, anguished night, sitting in the chair beside the bed, watching her sleep. It was a mark of the respect he commanded in the community that even Natalie’s aunt hadn’t said a word about his presence there