Rawhide and Lace by Diana Palmer Read Free Book Online Page B

it."
     
    He glanced at her. "Maybe if I hadn't made a dead set at you, he'd have had a chance."
     
    She shook her head firmly. "Not that way."
     
    His eyes held hers for an instant before they returned to the road. "Didn't you ever want him?"
     
    "Not physically. He was good fun; a nice, undemanding companion. I didn't want affairs, like some of the girls did. The fact that he had money never made him any more special to me. I like making my own way." She leaned her head against the seat and studied his uneven features quietly. "At least you never suspected me of being a gold-digger."
     
    "I knew better," he said with a faint smile. "I tried to buy you off at first, if you remember. You took the check straight to Bruce and handed it to him in front of me. That cured me."
     
    "And surprised you, I guess."
     
    He nodded. "I'd thought I had you pegged. And I never really knew you at all." He turned onto the long ranch road that led back to Staghorn, down a driveway that boasted rough wood fenceposts, electrified fencing and mesquite groves everywhere among bare, leafless trees. "I thought you'd been to bed with half-a-dozen men. I got the shock of my life that night."
     
    She felt her face growing warm. They shared such intimate memories, for two old enemies.
     
    "Erin, why did you give in to me?" he asked unexpectedly. "You must have suspected what I was doing."
     
    She looked at him, admiring the play of muscles in his arms as he manipulated the car along the dirt road. "Yes," she replied after a moment. "I suspected it."
     
    "Then why give in? Were you really so trusting that you didn't realize what I had in mind?"
     
    "I was too far gone to care," she said quietly, avoiding his suddenly piercing gaze. "I'd never felt like that with a man. I didn't want you to stop. By the time I was fully aware of what I was doing, it was much too late to say no."
     
    "I would have stopped if you'd asked me, all the same," he said, jerking the wheel as he turned up toward the house.
     
    "You couldn't have."
     
    He pulled up at the front steps and turned to her. "I could have," he said firmly. "I wasn't that far gone until the last few seconds."
     
    Her face went beet red as he looked at her, because she remembered those last few seconds with shocking clarity.
     
    "You pulled me down to you," he said in a tone that was husky and deep, and unfamiliar. "I knew that your body was rejecting me, and why, and I was just starting to pull back. And you reached up to my hips and dug those long, exquisite nails into me, and I was lost."
     
    Her breath caught in her throat. She tried to reply and failed, and he touched her lips with the very tip of his finger, probing them delicately apart so he could see the pearly whiteness of her teeth.
     
    "I didn't even give you pleasure," he continued roughly. "I took you, used you, and you should have hated me for it. But you didn't. Your eyes were like velvet-so soft that I got lost in them. And I wanted to do it again, to try and make it right. But I started thinking about Bruce, and some things he'd said...and I was afraid to trust you. So I fed you a lot of bull about ruining you with Bruce and ran you off."
     
    Her eyes widened, darkened. "You...really wanted me, didn't you?" she asked gently.
     
    "Until you were an obsession," he replied, his voice low and slightly harsh. "You were so beautiful, Erin. Any man would have died to have you."
     
    Then, perhaps, she thought. But not now, not with her scars and her limp and her lack of confidence. She averted her eyes. "Those days are over now," she said dully. "I'm not the same person."
     
    "Aren't you? You could be, if you wanted to."
     
    "With my scars?" Her voice broke, and she jerked away from him, wounded. Her eyes sparked at his puzzled face. "You wanted me when I was beautiful; you wanted me because Bruce did. But now I'm crippled and hurt, and you feel sorry for me. That's the only reason you're even tolerating me, Ty! You were my