The Cowboy and the Lady by Diana Palmer Read Free Book Online Page A

with him as he averted his gaze to Duncan. “She’s too accident-prone.”
    Duncan only looked amused. “If you say so.”
    “I’m not a child,” Amanda protested, glaring down at the tall man.
    He looked up into her eyes, and there was a look in his that held banked-down flames, puzzling, fascinating. She didn’t look away, and something like an electric shock tore through her body.
    Jace’s firm jaw tautened and abruptly he released the reins and moved away. “If Summers calls me about that foundation sale, send somebody out to get me,” he told Duncan, and then he was gone, striding back into the tangle of men and cattle without a backward glance.
    Duncan didn’t say a word, but there was an amused smile on his face when they headed back to the house, and Amanda was glad that Terry was too concerned with his aching muscles to pay much attention to what was going on around him. That look in Jace’s eyes, even in memory, could jack up her heart rate. It wasn’t contempt, or hatred. It was a fierce, barely contained hunger, and it terrified her to think that Jace felt that way. Ever since her disastrous sixteenth birthday party, she’d kept her distance from him. Now, finally, she was forced to admit the reason for it, if only to herself. Fastidious and cool, Amanda had never felt those raging fires that drove women to run after men. But she felt them when she looked at Jace. She always had, and it would be incredibly dangerous to let him know it. It would give him the most foolproof way to pay her back for all his imagined grievances, and she wouldn’t be able to resist him. She’d know that for a long time, too.
    She glanced back over her shoulder at the branding that was proceeding without a hitch in the corral. If Jace hadn’t been there, Amanda would have loved to stay and watch the process. It was fascinating to see how the old hands worked the cattle. But Jace would have made her too nervous to enjoy it. She urged her mount into a trot and followed along behind the men.
    * * *
    Terry didn’t move for the rest of the afternoon. He spread his spare body out in a lawn chair by the deep blue water of the oval swimming pool, under a leafy magnolia tree, and dozed. Amanda sat idly chatting with Duncan at the umbrella table, sipping her lemonade, comfortably dressed in an aged ankle-length aqua terry-cloth lounging dress with slit sides and white piping around the V-necked, sleeveless bodice. She could no longer afford to buy this sort of thing and the dress was left over from better days. Her feet were bare, and her hair was loose, lifting gently in the soft breeze. All around the pool area, there were blooming shrubs and masses of pink, white and red roses in the flower gardens that were Marguerite’s pride and joy.
    Her eyes wandered to the little gray summer house further along on the luscious green lawn, with its miniature split rail fence. It was a child’s dream, and all the family’s nieces and nephews and cousins had played there at one time or another.
    “What do you really think of the campaign we’ve laid out?” Amanda asked Duncan.
    “I like it,” he said bluntly. “The question is, will Jace? He’s not that keen on the real estate operation, but even so he’s aware that it’s going to take some work to sell the idea of an apartment complex in inland Florida. Most people want beachfront.”
    She nodded. “We can make it work with specialty advertising,” she said quietly. “I’m sure of it.”
    Duncan smiled at her. “Are you the same girl who left here a few years ago, all nervous glances and shy smiles? Goodness, Miss Carson, you’ve changed. I noticed it six months ago, but there’s an even bigger difference now.”
    “Am I really so different?” she mused.
    “The way you stand up to Jace is different,” he remarked dryly. “You’ve got him on his ear.”
    She flushed wildly. “It doesn’t show.”
    “It does to me.”
    She looked up. “Why did you insist that I