Trilby by Diana Palmer Read Free Book Online Page A

depth, and disturbed. He made her feel things she didn’t want to feel. “ Shock is hardly the right word. Please let me go,” she said tersely.
    “Very well,” he replied, loosening his hold. “But don’t think you’ll escape me completely,” he added mockingly. “I don’t give up when something, or someone, interests me.”
    The words had an ominous ring.
    “I should prefer to become an object of interest to a fat sidewinder!” she returned.
    Her analogy amused him. He smiled, which made it even worse. Trilby turned away and muttered to herself all the way back to her parents and Teddy.
    It was one thing to be faced with a head-on accusation and reply to it. But Thorn Vance was only making nebulous innuendos, and she didn’t know how to handle them. She couldn’t imagine why he thought so badly of her.
    If it had mattered, she might have pressed him for an answer. As it was, she told herself, Richard was the only man in her life. That being the case, what did Mr. Vance’s opinion matter?

CHAPTER THREE
    A FTER T HORN’S CONTEMPT the night before, it was doubly shocking to Trilby when he suddenly appeared at the ranch the next morning and invited her to go for a ride in the desert.
    He looked as if he expected her to refuse, and his smile was mocking. “Not on a horse, Trilby,” he drawled. “I’ve brought the touring car, as you can see.”
    She glanced doubtfully at the big, open car. “I don’t like automobiles,” Trilby said. “We had one back in Louisiana and our chauffeur was forever snapping bands, and having flat tires, and skidding into the ditch on muddy roads. Even the one we have now is too fast,” she added, with an accusing glance at her grinning father.
    “The buckboard would be less comfortable, I assure you.”
    “Do go, Trilby,” her mother said gently. “It will do you good.”
    “Indeed,” Jack Lang agreed.
    Trilby could hardly tell them what Thorn had said to her the night before, or accuse him publicly of treating her like a loose woman. Her pride wouldn’t let her advertise his opinion of her.
    “What about Dr. McCollum? Aren’t you neglecting him?” she asked, grasping at straws.
    “Craig left on the El Paso train,” he said simply. Then he simply stared at her, his mocking smile daring her to produce another excuse.
    She was no coward. “All right,” she said composedly. “I’ll go with you, Mr. Vance.”
    She dressed in a long blue dress with lace-up shoes and a frilly hat. Then she wrapped a shawl around her shoulders—just in case the weather changed—and went out to Thorn.
    He’d certainly impressed her parents with his apparent pursuit of Trilby. And the dignified gray suit he was wearing only added to the image he was projecting of a pillar of the community. Jack and Mary were beaming at him, their approval so obvious that it was embarrassing. Only Trilby knew that whatever Thornton Vance’s intentions were, they certainly weren’t as respectable as he looked.
    “I’ll have her back before dark,” he assured them. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of her.”
    “Why, of course you will, dear boy,” Jack Lang replied, as if it were a foregone conclusion and needed no emphasis.
    Trilby sat quietly while Thorn cranked the car and came back to sit beside her. Naturally, she thought bitterly, it wouldn’t take him a half hour of sweat and muttered swear words to get it running, as it had Richard when he’d taken her and Teddy out riding. She held that competence against Thorn. It was just one more thing that set him apart from most men.
    She waved as they sped off down the wide dirt road that led toward the mountains. She held her hat on, glad of the windscreen that kept the thick dust out of her face.The car her father drove was missing its windscreen. Teddy had accidentally knocked a baseball through it.
    “Too fast?” Thorn asked, glancing ruefully at Trilby. “I’ll slow down a bit.”
    He did, lifting his booted foot from the accelerator