Will of Steel by Diana Palmer Read Free Book Online Page A

because I used to be one myself.” He glanced at her with twinkling black eyes. “They’re puff adders.”
    She blinked. “Excuse me?”
    â€œI’ve never seen one myself, but I had a buddy in the service who was from Georgia. He told me about them. They’re these snakes with insecurities.”
    She burst out laughing. “Snakes with insecurities?”
    He nodded. “They’re terrified of people. So if humans come too close to them, they rise up on their tails andweave back and forth and blow out their throats and start hissing. You know, imitating a cobra. Most of the time, people take them at face value and run away.”
    â€œWhat if people stand their ground and don’t run?”
    He laughed. “They faint.”
    â€œThey faint?”
    He nodded. “Dead away, my buddy said. He took a friend home with him. They were walking through the fields when a puff adder rose up and did his act for the friend. The guy was about to run for it when my buddy walked right up to the snake and it fainted dead away. I hear his family is still telling the story with accompanying sound effects and hilarity.”
    â€œA fainting snake.” She sighed. “What I’ve missed, by spending my whole life in Montana. I wouldn’t have known any better, either, though. I’ve never seen a cobra.”
    â€œThey have them in zoos,” he pointed out.
    â€œI’ve never been to a zoo.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWell, Billings is a long way from Hollister and I’ve never had a vehicle I felt comfortable about getting there in.” She grimaced. “This is a very deserted road, most of the time. If I broke down, I’d worry about who might stop to help me.”
    He gave her a covert appraisal. She was such a private person. She kept things to herself. Remembering her uncle and his weak heart, he wasn’t surprised that she’d learned to do that.
    â€œYou couldn’t talk to your uncle about most things, could you, Jake?” he wondered out loud.
    â€œNot really,” she agreed. “I was afraid of upsetting him, especially after his first heart attack.”
    â€œSo you learned to keep things to yourself.”
    â€œI pretty much had to. I’ve never had close girlfriends, either.”
    â€œMost of the girls your age are married and have kids, except the ones who went into the military or moved to cities.”
    She nodded. “I’m a throwback to another era, when women lived at home until they married. Gosh, the world has changed,” she commented.
    â€œIt sure has,” he agreed. “When I was a boy, television sets were big and bulky and in cabinets. Now they’re so thin and light that people can hang them on walls. And my iPod does everything a television can do, right down to playing movies and giving me news and weather.”
    She frowned. “That wasn’t what I meant, exactly.”
    He raised his eyebrows.
    â€œI mean, that women seem to want careers and men in volume.”
    He cleared his throat.
    â€œThat didn’t come out right.” She laughed self-consciously. “It just seems to me that women are more like the way men used to be. They don’t want commitment. They have careers and they live with men. I heard a newscaster say that marriage is too retro a concept for modern people.”
    â€œThere have always been people who lived out of the mainstream, Jake,” he said easily. “It’s a choice.”
    â€œIt wouldn’t be mine,” she said curtly. “I think people should get married and stay married and raise children together.”
    â€œNow that’s a point of view I like.”
    She studied him curiously. “Do you want kids?”
    He smiled. “Of course. Don’t you?”
    She averted her eyes. “Well, yes. Someday.”
    He sighed. “I keep forgetting how young you are. You haven’t really had time to live