Diana Palmer - Darling Enemy

“I’ve got modeling jobs—” she began.

“You can live without them for a few weeks, surely?” he taunted. “Twenty-four-hour days are only bearable for short terms,” he reminded her. “You’ve been holding down a night job, Jenna told me, in addition to your day courses. Quite a feat, if I remember curfew regulations.”

“The gates close at midnight here,” Teddi murmured. She glared at Jenna, who managed to look completely innocent.

“All the same, you could use a vacation. As long as you don’t spend it mooning over me,” he added.

Her eyes jerked up to find him smiling in a teasing way, his eyes kind and glittering with good humor. It surprised her into smiling back, accentuating her beauty to such a degree that King just sat and stared at her until she dropped her own gaze, embarrassed.

“Besides,” King added tautly, “where else have you got to go? With that nymphomaniac of an aunt, or to an apartment alone?”

“A half hour ago, you wouldn’t have cared if I’d had to shack up with a bear at the local zoo,” she reminded him hotly.

He cocked an eyebrow. “As I recall, Miss Cover Girl,” he murmured, “the subject of bears once got us into an interesting situation.”

She went fiery red, avoiding Jenna’s smiling, curious gaze. “An unbearable situation,” she murmured, laughing when King got the pun and threw back his own head.

“Please come,” Jenna added, pleading. “If you’re around to chaperone me, King will let me chase Blakely all over the ranch,” she laughed.

“Blakely?” King frowned. “You don’t, surely, mean my livestock foreman?”

Jenna peeked at him through her lashes. “I’m interested in ranching,” she murmured.

“Don’t get too interested in Blakely,” he warned. “I’ve got bigger plans for you.”

“Do you always try to run people’s lives?” Teddi challenged.

He looked deep into her eyes. “Look out, honey, I might fancy running yours if you aren’t careful.”

“I’m hardly worth notice,” she reminded him. “An orphan with no connections, a background of poverty, a sordid reputation...”

“Oh, hell, shut up,” he growled, getting to his feet. “I’ve got to have the plane serviced. You two get packed.”

He stormed off. Jenna giggled openly, her eyes speculative.

“Just what is going on?” she asked Teddi. “I’ve never seen him off balance like that.”

“I have been practicing sorcery,” Teddi said in a menacing whisper. “While he wasn’t looking, I slipped a potion in his coffee. Any second now, your tall, blond brother is going to turn into a short, fat frog.”

Jenna burst out laughing, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Oh, I can’t wait to see him,” she laughed. “King, with green warts!”

Teddi laughed, too, at the absurdity of fastidious King with such an affliction. He never seemed to have a hair out of place, even when he was working with the livestock.

Hours later, they were well on the way to Calgary in King’s private Piper Navajo.

“I can’t wait for you to meet Blakely,” Jenna told her friend. “King just hired him a couple of months ago and I got to know him when I was home for that long weekend in April.”

“He must be something special,” Teddi murmured.

Jenna sighed. “Oh, he is. Brown eyes and red hair and a build like a movie star. Teddi, you’ll love him...but not too much, please,” she added, only half teasing. “I couldn’t begin to compete with you, as far as looks go.”

“Don’t be silly,” Teddi chided. “You’re lovely.”

“You’re a liar, but I love you just the same,” came the laughing reply. Jenna leaned back in the plush seat. “King didn’t chew you up too badly, did he?” she asked after a minute. Her gray eyes met Teddi’s apologetically. “I could have gone through the floor when he made that nasty remark and I saw you standing in the doorway and knew you’d heard.”

“King and I have been enemies for years,” Teddi reminded her friend, her dark eyes wistful. “I don’t know what I did to make him dislike me so, but he always has.”

“It puzzles me,” Jenna murmured, “that King gets along so well with everyone else. He has that arrogant streak, of course, but he’s a pussycat most of the time. He’s worked twenty-two-hour days to keep us solvent since Dad died. Without him the whole property would have gone down the drain.” She eyed her friend. “None of which explains his hostility toward you. I couldn’t believe my eyes when he went out of the dormitory after you.”

“That makes two of us. I very nearly hit him.”

“How exciting! What did he do?”

Teddi reddened. She was not about to admit that King had held her hand all the way to the dormitory. “He ducked,” she lied.

Jenna laughed delightedly. “Just imagine, your trying to plant one on my brother. Do you know, you never used to stand up to him. When we were younger, he’d say something hurtful and you’d go off and cry, and King would go out and chew up one or two of his men.” She laughed. “It got to be almost funny. The men would start getting nervous the minute you walked onto the property.”

Teddi shifted restlessly. “I know. To be honest, I’ve been turning down your invitations lately to avoid him. I probably wouldn’t have gone home with you at Easter if I hadn’t been trying to shake off that friend of Dilly’s who’s been pursuing me.”

“Would you mind very much telling me what happened at Easter?”

“I threw a feed bucket at him,” Teddi blurted out.

Jenna’s eyes opened wide. “You’re kidding!”

Teddi’s gaze dropped to her lap. “It was just a mild disagreement,” she lied. “Oh, look!” she exclaimed as she looked out the window. “We must be over Alberta, look at the plains!”

Jenna peeked over her friend’s shoulder and looked down through the thick cloud cover. “Could be,” she murmured, checking her watch, “but we haven’t been in the air quite long enough. I bet it was Saskatchewan.” She got up. “I’ll ask King.”

Teddi’s eyes followed the smaller girl while her mind went lazily back to the spring day when King had chided her about her private life just one time too many....

Jenna had slept late that morning, but the bright sun and the sounds of activity out at the stables had roused Teddi from a sound sleep. She’d put on her riding outfit and hurried down to get Happy to saddle a horse for her. Happy, one of the older hands on the huge Canadian ranch, had been one of her staunchest allies. He’d taught her to ride when King had refused to.

But Happy hadn’t been in the neat stables that morning. King had. And the minute she saw him, she knew there was going to be trouble. He had a way of cocking his head to one side when he was angry that warned of storms brewing in his big body, a narrowing of one eye that meant he was holding himself on a tight rein. Teddi had been too angry herself to notice the warning signs.

“I know how to ride,” she argued. “Happy taught me.”

“I don’t give a damn,” he growled back. “The men have seen bear tracks around this spring. You don’t ride alone on the ranch, is that clear?”

She felt an unreasonable hatred of him, raw because he hadn’t even noticed her painfully shy flirting, her extra attention to her appearance. She had been trying to catch his eye for the first time in their turbulent acquaintance and it hadn’t worked. Her temper had exploded.

“I’m not afraid of bears!” she all but screamed.

“Well, you should be,” he replied tightly, his eyes roaming over her. “You don’t know what a bear could do to that perfect young body.”

The words had shocked her. Amazingly, now that she had his attention, she was frightened.