Diana Palmer - The Wedding In White

She gave him a look of mock indignation. “And I was just going to say how very sexy you were!”

“Pull the other one,” he said with amazing coldness.

Her eyebrows arched. “My, we’re touchy today!”

He glared at her. “What do you want? If it’s an invitation to supper for Viv’s heartthrob, he can’t come unless you do.”

That surprised her. He usually couldn’t wait to shoo her off the place. “Three’s a crowd?” she murmured dryly.

“Four. I live here,” he pointed out. He frowned. “More than four,” he continued. “Vivian, Bob and Charles and me. You and the would-be Romeo make six.”

“That’s splitting hairs,” she pointed out. “You’re suggesting that I come over to make the numbers even, of course,” she chided.

His face didn’t betray any emotion at all. “Wear a dress.”

That really surprised her. “Listen, you aren’t planning any pagan sacrificial rites at a volcano?” she asked, rubbing in the virgin sacrifice notion.

“Something low-cut,” he persisted, his gaze narrow and faintly sensual on her pert breasts under the sweater.

“Stop staring at my breasts!” she burst out indignantly, crossing her arms over them.

“Wear a bra,” he returned imperturbably.

Her face flamed. “I am wearing a bra!”

His black eye twinkled. “Wear a thicker bra.”

She glared at him. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you!”

He lifted an eyebrow and his eye slid down her body appraisingly. “Lust,” he said matter-of-factly. “I haven’t had sex for so long, I’m not even sure I remember how.”

She couldn’t handle a remark like that. They shared such intimate memories for two old sparring partners. She couldn’t fence with him verbally when he let his voice drop like that, an octave lower than normal. It was so sensuous that it made her knees weak. So was the memory of that one unforgettable night they’d shared. Warning signals shot to her brain.

He sighed theatrically when her cheeks turned pink. “So much for all that sophistication you pretend to have,” he mused.

She cleared her throat. “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that to me,” she said worriedly.

“Maybe I shouldn’t,” he conceded. His hand went out and pushed a strand of hair behind her small ear. She jerked at his touch, and he moved a step closer. “I’d never hurt you, Natalie,” he said quietly.

She managed a nervous smile. “I’d like that in writing,” she said, trying to move away without making it look as if she was intimidated, even though she was.

The barn door was at her back, though, and there was no way to escape. He knew that. She could see it on his face as he slid one long arm beside her head and rested his hand by her ear.

Her heart jumped into her throat. She looked at him with all her darkest fears reflecting in her emerald eyes.

He searched them without speaking for a long moment. “Carl would never have made you happy,” he said suddenly. “His people had money. They wouldn’t have let him marry an orphan with no assets.”

Her eyes darkened with pain. “You don’t know that.”

“I do know that,” he returned sharply. “They said as much at the funeral, when someone mentioned how devastated you were. You couldn’t even go to the funeral.”

She remembered that. She remembered, too, that Mack had come looking for her in her aunt’s home the night Carl had died. Her aunt was out of town shopping over the weekend, and she’d been all alone. Mack found her in a very sexy pink satin gown and robe, crying her eyes out. He’d picked her up, carried her to the old easy chair by the bed, and he’d held her in his lap until she couldn’t cry anymore. After a close call that still made her knees weak, even in memory, he’d stayed with her that whole long, anguished night, sitting in the chair beside the bed, watching her sleep. It was a mark of the respect he commanded in the community that even Natalie’s aunt hadn’t said a word about his presence there when she found out about it on her return. Natalie inspired defense in the strangest quarters. Her tenderness made even the toughest people oddly vulnerable around her.

“You held me,” she recalled softly.

“Yes.” His face seemed to tauten as he looked at her. “I held you.”

She felt him so close that it was like being lifted and carried away. Little twinges of pleasure shot through her when she met his searching gaze. The sensation was so intense as they looked at each other, she could almost feel his bare chest against hers. Five years had passed since that night, but it seemed like yesterday. It was like stepping into space.

“And when I lost my sight,” he continued, “you held me.”

She bit her lower lip hard to stop it from trembling. “I wasn’t the only one who tried to nurse you,” she recalled.

“Vivian cried when I snapped at her, and the boys hid under their beds. You didn’t. You snapped right back. You made me want to go on living.”

She lowered her eyes to his chest. He had the build of a rodeo cowboy, broad-shouldered and lean-hipped. His checked shirt was open at the neck, and she saw the thick, curling hair that covered him from his chest to his belt. He wasn’t a hairy man, but he was devastating without a shirt. She’d seen him like that more often than she was comfortable remembering. He was beautiful under his clothing, like a sculpture she’d seen in pictures of museum exhibits. She even knew how he felt, there where the hair was thick over his breastbone….

“You were kind to me when Carl died,” she returned.

There was a new tension between them after she spoke. She sensed a steely anger in him.

“Since we’re on the subject of your poor taste in men, what do you see in that Markham man?” he asked curtly. “He’s as prissy as someone’s maiden aunt, and in a stand-up fight, he’d go out in seconds.”

She lifted her face. “Dave’s my friend,” she said shortly. “And certainly he’s no worse than that refugee from the witch trials that you go around with!”

His firm lips pursed. “Glenna’s not a witch.”

“She’s not a saint, either,” she assured him. “And if you’re going without sex, I can guarantee it’s not her fault!” she added without thinking. But once the words left her stupid mouth, and she saw the unholy light in the eye that wasn’t covered by the black eye patch, she could have bitten her tongue in two.

“Will you two keep your voices down?” young Bob Killain groaned, as he peered around the barn door to stare at them. “If Sadie Marshall hears you all the way in the kitchen, she’ll tell everybody in her Sunday school class that you two are living in sin out here!” he exclaimed, naming the Killain housekeeper.

Natalie looked at him indignantly, both hands on her slender hips. “It’s Glenna you’d better worry about, if he gets involved with her!” she assured Mack’s youngest brother, a redhead. “Her name is written in so many phone booths, she could qualify as a tourist attraction!”

Mack tried not to laugh, but he couldn’t help himself. He pulled his hat across his eyes at a slant and turned into the barn. “Oh, hell, I’m going to work. Haven’t you got something to do?” he asked his brother.

Bob cleared his throat and tried desperately not to laugh, either. “I’m just going over to Mary Burns’s house to help her with her trigonometry.”

“Carry protection,” Mack’s droll voice came back to him.

Bob turned as red as his hair. “Well, we don’t all stand around talking about sex all day!” he muttered.

“No,” Natalie agreed facetiously. She looked at Mack deliberately. “Some of us go looking for names in phone booths and call them up for dates!”