Diana Palmer Long Tall Texans 28 Lawless

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bull. "You do live in his pocket since you came home," he pointed out.
She turned away from him, tired of the fighting. She and Cash were friends. That was all it would ever
be. But it kept Judd from wallowing over the debt he owed her.
"If it had been me, in the same circumstances, you'd have done what I did, and you know it," she said
quietly, her eyes on the pasture out the window. "You're making such a big deal of this, Judd, and it
isn't necessary."
She felt his warmth at her back, felt his breath stirring the hair at her temples.
"You took a bullet that was meant for me," he said curtly. "How, exactly, should I take it?"
His big hands caught her shoulders and turned her around, very gently, so that he could look down
into her eyes.
"I move one step closer and you move two steps back," he said broodingly. "Are you the same woman
who couldn't get close enough to me on Christmas Eve?"
She flushed. "How dare you bring that up!" she raged.
"And you hadn't even been drinking," he added with amused indulgence.
She looked everywhere except in his eyes. "It was a mistake. You said so."
"I said a lot of things," he murmured evasively.
"Yes, and now you're saying a lot more, and you shouldn't," she tried to explain, pulling away from
his hands.
"Listen, you want a divorce. No problem. I'm not even arguing about it. You can marry Tippy Moore
and I'll go around with Cash until he decides whether or not he can live in Jacobsville for the rest of
his life."
He wondered if she had any idea how much it hurt him when she made offhand remarks like that. He
had no interest in Tippy Moore. But her fascination with Cash had caused him to pretend one, out of
wounded pride.
Cash was everything most men wanted to be. He was handsome, charming, cultured and absolutely
fearless.
There wasn't a peace officer in Texas who didn't recognize his name. Judd had a cursory education
and some college, but he wasn't in Cash's league intellectually and he was keenly aware of it. He
wasn't cultured, either, and he didn't speak half a dozen impossible foreign languages.
Worse, he knew how Cash felt about Christabel, and that, given the least chance, he'd marry her out of
hand, without a sec-ond thought.
Judd began to see how his indifference and rejection had wounded her all these long years, when he'd
been so determined to keep his distance from her. He'd told himself it was for her good, so that she'd
be heartwhole and innocent, so that she could pick up the threads of her life when their marriage was
annulled. But it wasn't. He didn't want ties, roots, a family. He couldn't help remembering his own
childhood when his mother left his father for another man. She'd been like Christabel, innocent and
married in her teens, with no experience of the world or other men except her husband. It wasn't
surprising to him, now, in manhood, that she would have been tempted by other men.
He'd had visions of Christabel doing as his mother had, running into some other man's arms out of
curiosity after years of marriage, and it had frightened him. He'd turned away from her hungry eyes,
her dreams of a life with him. Now he wanted those things back again, but she didn't. She was as
remote and unresponsive as he'd ever been. With greater cause, he had to admit. He'd given her no
encouragement whatsoever. Now, it seemed, it was too late. And the competition was fierce. Even he,
with his massive self-confidence, felt uncertain around the threat of Cash Grier.
"I've told you until I'm blue in the face that I never intended to marry Tippy," he said through his teeth.
"But you won't lis-ten."
Because he'd said he was going to marry Tippy continually until Christabel was shot, she thought, but
she was through arguing. "If I can't get out of going, I guess I'll pack," she said heavily. "Thirteen
hours on an airplane.
I'll be foaming at the mouth before we even get to California "
He gave her a worldly look. "We could do the initiation for the Mile High club."
It took a minute for her to realize what he was talking about.
She glared up at him. "I am not having sex with you in the wash-room of an airplane!" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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