Regan's Pride. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ supplies. He was courteous to Coreen, but not overly friendly. That wasn’t new. From the beginning of her friendship with his sister, he’d been cool to her.

      Coreen had found him fascinating from the first time she’d looked into those pale eyes, when Sandy had introduced them. Ted had given her a long, careful appraisal, and obviously found the sight of her offensive because he absented himself immediately after the introduction and thereafter maintained a careful distance whenever Coreen came out to the ranch.

      Coreen wasn’t hurt; she took it for granted that a sophisticated man like Ted wouldn’t want to encourage her by being friendly. She’d been gangly and tomboyish in her jeans and sweatshirt and sneakers. Ted was almost a generation older, and already a millionaire. His name had been linked with some of the most beautiful and eligible women around Texas, even if his distaste for marriage was well-known.

      But he noticed Coreen. Although it might have been reluctant on his part, his pale eyes followed her around the store every week while she filled his orders. But he came no closer than necessary.

      As time went by, Coreen heard about him from Sandy and got to know him in a secondhand sort of way. Slowly she began to fall in love, until two years ago, he had become her whole life. He pretended not to see her interest, but it became more obvious as she fumbled and stammered when he came around the store.

      It was inevitable that he would touch her from time to time as they passed paperwork back and forth, and suddenly it was like electricity between them. Once, she stood with her back to the counter and suddenly looked up into his eyes. He was standing so close that she could breathe in the very masculine scent of his cologne. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t blinked, and the intensity of the stare had made her knees weak. His gaze had dropped abruptly to her soft, pink mouth and her heartbeat had gone wild. She might be innocent, but even a novice could recognize the sort of desire that had flared unexpectedly in Ted’s hard, lean face at that moment. It was the first time he’d ever really looked at her, she knew. It was as if, before, he’d forced himself not to notice her slender body and pretty face.

      Her father’s arrival had broken the spell, and Ted’s expression had become one of self-contempt mingled with anger and something much more violent. He’d left the store at once.

      Coreen had built dreams on that look they’d shared. As if Ted was caught in the same web, his trips to the feed store became more frequent and always, he watched her.

      In her turn, she noticed that he usually came in on Wednesdays and on Saturdays, so she started dressing to the hilt on those days. Her slender, tomboyish figure could look elegant when she chose the right sort of clothes, and Ted didn’t, or couldn’t, hide his interest. His pale eyes followed her with visible hunger every time he came near her. The tension between them grew swiftly until one day things came to a head.

      They were in the storeroom together, looking for a particular kind of bridle bit he wanted for his tack room. Coreen tripped over some coiled rope and Ted caught her easily, his reflexes honed by years of dangerous ranch work.

      “Careful,” he’d murmured at her forehead. “You could have pitched headfirst into those shovels.”

      “With my hard head, I’d never have felt it.” She laughed, looking up at him. “I’m clumsy sometimes…”

      The laughter had stopped when she saw his face. The lean hands holding her had brought her quite suddenly against the length of his body and secured her there. She could feel his chest move against her breasts when he breathed, and his breathing was as ragged as her own.

      With a soft laugh full of self-contempt, he bent and brushed his open mouth roughly over her lips, teasing them with a skill that Coreen had never experienced. She stiffened, and he searched her eyes narrowly. Then he did it again, and this time she held her face up for him, poised like a sacrifice in his warm embrace.

      “Do you know how old I am?” he asked against her mouth in a voice gone deep and gravelly with emotion.

      “No.”

      “I’m thirty-eight,” he murmured. “You’re nearly twenty-two. I’m sixteen years your senior. We’re almost a generation apart.”

      “I don’t care…!” she began breathlessly.

      His head lifted. “There’s no future in it,” he said mercilessly as he searched her face with quick, hard eyes. “You’re infatuated and set on your first love affair, but it can’t, it won’t, be me. I’m long past the age of hand-holding and petting.”

      She stared at him uncomprehendingly. Her body was throbbing with emotion and she wanted nothing more than his mouth on hers.

      “You aren’t even listening,” he chided huskily. His gaze fell to her soft mouth. “Do you know what you’re inviting?” He drew her up on her tiptoes and his hard mouth closed slowly, expertly, on hers, teasing her lips apart with a steady insistent pressure that made her body feel swollen and shivery. She hesitated, frightened by it.

      “No, you don’t,” he whispered, containing her instinctive withdrawal. “If I teach you nothing else, it’s going to be that desire isn’t a game.”

      One lean hand went to her nape, holding her head steady, and then his mouth began to torment hers in brief, rough, biting kisses. He aroused her so swiftly, so completely, that she pressed into him with a harsh whimper and clung, her legs trembling against his as her young body pleaded for relief from the torment that racked it.

      She had no control, but Ted never lost his. Tempestuous seconds later, he lifted his mouth from hers slowly, inch by inch, his hands contracting around her upper arms as he eased her away from him and looked down into her shattered eyes.

      She knew how she must look, with her swollen mouth still pleading for his kisses, her body trembling with the residue of what he’d aroused. She couldn’t hide her reaction. But none of his showed in his face.

      “Do you begin to see how dangerous it is?” he asked with unusual softness in his deep voice. “I could have you against the counter, right now. You’re too shaken, too curious, to deny me, and I’m fairly human in my needs. I can see everything you feel, everything you want, in your face. You have no defense at all.”

      “But you…don’t you…want me?” she stammered.

      His face contorted for an instant. Then suddenly, all expression left his face. His hands contracted and one corner of his mouth pulled up. “I want a woman,” he said mercilessly. “You’re handy. That’s all it is.”

      The revelation was shattering to her ego. “Oh. Oh, I…I see.”

      “I hope so. You’re very obvious lately, Coreen. You hang around the ranch waiting for me, you dress up when I come into the feed store. It’s flattering, but I don’t want your juvenile attention or your misplaced infatuation. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but that’s how it is. You aren’t the kind of woman who attracts me. You have the body and the outlook of an adolescent.”

      She went scarlet. Had she been so obvious? She moved back from him, her arms crossing over her breasts. She was devastated.

      His jaw tautened as he looked at her wounded expression, but he didn’t recant. “Don’t take it so hard,” he said curtly. “You’ll learn soon enough that we have to settle for what we can get in life. I’ll send Billy for supplies from now on. And you’ll find some excuse not to come out to the ranch to see Sandy. Won’t you?”

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