Wild Enough For Willa. Ann Major

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      5

      Willa de Mello was afraid of the dark, afraid of going to sleep, afraid of bad dreams. Especially when there was a big bad wolf lounging in the stuffed armchair right beside her.

      So, she lay in the dark and wondered how in the world she would get away from Luke McKade. Not that she was really worried. For all his macho bravado, the big, oversexed lug was a pussycat…at least compared to Brand.

      She’d known he wouldn’t force her to do it. Not if she didn’t want to. A man like him lived for challenges. He was so conceited he truly believed it would be child’s play to win her, before he bedded her.

      Willa was a cat lover. Thus, she understood predators. Cats liked to stalk and wait, to play a bit with their prey. They savored the chase, anticipating the treat. In his mind the treat was a yellow-haired party girl. A lot of men had been fooled by her hair color and sexy looks.

      Ha! This was one lady who wasn’t about to serve herself on a silver platter to another oversexed rogue, even if he had paid a thousand dollars for the meal. Under different circumstances, he might have been fun. Not tonight. But Brand, what he’d nearly done, had changed Willa forever. Willa’s secret agenda was a matter of life and death.

      Not that McKade wasn’t attractive, if a girl went for tall dark and disturbingly handsome and rich and powerful, which did have a certain appeal to a fan of Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters’ novels. But Willa was way too disillusioned and in way too much trouble to take on a new man, especially another know-it-all bully who thought the worst of her. All her life she’d been misunderstood. If her appearance didn’t get her into trouble, then her wacky responses to life and literature did.

      What she’d been looking for was someone who believed in her, who accepted her—who respected her, who saw past her sexpot, dumb-blond good looks. She’d known she had to have a man who didn’t mind a woman who was a little different. A man who didn’t expect her to be a deb or a Martha. Here in Laredo, the highest class debs were known as Marthas and Marthas were the equivalents of New Orleans Mardis Gras queens. And Willa had thought, until tonight’s rude awakening, she’d found such a man in Brand.

      Desperate moments. Wild impulses. Reckless deeds.

      She was used to this sort of thing. Like a cat, she would land on her feet.

      It isn’t just you anymore though. You can’t keep flying by the seat of your pants, Willa dear.

      Her conscience always had Mrs. Connor’s voice. Dear, soft-spoken Mrs. Connor had been her favorite art teacher at Trinity Elementary. Mrs. Connor hadn’t minded if she hadn’t colored in between the lines, if she’d drawn her own pictures instead. When all the other kids had been coloring red apples on apple trees in their workbooks, Willa had drawn an upside down orange tree floating on a cloud because there had been an orange grove right in her backyard. And sometimes, when she’d lain under her favorite orange tree and stared up at the branches, she’d seen clouds floating above her tree.

      If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Connor, Willa wouldn’t have majored in art in college. She wouldn’t have become the biggest success in her class by going on to the grand career of painting T-shirts for a living. Of course, real artists despised her. Or, at least, Willa imagined they did. But she did make a good living. Which was more than a lot of real artists could say.

      If things were half as bad as McKade described, you were in a heap of trouble tonight, girl.

      Willa always talked back to Mrs. Connor.

      Tied to a bed in that vulgar, uncomfortable costume? Who me? McKade probably ripped it off some other woman and then embellished what happened to exaggerate his own importance and humiliate me.

      As if he read her rebellious thoughts and saw through her denial, McKade grumbled and shifted his large body in that chair that was much too small for him. Poor boy. He probably wanted to attract her attention, so she’d feel sorry for him and invite him to bed.

      Ha!