Man Of Ice. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ Her posture was still unnatural. He wanted to think she was acting this way deliberately, in an attempt to resurrect the old guilt. But it wasn’t an act. She looked at him with eyes that were vulnerable, but even if she cared as much as ever, she was afraid of him. And it showed.

      The knowledge made him uncomfortable. More uncomfortable than he usually was. He’d taunted her with her feelings for him for years, until it was a habit he couldn’t break. He’d even done it the night he lost his head and destroyed her innocence. He’d behaved viciously to push away the guilt and the shame he felt at his loss of control.

      He hadn’t meant to attack her tonight, of all times. Not after the argument he’d had with her months ago. He’d come to make peace. But the attempt had backfired. It was the way she was dressed, and the two eager young men sitting like worshipers at her feet, that had enraged him with jealousy. He hadn’t meant a word he said, but she wouldn’t know that. She was used to having him bait her. It didn’t make him feel like a man to punish her for his own sins; it made him sick. Especially now, with what he’d only just found out about the past, and what had happened to her because of him…

      He averted his eyes to her folded arms. She looked like a whipped child. She’d adopted that posture after he’d seduced her. The image was burned indelibly into his brain. It still hurt, too.

      “I only want to talk,” he said curtly. “You can relax.”

      “What could we possibly have to say to each other?” she asked icily. “I wish I never had to see you again, Dawson!”

      His eyes bit into hers. “Like hell you do.”

      She couldn’t win an argument with him. It was better not to start one. “What do you want to talk about?”

      His gaze went past her, to the living room, where people were laughing and drinking and talking. Happy, comfortable people. Not like the two on the staircase.

      He shrugged and took another swallow from the glass before he faced her again. “What else? I want you to come home for a week or two.”

      Her heart raced. She averted her gaze. “No!”

      He’d expected that reaction. He was ready to debate it. “You’ll have plenty of chaperones,” he informed her. “Rodge and Corlie.” He paused deliberately. “And the widow Holton.”

      She looked up. “Still?” she muttered sarcastically. “Why don’t you just marry her and be done with it?”

      He deliberately ignored the sarcasm. “You know that she’s got a tract of land in Bighorn that I have to own. The only way she’ll discuss selling it to me is if I invite her to Sheridan for a few days.”

      “I hear that she’s hanging around the ranch constantly,” she remarked.

      “She visits regularly, but not overnight,” he said. “The only way I can clinch the land deal and get her to go away is to let her spend a few days at the ranch. I can’t do that without you.”

      He didn’t look pleased about it. Odd. She’d heard from her best friend, Antonia Long, that the widow was lovely and eligible. She couldn’t understand why Dawson was avoiding her. It was common knowledge that she’d chased Powell Long, Antonia’s husband, and that she was casting acquisitive eyes at Dawson as well. Barrie had no right to be jealous, but she was. She didn’t look at him, because she didn’t want him to know for sure just how vulnerable she still was.

      “You must like her if you’re willing to have her stay at the ranch,” she said. “Why do you keep plaguing me to come and play chaperone?”

      His pale green eyes met hers. “I don’t want her in my bed. Is that blunt enough?”

      She flushed. It wasn’t the sort of remark he was in the habit of making to her. They never discussed intimate things at all.

      “You still blush like a virgin,” he said quietly.

      Her eyes flashed. “And you’re the one man in the world who has reason to know that I’m not!” she said in a harsh, bitter undertone.

      His expression wasn’t very readable. He averted his eyes to the carpet. After a minute he finished his drink. He reached through the banister to put the glass on the hall table beyond it.

      She pulled her skirt aside as he reached past her. For an instant, his deeply tanned face was on an unnerving level with hers. She could see the tiny mole at the corner of his mouth, the faint dimple in his firm chin. His upper lip was thinner than the lower one, and she remembered with sorrow how those hard lips felt on her mouth. She’d grieved for him for so long. She’d never been able to stop loving him, despite the pain he’d caused her, despite his suspicions, his antagonism. She wondered sometimes if it would ever stop.

      He turned sideways on the step, leaning back against the banister to cross his long legs in front of him. His boots were immaculate, as was the white silk shirt under his open dinner jacket. But, then, he made the most casual clothes look elegant. He was elegant.

      “Why don’t you get married?” he asked suddenly.

      Her eyebrows went up. “Why should I?”

      His quiet gaze went over her body, down her full, firm breasts to her narrow hips and long legs. The side slit had fallen open in the position she was sitting, and all too much of her silk-clad leg was visible.

      He watched her face very carefully as he spoke. “Because you’re twenty-six. In a few more years, it will be more difficult for you to have a child.”

      A child…A child. The color drained out of her face, out of her eyes. She swallowed a surge of nausea as she remembered the wrenching pain, the fear as she phoned for an ambulance and was carried to the hospital. He didn’t know. He’d never know, because she wouldn’t tell him.

      “I don’t want to marry anyone. Excuse me, I have to—”

      She tried to get up, but his lean hand shot out and caught her forearm, anchoring her to the steps. He was too close. She could smell the exotic cologne he always wore, feel his breath, whiskey-scented, on her face.

      “Stop running from me!” he growled.

      His eyes met hers. They were relentless, intent.

      “Let me go!” she raged.

      His fingers only tightened. He made her feel like a hysterical idiot with that long, hard stare, but she couldn’t stop struggling.

      He ended the unequal struggle by tugging slightly and she landed back on the steps with a faint thump. “Stop it,” he said firmly.

      Her eyes flashed at him, her cheeks flushed.

      He let go of her arm all at once. “At least you look alive again,” he remarked curtly. “And back to normal pretending to hate me.”

      “I’m not pretending. I do hate you, Dawson,” she said, as if she was programmed to fight him, to deny any hint of caring in her voice.

      “Then it shouldn’t affect you all that much to come home with me.”

      “I won’t run interference for you with the widow. If you want that land so badly…”

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