World's Most Eligible Texan. Sara Orwig

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      “What happened was scary. I guess you’ll get over it as time goes by. Sorry you won’t get to go to Asterland to teach this semester. I heard the program was suspended.”

      “That’s right, but with my ankle hurt, I wasn’t able to teach right after the crash,” Pamela said, wishing they could stop talking about it.

      Sheila turned away, and Pamela stared at the giant burger and golden fries on her plate and knew she couldn’t eat a bite. Nor could she leave the entire burger and fries without stirring up a storm of comments. She sipped some of the chocolate malt, ate two bites of the burger, and then she couldn’t get down another morsel. She wrapped the burger and a few fries in her napkin and jammed them into her purse. Her purse would reek of hamburger, but she didn’t want any gossip starting now. No one ordered one of Manny’s juicy burgers and then left it with only a couple of bites taken out of it.

      Thank heavens, so far, both she and Thad Delner led such straight and square lives that no one could conjure up gossip about them going together to the ball. And everyone in town knew he went to represent the school. Also, everyone in town was sorry about the loss of his wife, whom he had deeply loved. But once word got out that she had left the ball with Aaron Black, that would be another matter.

      She slid out of the booth, paid and rushed from the diner before she had another conversation with anyone else. A few people were beginning to appear for lunch and she greeted them perfunctorily without even seeing who they were.

      She drove home, her thoughts still churning, but an absolute determination growing within her that Aaron Black should never know about the baby. Their baby. She would call Jessica to tell her to watch for teaching jobs in Midland. The teaching position in Asterland was suspended this semester and by the next term, she would be very pregnant and she wouldn’t want to go to Asterland even if it were possible. She wanted her baby born here in Texas where she had friends.

      Midland was larger than Royal, far enough away that her life would be her own, yet close enough she could get back to see her friends in Royal when she wanted to.

      At least she didn’t have to worry about running into Aaron. He was halfway around the world and most likely had forgotten about her by now. She could imagine the kind of women in his life and wondered whether, while home in Texas, he had simply been amusing himself with the country girl that she was. In many ways Royal wasn’t a typical small Texas town because of oil money and all the wealth it produced. Basically, though, Royal was a small West Texas town and she was pure country.

      She turned onto her street and saw her two-story brick apartment complex. She drove through the open wooden barriers that never closed and turned down the row to the back of her tiny apartment and her carport. As she approached her carport, her heart thudded. Seated on the tailgate of a shiny black pickup was Aaron Black.

      Two

      Her throat went dry and it was difficult to breathe. She felt hot, embarrassed, as if she were nine months pregnant instead of only weeks. There he was, and more than that, he looked marvelous. Her pulse raced like a shooting star. He looked as good in jeans and a plaid woolen shirt as he had in a tux. He wore scuffed boots and slid casually to his feet with his hands hooked into his wide, hand-tooled leather belt. A lock of brown hair fell across his forehead.

      His green eyes were just as she remembered—going right through her. How could she keep her secret? Why was he here and not halfway around the world? What was she going to say to him? What did he want?

      A cynical voice answered that question in a flash—another easy night with her. Her chin raised and her lips compressed while she tried to breathe deeply and wondered if she was going to faint right in front of him. Except she wasn’t given to fainting. It might be a lot easier if she could.

      “Go away, Aaron Black,” she mumbled as she parked, and knew he was watching her every move. And then he was at the door, opening it and holding it for her.

      When she stepped outside and looked up at him, her heart skipped beats. Gazing at him solemnly, she wrestled with her feelings because she wanted to walk right into his arms.

      “Hi, Pamela.”

      She couldn’t say a word.

      “Well, hi, there, Aaron, it’s good to see you,” he said in a teasing voice while he ran his finger lightly along her cheek. “Cat got your tongue? Some reason I developed the plague and you want to avoid me?”

      At his touch, tingles flashed through her, and she knew she was hopelessly lost unless she got her wits together and her defenses up. She drew herself up. “Hi, Aaron. I thought you were in Spain.”

      “Well, I was,” he drawled in that mellow voice that was like a stroke of his fingers. Darn, if he would just quit looking at her like she was a bit of steak and he was a starving man. “But I came home because I wanted to see you.”

      “You came home to see me?” she whispered, shocked and unable to believe she had heard correctly. Did he know? She rejected that notion instantly.

      He looked around while a gust of cold wind buffeted them and spun leaves into the air. “Could we maybe talk inside?”

      “Oh! Of course. Come in,” she said, feeling ridiculous and knowing the women in his life knew how to handle moments like this smoothly and casually, while she was acting like a twelve-year-old with her first crush. She moved ahead of him, reached out to unlock the door and dropped her keys. He scooped them up, reached his long arm around her and unlocked the door, pushing it open and waiting for her to enter. Too aware of how close he was behind her, she stepped inside. He made her fluttery and overly conscious of him and of herself and her condition.

      She glanced around her tiny kitchen and thought of his palatial family home in Pine Valley. Her whole apartment would fit into his kitchen.

      She opened her purse to drop her keys inside and the smell of the hamburger wafted into the air. His brows arched and he reached down to pull the wrapped burger from her purse. She could hear the laughter in his voice. “You carry hamburgers and fries in your purse?”

      “Not usually,” she said, snatching her lunch from him and carrying it to the counter to set it down. “I wasn’t hungry. Do you want anything to drink?”

      “No thanks, but help yourself.”

      She shook her head. “Let’s sit in the living room.”

      He looked all around as they entered her tiny living room with its white wicker furniture, red, blue and yellow throw pillows, colorful prints on the walls—an attractive room to her, but a far cry from his lifestyle.

      “Nice place.”

      “Thank you.”

      He prowled around with both the grace and curiosity of a cat and stepped into the bedroom that opened off the living room. “This is your bedroom,” he said, and she wondered how she had left her room that morning when she had dressed for the doctor’s appointment. She ran her hand across her forehead, watching him as he returned to the living room and moved across the room to the sofa. He tilted his head again.

      “Are you going to sit down?”

      “Yes,” she replied, knowing she was acting ridiculously, but he had jolted her with his sudden appearance when she’d thought he was in Spain.

      When СКАЧАТЬ