Unlikely Lover. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ She was wearing a simple dropped-waist dress in blue-and-white stripes and carrying only a roly-poly piece of luggage, which contained barely enough clothes to get her through one week.

      A tall man attracted her interest, and despite the shyness she felt with most men, she studied him blatantly. He was as big as the side of a barn, tall with rippling muscles and bristling with backcountry masculinity. Wearing a gray suit, an open-necked white shirt and a pearly gray Stetson and boots, he looked big and mean and sexy. The angle of that hat over his black hair was as arrogant as the look on his deeply tanned face, as intimidating as that confident stride that made people get out of his way. He would have made the perfect hero for Mari’s book. The strong, tender man who would lead her damaged heroine back to happiness again…

      He didn’t look at anyone except Mari, and after a few seconds she realized that he was coming toward her. She clutched the little carryall tightly as he stopped just in front of her, and in spite of her height she had to look up to see his eyes. They were green and cold. Ice-cold.

      “Marianne Raymond,” he said as if she’d damned well better be. He set her temper smoldering with that confident drawl.

      She lifted her chin. “That’s right,” she replied just as quietly. “Are you from Three Forks Ranch?”

      “I am Three Forks Ranch,” he informed her, reaching for the carryall. “Let’s go.”

      “Not one step,” she said, refusing to release it and glaring at him. “Not one single step until you tell me who you are and where we’re going.”

      His eyebrows lifted. They were straight and thick like the lashes over his green eyes. “I’m Ward Jessup,” he said. “I’m taking you to your Aunt Lillian.” He controlled his temper with a visible effort as he registered her shocked expression and reached for his wallet, flashing it open to reveal his driver’s license. “Satisfied?” he drawled and then felt ashamed of himself when he knew why she had reason to be so cautious and nervous of him.

      “Yes, thank you,” she said. That was Ward Jessup? That was a dying man? Dazed, she let him take the carryall and followed him out of the airport.

      He had a car—a big Chrysler with burgundy leather seats and controls that seemed to do everything, right up to speaking firmly to the passengers about fastening their seat belts.

      “I’ve never seen such an animal,” she commented absently as she fastened her seat belt, trying to be a little less hostile. He’d asked for it, but she had to remember the terrible condition that the poor man was in. She felt guilty about her bad manners.

      “It’s a honey,” he remarked, starting the engine. “Have you eaten?”

      “Yes, on the plane, thank you,” she replied. She folded her hands in her lap and was quiet until they reached the straight open road. The meadows were alive with colorful wildflowers of orange and red and blue, and prickly pear cacti. Mari also noticed long stretches of land where there were no houses and few trees, but endless fences and cattle everywhere.

      “I thought there was oil everywhere in Texas,” she murmured, staring out at the landscape and the sparse houses.

      “What do you think those big metal grasshoppers are?” he asked, glancing at her as he sped down the road.

      She frowned. “Oil wells? But where are the big metal things that look like the Eiffel Tower?”

      He laughed softly to himself. “My God. Eastern tenderfoot,” he chided. “You put up a derrick when you’re hunting oil, honey, you don’t keep it on stripper wells. Those damned things cost money.”

      She smiled at him. “I’ll bet you weren’t born knowing that, either, Mr. Jessup,” she said.

      “I wasn’t.” He leaned back and settled his huge frame comfortably.

      He sure does look healthy for a dying man, Mari thought absently.

      “I worked on rigs for years before I ever owned one.”

      “That’s very dangerous work, isn’t it?” she asked conversationally.

      “So they say.”

      She studied his very Roman profile, wondering if anyone had ever painted him. Then she realized that she was staring and turned her attention to the landscape. It was spring and the trees looked misshapen and gloriously soft feathered with leaves.

      “What kind of trees are those, anyway?” she asked.

      “Mesquite,” he said. “It’s all over the place at the ranch, but don’t ever go grabbing at its fronds. It’s got long thorns everywhere.”

      “Oh, we don’t have mesquite in Georgia,” she commented, clasping her purse.

      “No, just peach trees and magnolia blossoms and dainty little cattle farms.”

      She glared at him. “In Atlanta we don’t have dainty little cattle farms, but we do have a very sophisticated tourism business and quite a lot of foreign investors.”

      “Don’t tangle with me, honey,” he advised with a sharp glance. “I’ve had a hard morning, and I’m just not in the mood for verbal fencing.”

      “I gave up obeying adults when I became one,” she replied.

      His eyes swept over her dismissively. “You haven’t. Not yet.”

      “I’ll be twenty-two this month,” she told him shortly.

      “I was thirty-five last month,” he replied without looking her way. “And, to me, you’d still be a kid if you were four years older.”

      “You poor, old, decrepit thing,” she murmured under her breath. It was getting harder and harder to feel sorry for him.

      “What an interesting houseguest you’re going to make, Miss Raymond,” he observed as he drove down the interstate. “I’ll have to arrange some razor-blade soup to keep your tongue properly sharpened.”

      “I don’t think I like you,” she said shortly.

      He glared back. “I don’t like women,” he replied and his voice was as cold as his eyes.

      She wondered if he knew why she’d come and decided that Aunt Lillian had probably told him everything. She averted her face to the window and gnawed on her lower lip. She was being deliberately antagonistic, and her upbringing bristled at her lack of manners. He’d asked Lillian to bring her out to Texas; he’d even paid for her ticket. She was supposed to cheer him up, to help him write his memoirs, to make his last days happier. And here she was being rude and unkind and treating him like a bad-tempered old tyrant.

      “I’m sorry,” she said after a minute.

      “What?”

      “I’m sorry,” she repeated, unable to look at him. “You let me come here, you bought my ticket, and all I’ve done since I got off the plane is be sarcastic to you. Aunt Lillian told me all about it, you know,” she added enigmatically, ignoring the puzzled expression on his face. “I’ll do everything I can to make you glad you’ve brought me here. I’ll help you out in every way I can. Well,” СКАЧАТЬ