Marooned With The Maverick. Christine Rimmer

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СКАЧАТЬ was still plenty left in the bucket. He set it on the floor, where Buster promptly stuck his nose in it and started lapping. “You don’t happen to have a nice T-bone handy, do you, Willa?”

      She chuckled. There wasn’t a lot of humor in the sound, but he took heart that at least she wasn’t staring blindly into space anymore. “Plenty on the hoof right outside that door.” She pointed her thumb over her shoulder at the door that led into the barn.

      He scooted back to the wall for something to lean against. “Not that hungry yet.”

      “I didn’t think so.” She scooted back, too, settling alongside him, and then spent a moment readjusting the blanket she’d wrapped around her feet. “There.” She leaned back and let out a long breath. “I believe I am actually beginning to thaw out.”

      “That was the plan.” Outside, the rain kept falling. The sky remained that same dim gray it had been all day. “Got any idea what time it is?”

      “I don’t know. Six, maybe? Seven?” She sounded … softer. A little sleepy. That was good. Rest wouldn’t hurt either of them. “Won’t be dark for hours yet….”

      He was feeling kind of drowsy, too, now that he wasn’t chilled to the bone anymore and most of the adrenaline rush from the various near-death events of the day had faded a little. He let his eyelids droop shut.

      But then she spoke again. “It’s really very strange, Collin, being here with you like this.”

      He grunted. “This whole day has been pretty strange.”

      “Yes, it has. And scary. And awful. But, well, that’s not what I meant.”

      He knew exactly what she meant. And why was it women always had to dig up stuff that was better left alone? He kept nice and quiet and hoped she wasn’t going there.

      But she was. “Maybe this is a good chance to clear the air a little between us.”

      “The air is plenty clear from where I’m sitting.”

      “Well, Collin, for me, it’s just not.”

      “Willa, I—”

      “No. Wait. I would like a chance to say what’s on my mind.”

      He didn’t let out a groan of protest, but he wanted to.

      And she kept right on. “It was very … humiliating for me, that night at the Ace in the Hole.” The Ace was on Sawmill Street. It was the only bar in town. People went there to forget their troubles and usually only ended up creating a whole new set of them. “It was my first time there, did you know? My twenty-first birthday.” She sounded all sad and wistful.

      He’d known. “I think you mentioned that at the time, yeah.”

      “Derek had just dumped me for a Delta Gamma.” Straight-arrow Derek Andrews was her high school sweetheart. They’d graduated the same year and headed off to the University of Idaho together. “Collin, did you hear me?”

      “Every word,” he muttered.

      “Did you know it was over between me and Derek?”

      “Well, Willa, I kinda had a feeling something might have gone wrong with your love life, yeah.”

      “You led me on,” she accused. “You know that you did.” He’d seen her coming a mile away. Good-girl Willa Christensen, out to find a bad boy just for the night. “And then you …” Her voice got all wobbly. “You turned me down flat.”

      “Come on, Willa. It wasn’t a good idea. You know that as well as I do.”

      “Then why did you dance with me all those times? Why did you flirt with me and buy me two beers? You acted like you were interested. More than interested. And then, when I tried to kiss you, you laughed at me. You said I wasn’t your type. You said I should go home and behave myself.”

      He’d had some crazy idea at the time that he was doing her a favor, keeping her from doing something she wouldn’t be happy about later. But with Willa, no good deed of his ever went unpunished. And was she going to start crying? He hated it when a woman started crying.

      She sniffled in her blankets, a small, lost little sound. “I still can’t believe I did that—made a pass at you. I mean, you never liked me and I never cared much for you and we both know that.” That wasn’t true—not on his part anyway. Far from it. But he wasn’t in the mood to dispute the point at the moment. He only wanted her not to start crying—and he thought maybe he was getting his wish when she squirmed in her blankets and grumbled, “Everyone knows how you are. You’ll sleep with anyone—except me, apparently.”

      Mad. Now she was getting mad. As far as he was concerned, mad was good. Mad was great. Anything but weepy worked for him.

      She huffed, “I just don’t know what got into me that night.”

      He couldn’t resist. “Well, Willa, we both know it wasn’t me.”

      She made another huffing sound. “Oh, you think you’re so funny. And you’re not. You’re very annoying and you always have been.”

      “Always?” he taunted.

      “Always,” she humphed.

      He scoffed at her. “How would you know a thing about me the last four years? Since that night at the Ace, all I see is the backside of you. I come in a room—and you turn tail and run.”

      “And why shouldn’t I? You are a complete tool and you never cared about anything or anyone in your whole life but yourself.”

      “Which is girl talk for ‘You didn’t sleep with me,’“ he said in his slowest, laziest, most insolent tone.

      “You are not the least bit clever, you know that?”

      “You don’t think so, huh?”

      “No, I do not. And it just so happens that I’m glad we never hooked up that night. You’re the last person in the world I should ever be sleeping with.”

      He tried not to grin. “No argument there. Because I’m not having sex with you no matter how hard you beg me.”

      “Oh, please. I mean just, simply, please.” She sat up straight then. Dragging her blankets along with her, she scooted to the edge of the hay bales, as far from him as she could get without swinging her bare feet to the floor. Once there, she snapped, “You do not have worry. I want nothing to do with you.”

      He freed a hand from his blankets and made a show of wiping his brow—even though she wasn’t looking at him. “Whew.”

      “In case you didn’t know, it just so happens that I have a fiancé, thank you very much.”

      “A fiancé?” That was news to Collin. The information bothered him. A lot—and that it bothered him bugged him to no end.

      “Yes,” she said. “Well. Sort of.”

      “Willa, get real. You do or you СКАЧАТЬ