Lone Star Valentine. Cathy Gillen Thacker

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СКАЧАТЬ noted in disappointment, was enough to cause Lily to take a step back, away from him.

      She held up a delicate left hand, conspicuous only for its lack of wedding and engagement rings. “That’s not really necessary, Gannon,” she told him archly.

      “So you’re saying you forgive me for the things I said after we graduated from law school?” When they had still technically been friends. Although he had never stopped wanting something more...

      Lily raked her teeth across her soft lower lip. “You were right about Bode, Gannon. He was all wrong for me.”

      The knowledge brought Gannon no comfort. He followed her back over to her desk. “You didn’t think so at the time. In fact, as I recall, you accused me of being jealous of what you had with him.”

      She shot him an uncompromising look. “Weren’t you?”

      More like worried. Because Gannon had seen, even when Bode was merely a backup quarterback who’d spent his first three years in the NFL sitting on the bench, that he wasn’t the kind of guy who would ever give Lily even a fraction of the love and attention she deserved. A hunch that Bode had proved true shortly after he became a star.

      Because then he had dumped Lily. Pronto. And hadn’t cared that she had been pregnant with his child.

      But seeing no reason to go into that—Lily had suffered enough humiliation due to her ill-considered end-of-law-school liaison with Bode Daniels as it was—Gannon merely folded his arms across his chest. Stood, legs braced apart. “I never stopped wanting to date you.”

      Lily looked surprised. As if she had never known he had wanted to be anything more than friends after she had rebuffed his advances that first year at UT Law.

      Figuring it was time they cleared the air, Gannon went on, “But, by the same token, I wasn’t going to waste three years waiting to see if you would change your mind and eventually go out with me after all.”

      Frustration and regret crossed Lily’s face. She held out her hands beseechingly, came closer. “Had I not been in my very first year of law school when you asked me out...had I not seen all of our friends who got seriously involved or married to someone in their first grueling year of professional school eventually have their relationships destroyed amidst all the stress and pressure, I probably would have gone out with you.”

      “But you didn’t want to risk it.”

      She started to speak. Stopped. Then tried again. An invisible emotional wall went up. “I wanted you to be friends with me, the way we never had been when we were growing up.”

      “And I was.” Although, given how much he had yearned to make her his woman, it had been hard as hell keeping things light.

      Her eyes grew stormy. “I wanted us to use that first year to build a foundation for whatever came next, assuming something came next, not just jump heart-first into an affair that was pretty much guaranteed because of the pressure-filled circumstances we were in, as first-years, to crash and burn!”

      “You see, Lily?” Gannon shot back. “That’s the difference between us. Because I never thought a relationship between us would end in failure. And if you had been brave enough to start something with me, regardless of the timing, you would have discovered what I already knew—that we would have been the exception to the rule. The couple everyone else looked up to because we had made our relationship work in the face of impossible odds.”

      Briefly, Lily looked as crushed as he had felt back then, when she had turned him down. As though her heart had been broken.

      As usual, however, she bounced back fast.

      With an angry sniff, she folded her arms in front of her and asserted, “Not that we ever had a chance to find out, since you went on to pursue everything in a skirt that came your way over the next three years. Thereby unwittingly proving my point that relationships forged in the maelstrom of professional school do not last.”

      Acutely aware his serial dating had been a mistake, embarked on because he was still smarting from Lily’s rejection, and knew she would never do anything more than hold him at arm’s length, no matter what she said, Gannon shrugged.

      “So sue me for not wanting to sit on the sidelines while you soldiered on bravely alone!” Gannon volleyed back. Because, true to her self-flagellating vow, Lily hadn’t dated anyone until the very last few weeks of her law school years.

      Lily stuffed papers in her briefcase willy-nilly. “You always were an all-or-nothing kind of guy.”

      His gaze swept over her, head to toe. Reminding him all over again what a lithe, beautiful body she had. How she was determined to let the satisfaction he could bring her go untested. “Whereas you live your life in all half measures,” he retorted just as stubbornly.

      “You’re right. I do see the value in compromise.” Lily zipped her briefcase shut with quick, jerky motions. Hunted around for her purse.

      Finally finding it, she flung it on her desk next to her briefcase, then defiantly marched toward him, chiding him all the way. “And if you’d grown up the way I had, as the fifth-born of six daughters, you, too, would be happy to get whatever you could—whenever you could—and never ever expect too much because...”

      Recognizing another We Can’t Do This speech coming on, Gannon decided the time for treating her with kid gloves had passed. Lily was all woman. He was all man. And the attraction between them was tantalizingly real.

      Wordlessly, he closed the remaining distance between them and took her in his arms. Flattened one palm over her spine and threaded his other hand through her hair.

      Smiling at her gasp of surprise, he tilted her head up, lowered his mouth slowly and deliberately over hers.

      “What are you doing?” Lily sputtered, her turquoise eyes flashing.

      Just this once, Gannon decided to stop putting his own wants and needs aside. “Showing you exactly what you could expect if you ever let down your guard with me.”

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