Friends and Lovers

He drew an impatient breath. “My God, one bad experience isn’t any excuse for becoming a nun,” he growled.

She stiffened. Her full lower lip pouted at him. “You’re like a bear with a sore head lately, John Durango,” she glowered. “If you’re hungry, take a bit of the hors d’oeuvres; I don’t feel like being nibbled on tonight.”

She turned and started to walk away, but he caught her arm. As usual, the touch of his warm, strong fingers on her bare skin caused her heart to race, her breath to catch. It was a faintly alarming reaction, but she’d never dared wonder why he could cause it when no other man ever had.

“Don’t run from me,” he said at her ear. He was so close that she could feel the heat and power of his big body against the length of her back.

“I don’t know what else to do,” she said miserably. “You’re ice cold with me, you act as if you can’t bear to be around me and draw back every time I touch you….” Her troubled eyes met his. “I thought we were friends.”

His eyes wandered over her face. “We are. Bear with me.”

She saw the rigid lines in his face, the turbulence in his silver eyes, and she relented.

“I care about you,” she said gently. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it? Something’s bothering you. Can’t you tell me what it is?”

“You, least of all, my dear,” he said curtly. He reached out a careless hand and touched a wispy strand of reddish gold hair that had escaped her high coiffure. “Why do you twist your hair up like that? I hate it.”

“I’m not a gypsy,” she reminded him. “Long hair goes with bare feet, and our hostess would be shocked.”

“Shock her,” he murmured, and the mustache curled for the first time that night. “I dare you.”

“The last time you dared me to do anything, I jumped in the river fully clothed and astounded a carload of tourists,” she reminded him. She laughed softly. “Besides,” she added with a sigh, touching her temple, “I don’t feel like doing shocking things tonight. My head hurts; I’m so tired I can hardly stand, and all I want is to go home and go to sleep.”

“Then why don’t you?” he asked.

“Walk out on my own party when I’ve been here for less than an hour?” she asked. “Now wouldn’t that be polite, and after Elise has gone to so much trouble, too.”

“To hell with diplomacy,” he murmured curtly. His eyes searched her wan face. “I’ll drive you home.”

“And leave your conquest smoldering?” she asked with a pointed glance toward Melody, who was openly glaring at both of them while a man twenty years John’s junior was trying to get her attention. “No thanks. I’ll get Donald to take me.”

It was the wrong thing to say—she saw that at once. His eyes went from silver to slate in seconds. “Like sweet hell you will,” he growled.

Suddenly he bent and swung her easily up into his hard arms, a move so unexpected that she gasped.

“Close your eyes and moan,” he said curtly. His tone was so commanding that she forgot her independence for once and did as he told her. She felt his big arms around her, smelled the soap and cologne that clung to him, felt the warmth and strength of his magnificent body and wondered at the tiny little tremor that worked its way down to her toes.

“Why, John, what’s wrong with Madeline!” she heard Elise exclaim.

“Overwork,” he replied flatly, barely breaking stride. “I’m going to drive her home. I’ll send Josito over in the morning to get her car. Thanks, Elise, enjoyed it. Good night.”

“Uh, good night,” came the stammered reply. “I’ll call her tomorrow and check on her!”

John went straight out the door and Madeline heard him murmur something as someone opened and closed it for him. Then they were outside in the cool night air, and she was grateful for the warmth of his arms in the spring chill. Her wrap was back in the house, but fortunately she’d kept her dangling little purse on her arm.

“You can open your eyes now,” John murmured, a soft, teasing note in his voice.

She did, staring up at him. “You’re terribly strong.” The words slipped out involuntarily and embarrassed her.

He chuckled, an increasingly rare sound these days. “I’m not over the hill, honey,” he reminded her, “and nobody could call me a desk executive.”

That was the truth. He still worked around the ranch to keep fit, and he could outlast most of his cowboys.

She shifted her arms around his neck, feeling him stiffen as her breast brushed closer. “That was a novel idea you had,” she said with a smile. “Nobody could say anything about a woman fainting….” The smile vanished and she gaped up at him. “Oh, my God!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Everyone will think I’m pregnant!” she groaned.

Chapter Two

His shadowy eyes swept down her slender body as he paused by his black Ferrari and opened the door, propping her on a lifted thigh before lowering her inside.

“So?” he asked nonchalantly. “Writers are supposed to be unconventional.”

She glared at him as he went around the front of the sports car and got in beside her. “Who do I spend most of my spare time with?” she asked archly. “They’ll think it’s yours!”

He laughed softly as he started the car. “You can name it after me, too.”

The thought of having John’s child made her feel strange. She gazed at his profile with curiosity, trying to reconcile the way she was feeling with the old comradeship that seemed to be slipping away. What was happening to her?

He drove in silence to the 610 Loop that circled the city, and smoked his cigarette without moving his eyes from the traffic until he turned off at Montrose and wound down the street where Madeline’s small Victorian house was located.

It was an older section of the city, and a number of the houses had been beautifully renovated. Madeline had inherited hers from a great-aunt who’d preserved the little house with the protective instincts of a mother hen. It might be old, but it was well cared for, and Madeline had kept up the tradition; frugally at first, and then lavishly when she began to show a profit with her writing.

“How’s the new book going?” he asked as he pulled into her driveway.

“Slowly,” she murmured. “Did I tell you there’s actually talk of a movie contract on The Grinding Tower if it continues to pick up readers and critical acclaim?” she added with a flash of sweet triumph in her eyes. “I was so excited I could hardly believe it. And I wanted to call and tell you—but we weren’t speaking.”

He cut the Ferrari’s powerful engine and half turned in the bucket seat to study her in the glare of the porch light from Miss Rose’s house next door. Madeline knew Miss Rose kept an eye out for her when she was late getting home at night. “I lost my temper,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean to cut you up that way.”

It was the closest he’d ever come to any apology, and she knew it. He wouldn’t have made the effort for most people.

She shrugged gently. “I really wasn’t leading him on, you know,” she murmured. She glanced at him. “Do I have to remind you how I feel about men?”

He searched her flushed face. “It might help if you go over it every fifteen minutes,” he said enigmatically. “Especially if you’re going to wear dresses like that.”

“This old thing?” she teased, fingering the pleats of the dress. “Why it only cost the better part of one little chapter.”

He laughed softly, his face visible in the glow of his cigarette tip. “Everything is in terms of books with you,” he murmured amusedly. “A car is one book, a dress is a chapter….”

“My car is certainly not worth one book,” she reminded him. “I got it secondhand, it’s great on gas, and I love it.”

“I don’t have any quarrel with making full use of a piece of machinery,” he reminded her, and she suppressed a giggle, thinking of the limits to which he’d push a tractor or a combine.

“Yes, I know,” she mumbled.

His eyes went toward the side of the house where her little yellow Volkswagen was usually parked, and stopped on the huge oak tree beside it. “You need to have that tree taken down,” he said for the tenth time in as many months. “It’s dangerous. One good storm wind will land it right in your living room,” he said, “and I’ll remind you that it’s storm season and we’ve had our share of tornadoes in past years.”