Darling Enemy

“Don’t get too interested in Blakely,” he warned. “I’ve got bigger plans for you.”

“Do you always try to run people’s lives?” Teddi challenged.

He looked deep into her eyes. “Look out, honey, I might fancy running yours if you aren’t careful.”

“I’m hardly worth notice,” she reminded him. “An orphan with no connections, a background of poverty, a sordid reputation...”

“Oh, hell, shut up,” he growled, getting to his feet. “I’ve got to have the plane serviced. You two get packed.”

He stormed off. Jenna giggled openly, her eyes speculative.

“Just what is going on?” she asked Teddi. “I’ve never seen him off balance like that.”

“I have been practicing sorcery,” Teddi said in a menacing whisper. “While he wasn’t looking, I slipped a potion in his coffee. Any second now, your tall, blond brother is going to turn into a short, fat frog.”

Jenna burst out laughing, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Oh, I can’t wait to see him,” she laughed. “King, with green warts!”

Teddi laughed, too, at the absurdity of fastidious King with such an affliction. He never seemed to have a hair out of place, even when he was working with the livestock.

Hours later, they were well on the way to Calgary in King’s private Piper Navajo.

“I can’t wait for you to meet Blakely,” Jenna told her friend. “King just hired him a couple of months ago and I got to know him when I was home for that long weekend in April.”

“He must be something special,” Teddi murmured.

Jenna sighed. “Oh, he is. Brown eyes and red hair and a build like a movie star. Teddi, you’ll love him...but not too much, please,” she added, only half teasing. “I couldn’t begin to compete with you, as far as looks go.”

“Don’t be silly,” Teddi chided. “You’re lovely.”

“You’re a liar, but I love you just the same,” came the laughing reply. Jenna leaned back in the plush seat. “King didn’t chew you up too badly, did he?” she asked after a minute. Her gray eyes met Teddi’s apologetically. “I could have gone through the floor when he made that nasty remark and I saw you standing in the doorway and knew you’d heard.”

“King and I have been enemies for years,” Teddi reminded her friend, her dark eyes wistful. “I don’t know what I did to make him dislike me so, but he always has.”

“It puzzles me,” Jenna murmured, “that King gets along so well with everyone else. He has that arrogant streak, of course, but he’s a pussycat most of the time. He’s worked twenty-two-hour days to keep us solvent since Dad died. Without him the whole property would have gone down the drain.” She eyed her friend. “None of which explains his hostility toward you. I couldn’t believe my eyes when he went out of the dormitory after you.”

“That makes two of us. I very nearly hit him.”

“How exciting! What did he do?”

Teddi reddened. She was not about to admit that King had held her hand all the way to the dormitory. “He ducked,” she lied.

Jenna laughed delightedly. “Just imagine, your trying to plant one on my brother. Do you know, you never used to stand up to him. When we were younger, he’d say something hurtful and you’d go off and cry, and King would go out and chew up one or two of his men.” She laughed. “It got to be almost funny. The men would start getting nervous the minute you walked onto the property.”

Teddi shifted restlessly. “I know. To be honest, I’ve been turning down your invitations lately to avoid him. I probably wouldn’t have gone home with you at Easter if I hadn’t been trying to shake off that friend of Dilly’s who’s been pursuing me.”

“Would you mind very much telling me what happened at Easter?”

“I threw a feed bucket at him,” Teddi blurted out.

Jenna’s eyes opened wide. “You’re kidding!”

Teddi’s gaze dropped to her lap. “It was just a mild disagreement,” she lied. “Oh, look!” she exclaimed as she looked out the window. “We must be over Alberta, look at the plains!”

Jenna peeked over her friend’s shoulder and looked down through the thick cloud cover. “Could be,” she murmured, checking her watch, “but we haven’t been in the air quite long enough. I bet it was Saskatchewan.” She got up. “I’ll ask King.”

Teddi’s eyes followed the smaller girl while her mind went lazily back to the spring day when King had chided her about her private life just one time too many....

Jenna had slept late that morning, but the bright sun and the sounds of activity out at the stables had roused Teddi from a sound sleep. She’d put on her riding outfit and hurried down to get Happy to saddle a horse for her. Happy, one of the older hands on the huge Canadian ranch, had been one of her staunchest allies. He’d taught her to ride when King had refused to.

But Happy hadn’t been in the neat stables that morning. King had. And the minute she saw him, she knew there was going to be trouble. He had a way of cocking his head to one side when he was angry that warned of storms brewing in his big body, a narrowing of one eye that meant he was holding himself on a tight rein. Teddi had been too angry herself to notice the warning signs.

“I know how to ride,” she argued. “Happy taught me.”

“I don’t give a damn,” he growled back. “The men have seen bear tracks around this spring. You don’t ride alone on the ranch, is that clear?”

She felt an unreasonable hatred of him, raw because he hadn’t even noticed her painfully shy flirting, her extra attention to her appearance. She had been trying to catch his eye for the first time in their turbulent acquaintance and it hadn’t worked. Her temper had exploded.

“I’m not afraid of bears!” she all but screamed.

“Well, you should be,” he replied tightly, his eyes roaming over her. “You don’t know what a bear could do to that perfect young body.”

The words had shocked her. Amazingly, now that she had his attention, she was frightened.

She backed away from him, and that had caused a quaking kind of anger to charge up in his big body. “Afraid?” he chided. “You probably know more about sex than I do, so why pretend? Just how many men have had you?”

That had been the final straw. There was a feed bucket at her elbow, and she grabbed it without thinking, intending to fling it directly at him.

He hadn’t kept his hard-muscled body in shape by being careless. He stepped out of the way gracefully and before she had time to be shocked at her own behavior, he stepped forward and caught her by the wrists, roughly putting her hands behind her and pinning her against him.

“That,” he growled, “was stupid. What were you trying to prove, that you don’t like what you are?”

“You don’t know what I am!” she cried, wounded. Her huge brown eyes had looked up at him with apprehension.

“No?” His big hands had propelled her forward until her soft, high breasts were crushed against the front of his blue-patterned cotton shirt. She smelled the fresh, laundered scent of it mingling with his cologne. It was the closest she’d ever been to him.

“You’ve behaved like a homeless kitten around me lately,” he said in a deep, sensuous tone that aroused new sensations in Teddi’s taut body. “Low-cut blouses, clinging dresses, making eyes at me every time I turn around....” He released her wrists then, and his calloused hands eased under the hem of her blouse, finding her bare back. They lingered on her silky skin, faintly abrasive, surprisingly gentle. “Come closer, little one,” he murmured, watching her with calculating eyes, although she’d been too lost in his darkening gaze to notice that.

Her legs had trembled against the unfamiliar hardness of his, her breasts had tingled from a contact that burned even through the layers of fabric that separated her from his broad, hair-covered chest.

His hands were causing wild tremors all over her body as he savored the satin flesh of her back and urged her slender hips against his.

“I want your mouth, Teddi,” he whispered huskily, bending, so that his smoky breath caressed her trembling lips. “And you want mine, don’t you, love? You’ve wanted it for days, years...you’ve been aware of me since the day we met.” His mouth had hovered over hers tantalizingly while his hands caressed her back, made mincemeat of her pride, her self-control. “You want to feel my hands touching you, don’t you, Teddi?” he taunted, moving his head close, so that his mouth brushed tormentingly against hers when he spoke.

“King,” she moaned, going on tiptoe to try to catch his poised, teasing mouth with her own.

He’d drawn back enough to deny her the kiss, while his hands slid insolently down over her buttocks and back up again. “Do you want me to kiss you, Teddi?” he’d asked with a mocking smile.

“Yes,” she whispered achingly, “yes, please...!” Anything, she would have agreed to anything to make him kiss her, to bring the dream of years to reality, to let her know the touch and taste and aching pleasure of his hard, beautiful mouth.