Friends and Lovers

Her tense body relaxed. “No, thanks,” she said stiffly. “You’re entitled to your opinion of me. I’m aware that it’s gone down a few notches lately.”

He took a draw from the cigarette and studied her flushed face quietly. “For just a minute, that cool little mask you always wear slipped. You wanted to hit me, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she said curtly, averting her eyes.

“Why didn’t you?”

She shifted restlessly. “Because I’ve never imagined that you were the kind of man to turn the other cheek.”

“I wouldn’t have hit you back, if that’s what you mean.” He leaned across to open the door, and she felt the brief, hard pressure of his arm across her soft breasts. She sat like a statue until he moved away, and only then did she realize that she’d stopped breathing for an instant.

“What would you have done?” she asked in a strangely breathless tone.

He studied her through a wisp of smoke, his lips pursed thoughtfully. “What do you think?” he asked in a blatantly sensuous tone.

“I think it’s late,” she said.

“Later than you think, honey. I’ll send Josito for you about seven, okay?”

She searched his eyes, finding questions instead of answers. He made her nervous, he frightened her.

“We’ll take it slow and easy,” he said softly, his eyes giving the words a different, exciting meaning.

Incredibly, she blushed, while he searched her eyes until she thought her frantically beating heart would burst.

“Maybe it would be better if I didn’t,” she said in a whisper, thinking out loud.

“Don’t be afraid of me,” he said. “We’ve always trusted one another, Satin.”

She laughed self-consciously. “I must be more exhausted than I imagined,” she said, staring at him. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight.”

“Don’t you, honey?”

She swung her long legs to the ground and got out of the low-slung car. “Thanks for bringing me home,” she said in a strained tone.

“Will you be all right?” he asked, and there was genuine concern in his voice.

“Of course I will,” she said firmly. “I don’t need taking care of, you know. I’m very independent.”

“So am I, but who sat up with me for two nights when I had the flu?” he asked, his mustache curling.

She flushed, remembering how she’d helped Josito sponge him down during that unusual illness. John never got sick, but he’d been far from well that night. It had taken both of them to hold him down until the fever broke. And she remembered vividly the feel of his hair-roughened skin under her hands as she’d bathed him to bring down the fever….

“Who else was there?” she muttered self-consciously. “Josito couldn’t manage alone.”

He smiled at her, a quiet, tender smile that made her want to fling herself into his arms. “I’d have done the same for you,” he said. One eye narrowed and the mustache twitched wickedly. “In fact, I’d have enjoyed it tremendously.”

The thought of his big, rough hands touching her the way she’d touched him made her go weak in the knees. It was an odd reaction, a frightening one.

“Go home,” she grumbled, slamming the door.

She started toward the house, digging for her key.

“Seven a.m. sharp!” he called out the window.

She turned and gave him her best fairy-princess curtsy before he reversed the Ferrari and roared away into the night with a chuckle.

Chapter Three

John’s ranch was small by Texas standards, but then it wasn’t his main source of income. Oil was, and the ranch was more of a hobby than a business. He raised thoroughbred Santa Gertrudis cattle, and his champion bulls brought high prices at market. The older ones, the ribbon winners whose photographs lined the walls of his office and his den, were worth up to a half-million dollars apiece. Even the young bulls brought good prices, though, for their superior bloodlines.

Riding along beside John, between the neat white fences that separated the pastures stretching to the flat horizon, she was struck by the difference in him. He was in denims and boots and that battered black Stetson he wore around the ranch—this was a far cry from the elegantly dressed man who’d driven her home the night before.

“You’re staring again,” he observed with a wry glance, the habitual cigarette in his long, brown fingers.

“I was just thinking how different you are here,” she admitted.

His eyes ran over her slender body in jodhpurs and a short-sleeved green print blouse. The morning was cloudy and a little chilly, but she hated the idea of a sweater. John must have, too, because his denim shirt was rolled up to his elbows.

“I like you in green,” he said thoughtfully.

She smiled, shaking back her loosened hair, and then wondered at the way his eyes followed the movement. “They say it’s a restful color,” she murmured.

“Just what I need,” he replied dryly. “I didn’t get much sleep.”

She stared at him, the smile fading. She tugged on the reins and increased the pressure of her knees, forcing the little Appaloosa mare she was riding into a canter. She could have ridden the horse right over John Durango. Damned arrogant man, flinging his one-night stand in her face!

He effortlessly caught up with her on his big Appaloosa gelding.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” he growled.

She wouldn’t look at him. “Nothing,” she said tersely. “Are those cows new?” she asked, changing the subject.

“No, they’re not new. Answer me.”

She flashed him a glance before she urged the mare into a gallop, leaning over her mane. The wind lashed her face, tore through her hair. She needed the burst of excitement that the speed gave her. She needed the element of danger.

She raced wildly down the wide dirt road between the pastures, laughing, her hair trailing behind her. He’d never catch her now!

But he was right alongside, his eyes biting into hers, and all at once he leaned over and caught the reins in a big, strong hand, easing her mare to a canter, a trot, and then reining her in completely. They were beyond the road now, in the meadow, in a grove of tall pecan trees near the highway.

Madeline glared at him. “I was having fun…!”

“You were about to break your damned neck!” he countered, faintly pale beneath his dark tan, his craggy face unusually hard. “What’s gotten into you, you little fool?”

“Don’t shout at me!” she defended.

“I’m not shouting!” His eyes narrowed and he drew in an annoyed breath. “I could beat the breath out of you when you do crazy things like this, Madeline, I swear to God….” He dismounted, almost jerking her off the horse. He glared down at her, his mouth making a thin line, his eyes blazing. His big hands were gripping her shoulders painfully, and he shook her once, roughly.