She realized she didn’t know. Her fear was formless, and yet she did feel it.
Remember the others, she reminded herself. They were after your money. They hurt you. He could so easily do the same…
But even as she thought of that, she didn’t believe it. Oh, he might hurt her, yes. But in her heart, she simply didn’t believe it would be for her money.
Which probably made her the biggest fool in Montana.
He loosened his hold on her. With a deep sigh, he pressed his forehead to hers. “You’re right,” he said. “Enough.”
She slid her hands down to his hard chest. Beneath her palms, she could feel his heat, and his heart racing. His breath came out in ragged puffs—just like hers.
She whispered, “We’d better go in.”
He touched her hair. She thought that she’d never felt anything quite so lovely in her whole life as that—the tender caress of his hand on her hair. He threaded his chilled bare fingers up under the tangled strands and cupped the back of her neck. She took his cue and tipped her head up to look at him.
“Yeah,” he said. His mouth was swollen from what he’d been doing to her, his eyes twin blue flames. “We’ll go in. Now.” He pressed one more quick, hard kiss on her lips—as if he realized he shouldn’t, but couldn’t resist. Her mouth burned at the contact.
Then he reached across her to grab his discarded glove. Rolling away from her, he rose. She scuttled to a sitting position.
“Here,” he said.
She stared at his outstretched hand. It seemed…too dangerous to take it.
Her gaze tracked upward, to his face. She knew by the heated look in his eyes that if she reached out, he would only pull her close and start kissing her again—and the thrumming of her blood through her body left her no doubt that she would end up kissing him right back.
No. Not going to happen. She’d known this man less than twenty-four hours. And she refused to end up rolling around naked with him on a bed of hay in a freezing old shed.
“I can manage, thanks.” She pulled off a glove and felt in her hair. It was just as she’d suspected: threaded through with bits of hay. “Oh, just look at me…”
Justin let his hand drop to his side. “I am.” His voice was husky and low. And in his eyes she saw desire—real desire. For her.
And not only desire, but also something dark and lonely, something that might have been regret.
Katie’s mouth went dust-dry. This was danger—a danger far beyond any threat a mere fortune hunter might pose. Peril to her tender heart, to her very soul.
No doubt about it. She wanted him—with a kind of bone-melting yearning, with a merciless desire the like of which she’d never known before.
It was…a physical aching. A hunger in the blood.
Oh, she would have to watch herself with him. She would have to exercise a little caution, or she’d be in way over her head.
Somewhere far back in her mind, a taunting voice whispered, Katie. Come on. You’re already over your head. Over your head and falling fast…
Chapter Four
He shouldn’t have kissed her.
It had been a major error in judgment and Justin damn well knew that it had.
He shouldn’t have kissed her. Not so soon, anyway—and certainly not in a prickly bed of hay on the frozen dirt floor of the shed out back, with that irritating old mare looking on.
Getting hot and heavy so fast had spooked her. She had her guard up and now he couldn’t get past it.
They spent the rest of the endless day playing checkers, watching the snow fall, stoking the fire in the stove out front and reading books and magazines they found stacked in the storage room. Whenever they spoke, she made sure it was in polite generalities.
The snow kept falling. The radio played only static. And the phone stayed dead.
Justin could have kicked himself with his rummage sale Converse All-Star. The big loss of ground with her was his own damn fault. He’d sucked her in beautifully, had her right in the palm of his hand once he’d told her the story of that lonely week in the cabin when he was thirteen. He’d hit the perfect common nerve: a lonely childhood; parents who weren’t all they should have been.
It was going so well.
Until the kiss.
And even that could have been okay—could have been tender and sweet and worked beautifully to lure her closer.
But he’d gotten his arms around her and her mouth under his and that sweet body pressed close against him…
He’d lost it. Lost every last shred of control.
The bald truth was that he’d seriously underestimated the power of his own lust for the shy browneyed librarian with too much money and an adopted family he despised.
It was funny, really—though he wasn’t laughing. A royal backfire of his basic intention: he was supposed to seduce her.
Not the other way around.
At six that evening, they sat at the kitchen table, reading—or at least, Katie was reading. He knew it because he kept sneaking glances at her and losing his place in the thriller that should have been holding him spellbound—or so it said in the cover notes. As “taut” and “edge-of-your seat” as the book was supposed to be, he kept having to go back and read the same paragraph over and over again.
Katie, though…
She seemed to have no trouble at all with her concentration. She’d laid the heavy volume she’d chosen open on the table, rested her forearms on the tabletop and bent her brown head to the page. She’d barely budged from that position for over an hour. He knew. He’d timed her. Occasionally, she’d catch her soft bottom lip between her teeth, worry it lightly and let it go. Sometimes she smiled—just the faintest hint of a smile. As if what she read amused her.
Justin scowled every time she smiled like that. He wanted her to look up and smile at him, damn it. But she didn’t.
And he ought to be glad she didn’t look up. If she caught him scowling at her, he’d only lose more ground than he already had.
And what the hell was his problem here, anyway? He was getting way too invested in this thing with her. She had nothing to do with the main plan and if she never let him get near her again it wouldn’t matter in the least.
So why should he care if she smiled at him or not?
He decided he’d be better off not thinking too deeply on that one.
Luckily for him, he’d just looked down at his book again when she glanced up and announced, “You know, when we went through the cupboards in here yesterday, I noticed some cans way in the back.”
There was something in her tone—something easier, a little more friendly.
His pulse ratcheted up a notch and he quelled a satisfied smile. Better, he thought. Now, don’t blow it…
He shut the battered paperback without marking the page. Next time he picked it up, he’d have to start over, anyway. “Yeah,” he said, sounding a hell of a lot more offhand than he felt. He gestured toward the cabinets on the far wall. “In the bottom, on the left.” He started to rise.
“No. I’ll look.”
He sank back to his seat and she got up and went over there, leaving him debating whether to follow her. He decided against it. She was loosening up a little. Better let her get looser before he got too close.