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.”
“I will not have Great-Aunt Jessie’s oak tree cut down. Her grandfather planted it, you know,” she said huffily.
“Her grandfather, hell,” he shot back. “She was an orphan!”
She tossed her hair, threatening the elaborate coiffure. “Lies!” she retorted. “I have it on the best authority that she was the illegitimate daughter of a Yankee sea captain and my great-grandmother Surrey!”
He chuckled softly. “How scandalous. Does hot blood run in your family, Miss Vigny?”
She peeked at him through her lashes. “Why, sir, what a scandalous question! Miss Rose would be shocked. She was the one who told me, and she heard it straight from my great-aunt, who was her neighbor for twenty years!”
He finished the cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray. “I’ll have Josito bring your car home in the morning,” he said. He turned. “Or I can have him fetch you and you can drive it home later.”
“Is that an invitation?” she asked.
He nodded. “We could go riding. We haven’t done that lately.”
She averted her eyes. “I don’t know that I want to go near your stables again. You seem to have the idea that all I want out of life is to seduce your ranch hands one by one.”
“Stop that!” His hand caught her chin and jerked her face around to his blazing eyes. “I don’t want to see men pawing you,” he said curtly. “Especially not my men when they’re drunk!” His eyes ranged over every inch of her soft body, touching it in a way they never had before. His fingers closed on her chin and his eyes were dark and full of secrets. “I don’t want any man…touching you,” he breathed roughly.
She stared up into his eyes helplessly, tracing the craggy face, the straight nose, the bushy mustache over that hard, sensuous mouth. She could feel the sigh of his breath on her face, and she felt tingly all the way to her toes at the feel of his fingers on her soft cheek and chin.
Involuntarily, her own fingers reached out to touch the mustache over that chiseled mouth.
He seemed to flinch just before his hand went up to catch her wrist in a steely grasp, holding it away.
“Don’t do that,” he said harshly. “Can’t you get it into your head that I don’t want you to touch me?”
Her lower lip trembled, but she managed a nervous laugh. “I’ve got the message, Mr. Durango,” she assured him. “Now if you’ll give me back my arm, I’ll gladly go away and let you rush back to your conquest at Elise’s party.”
But he didn’t let go, and his eyes were watchful. “You’ve been