“What do you mean, a girl like me?” she asked, her voice stiff, as if he’d insulted her instead of giving her a gift.
“You want things a guy like me could never give you, Hanna.”
“I don’t want you to give me anything! You don’t know me well enough to make presumptions about what I want,” she said huffily. “You never did, and you don’t now.”
He went on as if she had not protested. “You’re a forever kind of girl. When you get married, you will never ever get divorced, will you?”
“I’m never getting married, so it’s a stupid question.”
“You? Never getting married?” It was too easy to picture her amongst the Christmas trees, with a doting husband, two or three chubby babies in a sled and a golden retriever gamboling through the snow. “That’s ludicrous.”
“It isn’t,” she said, tilting her chin up, her eyes flashing dangerously. “Just because I never made it to the altar doesn’t mean that you are the only one with a failed relationship under your belt. I was engaged for two years.”
Despite her attempt to say it lightly, as if it didn’t matter one little bit to her, a world of pain swam in her eyes.
“That louse,” he growled.
“Wh-wh-what do you mean?” she stammered.
“He dumped you.”
Her mouth fell open, and then snapped shut. “How do you know?”
“Because if you said yes to a proposal, that would be as good as taking a vow to you. You would hang in there long after you’d figured out it was a mistake.”
“I never thought it was a mistake,” her tone was tight and did not invite any more comments.
“Louse,” he said again.
“No,” she said firmly. “He did me a favor. I love being single.”
He said nothing, and she apparently felt driven to continue.
“Not that I would want you to interpret that as an invitation to exercise your charms on me.”
“I won’t,” he said.
“I have been able to absolutely devote myself to my career.”
“Terrific,” he muttered. Sam knew he should let it go right there, but he couldn’t. Hanna Merrifield in love with her job? As an accountant? Ludicrous! He had to let her know he did know things about her...and they were things she would do well to know about herself.
“It is,” Hanna said stubbornly. “Terrific.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re acting as if you know me!”
“You’re a certain type. You’re the type of girl who stays inside and drinks cocoa on a snowy night,” he said softly. “You long for the very things you have denied yourself, like a Christmas tree.”
She was glaring at him with naked annoyance, which was a good thing, an antidote for the way he knew they both had felt when their hands touched.
There had always been something between them. Always.
Once, she had been too young.
Though, even then, had he not recognized that she needed something a person like him could never give her?
His failed marriage was ample evidence that he had been right then, and he was right now.
He was not a man accustomed to failure, and that one still had the power to sting. Though he would take it, instead, as a reminder not to tangle too deeply with the lovely Miss Merrifield.
He knew it would be a good note to leave on—with animosity shimmering off her like a heat wave off the desert.
The problem was that he felt honor bound to help her catch the horse. What was he going to do? Leave her here to deal with it when her hand was probably more injured than she was admitting?
Sam looked away from her impaling gaze to see the pony watching him. Who knew a horse could manage an expression of such deep suspicion and dislike?
It was almost identical to her owner’s.
And then, with startling swiftness, Molly leapt forward, snapped off the carrot with her slanted yellow teeth—nearly taking his fingers with it—and leapt away again. She stood just out of reach munching on the carrot, leaving him holding the green top part, all the while watching him out of the corner of her eye.
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