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.
“How much do you want it?” he persisted, bending to bite softly, tenderly at her mouth, catching her upper lip delicately between both of his in a caress that was blatantly arousing. “Do you ache, baby?”
“Yes,” she moaned, her eyes slitted, her body liquid under his as her knees threatened to fold under her. “King, please,” she half sobbed, “oh, please!”
He lifted his head, then, to study her hungry face and a look of pain had come over his features. He turned away so that she never saw whether he had to struggle to bring himself under control. She doubted it. Certainly there was no sign of emotion on his face when he turned back to her.
“Maybe for your birthday,” he said with magnificent arrogance. “Or Christmas. But not now, honey, I’m a busy man.”
He gave a curt laugh and she stood there like the ruins of a house—empty and alone. Her eyes had accused, hated, in the seconds that they held his.
“You’re not human,” she choked. “You’re as cold as...”
“Only with women who leave me that way,” he interrupted. “My God, you’d even give in to a man you profess to hate, you need it so much!”
She watched him walk away with her pride around her knees. She’d sworn to herself that day that she would toss herself over a cliff before she gave him the chance to humble her again. She avoided him successfully for the rest of the Easter vacation, and when she boarded the plane for Connecticut with Jenna, she hadn’t even looked at him.
She sighed, watching the clouds drift by outside the window. In her mind she relived that humiliation over and over again. She wondered sometimes if she’d ever be able to forget. The incident had revived other, older memories that had been the original cause of her frigid reaction to most men. Ironically, King had been the only one to ever get so close to her, to arouse such a damning response. And he didn’t even know that to Teddi, most men were poison.
“Saskatchewan,” Jenna said smugly, returning to reseat herself beside her friend. “But western Saskatchewan, so it won’t be too much longer before we get home.” She gave Teddi a searching appraisal.
“Looking for hidden beauty?” Teddi teased.
“Actually, I asked King about that bucket you threw at him,” she replied hesitantly.
Teddi’s heart dipped wildly. “And?” she prompted, trying desperately for normalcy.
“I guess I should have kept my mouth shut,” Jenna said with a sigh, turning toward the window. “Honestly, sometimes I think he lies awake nights thinking up new words to shock me with.”
Teddi felt a shiver as she folded her hands in her lap and closed her eyes. Apparently King didn’t want to be reminded any more than she did. It was just as well, King had made it perfectly clear that he despised her.
The Devereaux livestock farm, Gray Stag, was located in a green valley in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, not far from Calgary. It had its own private landing strip and all the creature comforts any family would ever want.
The house itself was a copy of a French château, big and sprawling with a long, winding driveway and tall firs all around it. Fields of wildflowers bloomed profusely against the majestic background of the snow-capped Rockies. There was a tennis court, a heated swimming pool, and formal gardens which were the pride of the family’s aging gardener. It always reminded Teddi of pictures she’d seen of rural France.
King taxied the plane toward the hangar, where a white Mercedes was parked. A petite, white-haired woman in a fashionable gray suit waved as they climbed out of the plane and onto the apron.
“Mama!” Jenna cried. She ran into the woman’s outstretched arms, leaving King and Teddi to follow.
“My God, you’d think she’d been away for two years instead of two months,” King growled.
Teddi glanced up at his set face, so deeply tanned and masculine that her fingers itched to touch it. She averted her eyes.
“It would be nice to have a mother to run to,” she said in a tone that ached with memories.
She felt a lean, rough hand at the nape of her neck, grasping it gently in a gesture that was strangely compassionate.
“You haven’t had a lot of love in your young life, have you?” he asked quietly. “It’s something Jenna never lacked, we made sure of that.”
“It shows,” she agreed, watching her friend’s warm, open smile. “She’s very much an extrovert.”
“My exact opposite.” His eyes