by Diana Palmer
By the time Natalie changed into her slacks and shirt and tidied her hair with a small brush from her purse, Mack was signing a sales slip. He handed it to the saleslady along with the pen, and turned as Natalie emerged with the dress over her arm.
“Let me have it, dear, and I’ll hang it for you.”
Natalie gave it up, watching blankly as the saleslady put it on a hanger, draped a bag over it and tied the bag at the bottom.
“I hope you enjoy it,” the saleslady said with a smile as she handed the hanger to Mack.
“Thank you,” Natalie said, uncertain if she was thanking the saleslady or her determined escort.
Mack led her out of the store and put her in the truck after he’d hung her new dress on the hook in the back seat.
“Do you need shoes to go with it?” he asked.
“I have some nice black patent leather ones, and a purse to match,” she said. “Mack, how could you pay for it? Everyone will think—”
His hand caught hers and curled into it hungrily. “Nobody will know you didn’t buy it yourself unless you tell them,” he said curtly. His head turned and he looked at her intently. “It really was made for you.”
“Well…”
His fingers curled intimately into hers. “You can wear it to Billings,” he said. “And when we go nightclubbing.”
Her heart raced madly, as much from the caressing touch of his strong fingers as from what he said. “Are we going nightclubbing?”
“We’re going lots of places,” he said casually. “You don’t start teaching until fall. That means, you’ll have plenty of spare time. We can go on day trips and picnics, too.”
Her body tingled from head to toe. She looked at the big, beautiful hand holding hers. “All four of us?” she asked, wondering if he wasn’t taking this chaperon thing a little too seriously.
“You and me, Nat.”
“Oh.”
He turned off the highway onto a dirt track that led under an enormous pecan tree. He stopped and cut off the engine. The dark eye that met hers was somber and intent on her face.
“Are you serious about Markham?” he asked at once.
“I told you before, he’s my friend.”
“What sort of friend?” he persisted. “Do you kiss him?”
She frowned worriedly. “Well, no…”
“Why not?”
She sighed angrily. “Because I don’t like kissing him. Mack…”
“You like kissing me,” he continued quietly.
“You’re making me nervous,” she blurted. “I don’t understand why you’re asking so many questions all of a sudden.”
He unfastened his seat belt and then hers before he pulled her across his body, her back to the steering wheel and her head resting on his left shoulder. He looked at her for a long moment before he spoke.
“I want to know if you have any long-range plans that involve your teaching colleague,” he said finally.
“Not the sort you mean,” she confessed.
His lean hand traced her shoulder and then slid down sensuously right onto her soft, firm breast. She gasped and caught his wrist, but he wouldn’t budge.
“You don’t have to pretend to be outraged,” he said gently. “I’ve touched you like this before.”
“You shouldn’t,” she whispered, flustered.
“Why not?” His hand spread in a slow, sensuous caress that made her nipples go immediately hard. “Your body likes it, even if your mind doesn’t.”
“My body is stupid,” she muttered.
“No, it isn’t. It has excellent taste in men,” he mused, tongue in cheek.
“Will you be reasonable? It’s broad daylight. What if someone drives down this way?” she asked, exasperated.
“We’ll tell them a bee got in your blouse and I stopped to take it out,” he murmured as his head lowered. “Now stop worrying about slim possibilities and kiss me.”
She tried to tell him that it wasn’t a good idea, but his mouth was already firmly on her soft lips before she could get a word out. He nibbled at her upper lip in a lazy, sensual rhythm that made it difficult for her to think. When his hand slid inside the blouse and under the strap of the flimsy lace bra, she stopped thinking altogether.
She heard the soft moan of the wind outside and the closer sound of her heartbeat in her ears. She curled a hand into Mack’s cotton shirt and lifted herself closer to him.
He bit her lower lip gently while his fingers felt for buttons and moved them out of buttonholes before he coaxed her soft hand inside his shirt and against warm, hard muscle and thick black hair.
It brought back memories of the rainy night he’d come to sit with her after Carl was killed. He’d held her close in his arms that night, too, and he’d pulled her hands inside his shirt, against his bare chest. She remembered his sudden, frightening loss of control….
Her hand stilled against him as she drew her mouth from under his and looked at him with traces of apprehension in her drowsy eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She swallowed. “I don’t want to…to make things difficult for you,” she said finally.
“They’re already difficult.” He shifted her in his arms so that her head lay in the crook of his arm, and his hand went under her blouse and around her to unfasten the hooks on her bra.
“We shouldn’t,” she tried to protest.
He lifted his head and looked around for a few seconds before his gaze came back to her. “There isn’t a car in sight,” he said. “And I’m not planning to ravish you within sight of a major highway.”
“I knew that.”
“Tell me you don’t want this and I’ll let you go,” he said bluntly, hesitating.
She wanted to. She really did. He looked impossibly arrogant with his shirt half unbuttoned and his mouth swollen from the long, hard contact with her lips. His hair was mussed by her fingers, and he looked somber and dangerous. She should tell him to let her go. But his fingers were tracing under her arm, and her traitorous body was writhing in an attempt to get his hand where she really wanted it. She could barely breathe as she twisted helplessly against him.
“That’s what I thought,” he said quietly, and he shifted her again, just enough to give him room to pull the blouse and bra up, baring her breasts to his intent scrutiny.
Natalie couldn’t get enough breath to make a token protest. She loved letting him look at her. She loved the slow, gentle tracing of his fingertips on her delicate skin. She loved the way he looked at her, as if she were a work of art. It wasn’t possible to be ashamed.
“Nothing to say?” he teased softly.
“Nothing at all,” she whispered, her breath jerking with the little bites of pleasure he gave her with his tender exploration of her breasts.
His thumb moved roughly over her nipple, and she bit her lower lip as pure delight arched her against him.
“I’ve never felt with anyone the things I feel with you,” he breathed as his head lowered. “Some nights, I think I’ll go stark raving mad from just the dreams.”
She barely heard him. His mouth suddenly covered her breast, and he suckled her, hard.
The cry she made was audible. She trembled as he fed on her soft, smooth skin. It was cool in the cab of the truck, but she was burning all over. Her arms looped around his neck, and she hid her hot face in his neck as the pressure of his mouth increased until it almost made her weep with pleasure.
She pulled at his head, trying to get his mouth even closer, but he pulled back, his eye stormy as it met hers.
“Don’t,” he said gently. “You’ll make me hurt you.”
“It won’t hurt me.” She shivered. Her eyes were as turbulent as the emotions that were overwhelming her. “Don’t stop,” she whispered unsteadily.
His fingers traced the curve of her breast, and he looked down to watch her body lift up against them.
“Your skin is like silk,” he said huskily. “I can’t get enough of it.” He bent
again, his hard mouth smoothing over her in a caress that made her moan.
She arched up, totally without inhibitions, loving his warm lips on her body.
The sound of a car in the distance brought his head up reluctantly. He glanced at the highway, grimaced and helped her sit. “I thought we were alone on the planet,” he murmured with a forced laugh. “I suppose it was wishful thinking. Need any help?” he asked as she fumbled behind her for catches.
“I can do it.” She glanced at the car as it whizzed past. So much for isolation, she thought, and flushed when she realized how embarrassed she would have been if the car had pulled in behind them and stopped instead of going on its way.
He watched her loop her seat belt across her chest and fasten it. He did the same with his before he cranked the truck.
“A woman like you could make a man conceited,” he said with a tender smile.
“It isn’t my fault that I can’t resist you,” she pointed out. “And if you’d stop undressing me—”
“I can’t do that,” he interrupted. “I’d have nothing left to live for.” He backed up until he could pull onto the highway. “Besides,” he added with a grin, “how would you ever get any practical experience?”
“I think I may be getting too much,” she replied. Her eyes slipped over him possessively, but she looked away before he noticed.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t push you into doing something you don’t really want.”
“Do you think you could?”
“I know I could,” he replied quietly. “But you’d hate me for it. Maybe I’d hate myself. Whatever happens, it has to be honest and aboveboard. No sneak attacks or seduction.”
“I won’t sleep with you,” she said defensively.
“You would, but I’m not going to let it go that far between us. I’ve got as much responsibility as I can handle already.” His face seemed to harden before her eyes. “The boys can take care of themselves, but Viv can’t. She seems to get less mature by the day.” He glanced at her. “And she’s poisonously angry at you right now.”
“Because Whit paid me too much attention, I gather,” she said miserably.
“Exactly.”
“But that wasn’t my fault,” she muttered.
“I know that. Vivian won’t believe it. Have you forgotten how she was just after Carl was killed?” he added. “She never considered you his girlfriend. She swore he only dated you to get near her. I love my sister, but she has enough conceit for two women.”
“Vivian is really beautiful,” she pointed out. “I’m not.”
He looked at her and smiled slowly. “You’re worth any ten beauty queens, Nat,” he said in a tone that was like being stroked with a velvet glove. “You have a big heart and you’re kind. Too kind, sometimes. You can’t refuse people, and they take advantage of you.”
“Yes, I noticed,” she said pointedly. “Just because I let you kiss me—”
“Stop while you’re ahead,” he cautioned with a bland look. “That was as mutual a passion as any two people ever shared. You love having my mouth on your body. You can’t even hide it.”
She crossed her legs and glared out the window with her arms folded. “I don’t know beans about men, so I’m a pushover.”
“Really? Then why won’t you let the fellow teacher touch you?”
She gave him a hard glare, which he ignored. “You came along when I was at an impressionable age,” she reminded him. “Remember what I said about baby ducks and imprinting?”
“You’re no baby duck.”
“I’m imprinted, just the same,” she said angrily. “Seventeen years old, and spoiled for other men in the course of a night. You should never have come near me while I was in such a vulnerable state!”
“I couldn’t leave you by yourself to grieve,” he pointed out. “And you may have been vulnerable, but you didn’t protest very much.”
“You didn’t leave me enough breath to protest with,” she reminded him. “I may have been stupid about men, but you were no novice! I was outflanked and outgunned!”
“I’m sorry about Carl, but you were no match for him. He liked a more flighty sort of girl altogether, and he had no plans to marry until he finished college. You’d have broken your heart over him.”
“It was my heart to break.”
He stopped at a traffic light and turned to meet her angry eyes. “For an intelligent woman, you are unbelievably naïve. Did you really think he took you out because he was in love with you?”
“He was,” she said. “He told me he was!”
“He told his friends that he dated you because his brother bet him he couldn’t get you to go out with him. There was more to it than that,” he added somberly, “but I’ll spare you the rest.”
“How do you know what he was planning?” she demanded, outraged.
“His younger brother and Bob were good friends,” he reminded her. “When Bob got wind of it, he came to me. That’s why I had words with Carl and his parents before he tried anything with you.”
She was devastated. She’d mourned Carl for months when she was seventeen, and now it turned out that he’d only dated her on a dare. He hadn’t loved her. He’d been playing a game. She leaned her head against her window and bit back tears. She was a bigger fool than she’d realized. Why hadn’t she guessed? And why hadn’t Mack told her years ago?
Chapter 5
Mack saw the glitter of tears in her eyes and he grimaced. “I’m sorry,” he said tersely. “I should never have told you.”
She pushed back a wisp of hair and dug in her purse for a tissue so she could wipe her eyes. “You should have told me years ago,” she corrected. “What an idiot I was!”
“You were naïve,” he said gently. “You saw what you wanted to see.”
His face was grim, and she realized belatedly that he was angry. She wondered what else Carl had said to his brother, but she was leery of asking.
He glanced at her and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “You were seventeen and bent on putting him on a pedestal for life. It would have been a waste.”
That note in his voice was almost defensive. She turned in the seat and looked at him openly. She was seeing things she didn’t want to see. “What you did…that night,” she faltered. “It was deliberate.”
“It was,” he confessed quietly. “I wanted to give you something to think about, at least something to compare with what you’d already experienced.” His jaw tensed. “I didn’t realize how innocent you were until it was too late.”
“Too late?”
He slowed for a turn and he looked so formidable that she didn’t say another word. A tense silence lay between them for several long seconds.
“Maybe it really was like imprinting,” he said heavily. “I should never have touched you. You were far too young for what happened.”
She felt her face coloring. The hungry passion they’d shared today and the night at his house was almost as explosive as what they’d shared all those years ago. Even in memory, her body burned as she relived her first experience of Mack.
“Do you think I blame you?” she asked finally, but she didn’t look at him.
“I blame myself. You’ve lived like a recluse ever since.”
She leaned her face against the glass of the window and smiled. “You were a pretty hard act to follow,” she said huskily.
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “So were you.” He sounded as if the words were dragged out of him, and she turned her head to encounter a stare that stopped her heart.
It was as if she could see right into his mind, and she ached at the images that flashed at her, memories they shared.
“I didn’t really expect that you’d be inexperienced just because I warned your boyfriend off,” he added after a minute. “I got the shock of my life when I realized that you’d never experienced even the mildest form of intimacy.”
“Men always say they know, but how do they?” she asked ir
ritably.
He forced his gaze to the road. “Because of the way you reacted,” he said tersely. “A sophisticated woman gives as much as she gets, Nat,” he told her bluntly. “You were wide-eyed and fascinated by everything I did, and I got in over my head long before I expected to. I dreamed about that night for years.”
“If we’re making confessions, so did I,” she admitted without looking at him.
He grimaced. “I should have gone home before I gave in to temptation.”
Her pale eyes touched his face like loving hands. She’d never known anyone like him. She didn’t think there was anyone else like him. He’d colored her dreams, become her world, in the years since that one incredible night.
She didn’t answer him. He glanced at her and laughed hollowly. “Which doesn’t change the past or bring us any closer to a solution,” he mused. “You’re not liberated, and I’m a confirmed bachelor.”
She toyed with her seat belt. “Are you really? I used to think that your father made you wary of marriage. He and your mother were totally unsuited, from what everybody says.”
“Everybody being my sister, Vivian,” he guessed. “She doesn’t remember our mother.”
“Neither do you, really, do you?” she wondered aloud.
“She died and left him with four kids,” he told her. “He wasn’t up to raising even one. I’ve always thought that the pressure of it started him drinking, and then he couldn’t stop.”
His face hardened with the words, and she knew he was remembering the bad times he’d had with his father.
“Mack, do you really think you’re like him?” she asked softly.
“They say abused kids become abusive parents,” he replied without thinking, and then could have bitten his tongue right through for the slip.
She only nodded, as if she’d expected that answer. “So they say. But there are exceptions to every rule. If you were going to be abusive, Vivian and Bob and Charles would have been sitting in the school counselor’s office years ago. They could have asked to go into foster care any time they wanted to.”
“Vivian would never have given up shopping sprees,” he pointed out.
