by Diana Palmer
“Innocence in these confused times is a rare jewel indeed,” he murmured, watching her.
She glared at him. “My jewel is none of your business,” she muttered. “And how do you know, anyway?”
“I don’t,” he agreed. He grinned slowly. “But I could find out in ten minutes flat with a little cooperation,” he added. “How about it?”
She latched onto what he was suggesting at once. “Mr. Deverell!”
She didn’t know whether to gasp or laugh or kick him very hard. She walked on toward the barn without saying anything at all.
The barn door opened and all three kids smiled at them with very knowing faces.
“Where are the kittens?” Kit asked.
“Right over here,” Amy volunteered, leading them. “Uh, Polk and Guy and I have to go get cleaned up. We’ll see you later!”
There was a scurrying sound and the barn door closed, but Kit would have bet her socks that the kids were still inside.
She exchanged a glance with Logan, who actually grinned.
“Aren’t they cute?” she asked, reaching down to pick up a kitten and stroke and caress it.
“Yes, they’re cute,” he mused, paying much more attention to Kit’s rapt face than the small felines. He knelt beside her and gave the cats equal attention.
Nothing else was said for several long minutes.
“Damn!” came a long-suffering exclamation from Guy, who stood up along with his siblings, cast a disgusted look at the adults and stalked out of the barn. The other two went with him, trying to look both sheepish and angry at the same time.
Logan chuckled. “I suppose they were expecting a floor show.”
“Those kids know too much already,” she said, refusing to be baited. “But they’re sweet children.”
“They are not! Why do you think the family avoids this place like the plague? My cousin Belinda came down here to spend the night last year and the little monsters put an armadillo in the bed with her.”
She whistled. “I’m glad they like me!”
“You’d better be. They defanged a rattler and shoved it in my room the first time I was fool enough to spend a night here.”
“What did you do?”
“I went out the window, of course,” he said. “Stark naked, because that’s how I sleep, and I think I took at least two-hundred dollars’ worth of pane glass with me.”
She could almost picture it. “Weren’t you hurt?”
“Only my pride. The glass did very little damage. Fortunately for them. I haven’t been back since, until now.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “But they’ll be nice to me this time. They think I’m going to kiss you, and they can catch us at it and we’ll be embarrassed.”
“That’s not a nice thing to say!”
“Why do you think they were hiding in here?” he asked patiently and smiled at her confusion. “Well, hide your head in the sand. But they’re getting old enough to be curious, you know, and I’ll bet Emmett hasn’t told them zilch.”
“He has so!” Amy interjected until two small hands, one on each side, clapped over her mouth.
“You varmints!” Logan raged at them. They’d eased back in and were crouched just inside the door behind a wall. “You’ll swing for this, you sidewinders!”
“You’ll have to catch us first, and you’re old!” Guy called. The three of them escaped at a dead run.
“They’re right,” Kit said thoughtfully, eyeing him. “You are old. Thirty-five just this year.”
He glared at her. “How would you like to be flattened out on the hay here for a few minutes?” he asked, glancing around. “The kids could sell tickets.”
She cleared her throat. “I take it all back. You’re young. You’re in your prime, in fact.”
“I was in my prime at eighteen, actually,” he remarked. He smiled wickedly. “But I can still go all night.”
She leaped up in the wake of outraged embarrassment, brushed off her jeans and stalked out the door just in time to connect with three small, warm bodies.
They all went sprawling, Kit included.
“I told you they were both too old,” Guy muttered as he helped his siblings to their feet. “You have to watch teenagers to find out that sort of thing, not old people. Come on. We’ll go down to the river and spy on Josh Landers and Cindy Gail when they get through fishing!”
Flushed with glee they rushed off again, leaving Kit muddled and out of sorts.
“I told you,” Logan said from behind.
Emmett passed the kids, whirling around as they went by him like cyclones. He didn’t ask where they were going. He wandered on down to join Kit and Logan.
“Why are you sitting on the ground?” Emmett asked Kit conversationally. “Is there a sudden chair shortage?”
“I’m just where your offspring left me, flat in the dirt,” Kit told him. “They were down here spying on us—” She broke off when she realized what she was saying.
Emmett lifted an eyebrow and looked at Logan, who had a disgustingly smug and triumphant look on his face. “Oh,” Emmett said. He smiled a little sadly, managing with one word to convey total understanding of the situation and regret on his own account.
“They’re just curious,” Emmett added after a minute, rocking back on his heels. “I told them the basics, and how to stay out of bad trouble with it all. They cleared their throats and pretended not to listen.” He chuckled.
“Well, they were on their way down to the river. Something about a couple of teenagers fishing there…” Kit told him.
“Ohmigod!”
Emmett did an about-face and rushed off in the general direction the kids had taken.
“No wonder he’s so slender and fit,” Kit remarked, watching his figure slowly grow smaller in the distance. “I don’t think I’ve seen him sit for five straight minutes since I’ve been here.”
“The kids keep him on his toes. When he’s here.”
“Rodeo is very dangerous, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “And for him more than most. His father died in a bull-riding competition, right in the ring.”
“How terrible for him!”
“That’s not all of it. His mother killed herself soon after the funeral. That was when Emmett got married.” He said it pointedly.
“He was lonely and grieving, wasn’t he?” she asked.
“And determined to have a family so that he could fill up the house and banish the bad memories as quickly as possible. But the woman he married didn’t take to motherhood, and she was really too young to settle down. She fell head over heels in love with a pretty ordinary man who’d worshiped her since high school. Emmett was never at home back then. He was paying off the mortgage on his father’s land and just getting started good on the rodeo circuit. She should have stayed around. One of our more well-to-do relatives died last year and left Emmett fixed for life. I think Emmett’s ex-wife married too young and wasn’t really in love with Emmett.”
“Then he doesn’t have to do rodeo,” she said.
“Not financially,” he told her.
“Oh. I see.” And she did. Emmett was harboring a wealth of hurt. Perhaps the pain and danger of rodeo made it go away for a while, or brought him close to memories of happier times when his father was alive. “But it can’t be good for his kids.”
“Maybe he does it to escape them,” he murmured dryly.
“But they adore him. You can tell that they do, and it’s mutual. But…”
“But he’s afraid to get too close.” Logan looked down at her with sudden comprehension. “He’s afraid to love, because he’s afraid of being left alone again. One way or another, he’s lost every single person he ever loved.”
Kit didn’t reply. She kept walking and so did Logan, but the thought lodged in his mind and wouldn’t be coaxed out. Was he that way, afraid to love? Betsy was temporary. Even as he’d admitted his physical need for her, there was never a time when he’d pictured her as a permanent part of his life. She h
ated cooking and housework and she and he never thought alike on the important issues. They argued often on politics and religion and just about everything else. The only real common ground they had was when Logan took her in his arms. But even that was superficial, shallow. There were times when he was almost certain that her enjoyment was nothing more than a facade.
Kit had said as much. She had to care about him, to be so protective. They’d been together a long time, he supposed, so maybe she felt a proprietary interest in his happiness. Still, she’d been upset enough to quit. Was she jealous?
He stuck his hands into his pockets as they walked, the big, husky man and the slender, graceful woman. It felt good to spend time with her. She didn’t chatter or talk fashion and gossip at the expense of more serious subjects. Kit only spoke when she had something to say.
“Betsy was upset because I didn’t bring her with me,” he remarked.
She didn’t look up. “You could ask her to fly out and meet you.”
Logan gave Kit a calculated glance that she didn’t see. “She’d want to sleep with me,” he lied. “Emmett would go through the roof. He doesn’t believe in that sort of thing.”
She hated the very idea of Betsy in Logan’s bed. Her hand clenched at her side, but she didn’t make any remarks.
She didn’t need to. The small movement didn’t escape Logan’s dark eyes. He smiled.
“Tansy’s being very agreeable, don’t you think?” she said, changing the subject.
“Yes. Suspicious, isn’t it?” he added. “She probably didn’t expect you to be this good at tracking her down.” He stopped, and the look in his eyes was thoughtful. “In fact, it really was good detective work.”
“I’m not just a typist, you know,” she murmured. “I do have a brain and a few skills.”
“If I never realized that, why would I go off and leave you in charge of the office for days at a time?” he asked. “I always recognized your talents, Kit.”
Her heart jumped in her chest. “You never said you did.”
“Why would I do a stupid thing like that?” he asked, amazed. “If I’d mentioned that you were being wasted in my office, you’d have quit and gone to work for a detective agency or something.” He glowered at her. “As it happened, you did it anyway.”
“After your beloved threw scalding coffee all over me and you took her side against me!”
“Of course I did, damn it!” He bit off the words. “I wasn’t trying to get you into bed, was I?”
She went scarlet. Her palm itched to land against that massive jaw, but she restrained it—barely.
“You hopeless little prude,” he said shortly, dark eyes blazing. “To you, like Emmett, sex is something that only happens between married people, I suppose?”
“Yes, it is. Or it should be,” she said forcefully. “I suppose you think it’s right that carelessness produces thousands of unwanted babies? Or that it’s all right to sleep around indiscriminately and spread terrible diseases?”
He didn’t reply immediately. “No,” he said finally. “I don’t think it’s right. I believe in prevention and safety, and I practice them.”
She didn’t have a comeback for that. She started walking again.
“How’s your secretarial staff?” she asked. “Are they coping with your absence?”
“Chris is having something of a problem with one of them.”
“Which one?”
“Margo.”
“The one with the cleavage who can spell.”
He chuckled. “That’s right. She likes rich men.”
She bit her tongue to hold back a remark about another woman close to him who did, too.
“Don’t hold back,” he told her, smiling as if he knew what she was doing and thinking. He stretched lazily. “The chain-smoker has bronchitis, but she’s still dragging in to work. The other one seems to be managing, too, now that you’d shown her where you hid all my most important files.”
“I didn’t hide them.” She gritted her teeth. “I filed them.”
“Only an idiot would file an oil account under T for Texas.”
She glared at him. “It isn’t T for Texas, it’s T for Texas Premium Oil Company!”
“Well, I had the girls refile things so that I could find them. Oil accounts under Oil, tax accounts under Taxes and clients under the last names.”
“Not under the company names?”
“It’s none of your business anymore,” he said smugly. “You quit.”
“I did not! You fired me!”
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “We had those potted things moved out into the hall, too.”
She gasped. “They’ll die! They were by the window so that they could get sunlight! They can’t live in the shade.”
He frowned. “So that’s why they’re wilting.”
“My poor plants!”
“There’s probably still time to save them,” he remarked casually. He glanced at her. “You could come back. I’d give you a raise.”
“And stand by while darling Betsy practices her Napoleon impression.”
“She is not tyrannical!”
“Ask Melody or Margo or Harriet,” she shot back. “I dare you! She may be sweetness and light to you, but she’s poison to everyone else—especially to her own sex! What she did to poor old Bill Kingsley she’s going to do to you, and I’ll be the last one crying when you’re sleeping in a downtown mission!”
His chest rose and fell roughly with anger. Damn, she was a bossy woman! He had no intention of letting her lead him around, tell him whom to date, what to think!
“Betsy is my business,” he said harshly. “You’re only jealous, because she’s beautiful and you aren’t!”
He’d never said that before, even if he’d always thought it. Kit was used to people looking through her. She knew she wasn’t pretty. But that was hardly why she disliked Betsy.
She didn’t fight back. It would have been admitting that he was right. She walked on, alone, her eyes sad and quiet.
Behind her, Logan slapped his fist angrily against his thigh. Damn his tongue! He’d been furious, but those hurtful words had really slipped out unconsciously.
It was pure cussedness, he knew, but he couldn’t think of any way to take it back—and still save face. Kit went very quiet when she was hurt. It was the only time she didn’t spit and claw. He remembered how she’d responded to him earlier, and how protective she was. She was probably in love with him, and he had more power to hurt her than anyone else on earth.
He watched her with a gnawing hunger. Love wasn’t an easy thing to throw away. All the same, he was getting married and Kit was off-limits. He shouldn’t have kissed her like that. She’d said that it was unfair to Betsy, and it was.
The problem was that Kit aroused him even more than Betsy did. He couldn’t let that situation develop. He had principles, even if he was only just discovering them. He might as well let Kit think he had a low opinion of her looks. Perhaps it would spare her any more hurt at his hands if he could turn her infatuation to dislike. He was going to marry Betsy. All he had to do was keep that in mind, then perhaps he could stop having these inconvenient urges to seduce Kit.
But she didn’t hate him. That was all too apparent when he stared at her across the supper table and her eyes fell in blushing confusion to her plate. His heart began to race in his chest as he realized how easily he could disconcert her. His eyes fell to her mouth. He remembered much too vividly how it felt to kiss her, to hold her. He’d tried for the rest of the day to put that sweet interlude out of his mind, but he couldn’t. The more he thought about it, the more he wanted it again.
With an angry movement of his hand, he reached for his coffee cup and accidentally hit it, sloshing hot coffee right across the table onto Kit’s white blouse.
She gasped, grabbing a napkin to dab at it. While Logan tried to apologize, she glared at him. “Been taking lessons from Betsy, have we?” she asked with cool sarcasm. “No need to wo
rry, it will wash out. Excuse me, please.”
She was grateful for the incident in a way, because it gave her the opportunity to escape. Everyone was looking at her. The kids were probably recalling every lurid minute they’d witnessed from the barn, and Emmett was speculative and a little sad. Tansy was hiding amusement. Logan—well, Logan was a puzzle altogether. But Kit had felt like a lab specimen. By the time she changed and went back downstairs, supper would be over and she could escape.
After she stripped off the blouse, she soaked it in the bathroom sink. Her flimsy bra was wet, too, from the coffee. That, she thought resignedly, would have to be washed, as well. As she unfastened it, her elbow caught a bottle of shampoo and knocked it across into the bathtub with a heavy thump. The noise concealed a brief knock at the door, and her own movements, as she retrieved and replaced the shampoo, masked the sound of footsteps.
She slid her bra into the sink and was swirling it through the water when a soft sound beside her made her turn her head.
Logan was holding the door open, and he was making no pretense of not looking. His eyes, dark with surprise and fascination, slid over her breasts as if they belonged to him, savoring their firm, tip-tilted contours, enjoying their dusky hard tips and creamy texture.
He hadn’t expected this when he’d come after her, albeit reluctantly, to apologize. Seeing her half-nude had knocked every sane thought right out of his mind. He was enthralled by the utter beauty of her. He leaned against the door frame and gave his eyes free rein. “I don’t think there’s any work of art in the world that could compare favorably to a woman’s bare breasts,” he said quietly, and without offensive intent. “Yours are beautiful, Kit. Absolutely breathtaking.”
They must have been, because she actually saw his breathing change. Her eyes fell and she saw something else change, too, before she quickly lifted her eyes again and quickly folded her arms over her breasts.
“I won’t embarrass you any more than I have,” he said softly. “It’s all right. I only came after you to apologize. Spilling the coffee really was an accident.”
“I knew that,” she said. Her voice was husky and she felt her body ache with new sensations, new hungers. Her breasts began to swell and tingle and throb. His hands were like plates, she thought as she stared at him. They would cover her breasts completely. They would be warm and a little rough, and her body would tremble because it would feel so sweet to have them on her bare skin.
