Harden

by Diana Palmer

  “Don’t panic,” he whispered.

  She didn’t understand until she felt him touch her in a way that even Tim never had. She cried out and arched, her body going rigid.

  Harden looked down at her, but he didn’t stop, even when he felt her hands fighting him. “Just this, sweetheart,” he whispered, watching her eyes. “Just this. Let it happen. It won’t hurt.”

  She couldn’t stop. It was like going over a cliff. She responded because it was impossible not to, her face taut with panic, her eyes wild with it. She was enjoying it, and she couldn’t even pretend not to. He watched her face, smiling when she began to whimper, feeling her responses, feeling her pleasure. When it spiraled up suddenly and arched her silky body, when she wept and twisted and then cried out, convulsing, he felt as if he’d experienced everything life had to offer.

  He cradled her in his arms while she cried, his lips gentle on her closed eyes, sipping away the tears.

  “Amazing, what a man can do when he sets his mind to it,” he whispered against her mouth. “I’m glad to see that my instincts haven’t worn out. Although I’ve read about that, I’ve never done it before.”

  Her eyes flew open. She was still trembling, but through the afterglow of satisfaction, she could see the muted pleasure in his eyes.

  “Never?” she exclaimed.

  “Why are you shocked?” he asked. “I’m no playboy. Women are still pretty much a mystery to me. Less so now,” he added with a wicked gleam in his eyes.

  She blushed and hid her face in his throat. His hair-roughened chest brushed her breasts and she stiffened at the pleasurable sensations that kindled in her. Involuntarily she pressed closer, pushing her hard nipples into the thick hair so that they brushed his skin.

  He went taut against her. “No,” he whispered.

  He sounded threatened, and she liked his sudden vulnerability. He’d seen her helpless. She wanted to see him the same way. She brushed against him, drawing her breasts sensually across his broad chest until she felt him shudder. His big hands caught her arms and tightened, but he didn’t try to make her move away.

  “Here.” He lifted her, so that she sat over his taut body, facing him, and then his hands bruised her hips and pulled her closer, so that the force of his arousal was blatant against her soft belly. He wrapped her up, crushing her breasts into his chest, and sat rocking her hungrily.

  “Harden,” she whispered.

  His jaw clenched. He was losing it. “Touch me, sweetheart.”

  Her hands smoothed over his chest.

  “No,” he ground out. “Touch me where I’m a man.”

  She hesitated. His mouth whispered over her closed eyes. He caught one of her hands and slowly smoothed it down over his flat stomach, his breath catching when he pressed it gently to him.

  Her heart ran away with her. She’d never touched Tim like that. The intimate feel of Harden’s body made her throb all over. She liked touching him. But when he began to slide the zipper down, she jerked her fingers away and buried her hot face in his throat.

  “You’re right,” he said roughly, fastening it back. “I’m letting it go too far. Much too far.”

  He eased her away and got up, his tall body shivering a little with residual desire as he fumbled a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. “Put your things back on, little one,” he said huskily.

  She stared at him with her black dress in her hands. “You don’t want me to,” she whispered.

  His eyes closed. “My God, no, I don’t want you to,” he ground out. He turned, his face rigid with unsated passion, his body blatant with it. “I want to bury myself inside you!”

  She trembled at the stark need. Her lips parted helplessly. “I…I’d let you,” she said fervently.

  His gaze dropped to her breasts and beyond it, to her flat belly. She’d had a baby there. She’d lost the baby and her husband, and he shouldn’t be doing this to her. He shouldn’t be taking advantage of her vulnerability.

  He closed his eyes again and turned away. “Miranda, you aren’t capable of making that kind of decision right now. It’s too soon.”

  Too soon. Too soon. She came back to herself all at once. This was the apartment she’d shared with Tim. She’d been pregnant. She’d lost control of the car and killed her husband and her unborn child. And only minutes before, she’d been begging another man to make love to her.

  She dragged the black dress over her head and fumbled the zipper up, her face white with reaction. She bundled up the rest of her things and pushed them down beside the sofa cushion, because she was shaking too hard to put them on. What had she done!

  Harden had fastened his shirt and put his tie and jacket in place by the time she dressed.

  He looked down at her with quiet, somber eyes in a face as hard as stone. “I won’t apologize. It was too sweet for words. But it’s too soon for lovemaking.”

  She couldn’t meet his eyes. “But, we did…”

  “I pleasured you,” he replied quietly. “By lovemaking, I mean sex. If I stay around here much longer, you’ll give yourself to me.”

  “You make me sound like a terrible weakling.” She laughed mirthlessly.

  He knelt just in front of her, his hands beside her hips on the sofa. “Miranda, it isn’t a weakness or a sin to want someone. But you’ve got a tragedy to work through. By staying here, I’m only postponing your need to put it behind you, not to mention clouding your grief with desire. I want you, baby,” he said huskily, his eyes fierce as they met hers. “I want you just as desperately as you want me, but you’ve got to be sure it’s not just misplaced grief or a crutch. Sex is serious business to me. I don’t sleep around, ever.”

  She wanted to ask him if he ever had. He seemed very experienced, but he didn’t sound as if sex was a minor amusement to him. He might be even more innocent than she was, and that made her feel less embarrassed about what she’d let him do.

  She searched his face. “Harden, I might not have acted like it, but it’s serious business to me, too. Tim was the only man I ever slept with.”

  “I know.” He caught her hand and held the soft palm to his mouth hungrily. “But he never satisfied you, did he?”

  She swallowed. Finally she gave in to that blatant stare. “Not like you did, no.” She hesitated.

  “You want to ask me something,” he guessed from that odd look. “Go ahead. What is it?”

  “Would it feel like that if I gave myself to you? If we went all the way?” she asked slowly.

  His fingers clenched on hers. “I think it might be even more intense,” he said gruffly. “Watching you almost sent me over the edge myself.”

  She reached out and touched his face, adoring the strength of it under her cool fingers. “You…had nothing,” she exclaimed belatedly.

  He only smiled. “Don’t you believe it,” he said with a deep, somber look in his pale blue eyes. “And now, I’ve got to go. I’ve put it off as long as I can.”

  He got to his feet. Miranda let him pull her up and her heart was in her eyes as she gazed up at him.

  “I’ll miss you more than ever, now,” she confessed.

  He sighed. “I’ll miss you, too, little one,” he said curtly. “Write to me. I’m as close as the telephone, if you just want to talk. You’ll get through this, Miranda. All you need is a little time.”

  “I know. You made it so much easier, though.”

  He brushed his fingers through her unruly hair and tilted her face up to his hungry eyes. “It isn’t goodbye. Just so long, for a while.”

  She nodded. “Okay. So long, then.”

  He bent and kissed her, so tenderly that she almost cried. “Be good.”

  “I can’t be anything else. You won’t be here. Harden,” she said as he opened the door.

  He looked back, his eyebrow arching in a question.

  “Just remember,” she said with forced humor. “You saved my life. Now you’re responsible for it.”

  He smiled gently. “I won’t
forget.”

  He didn’t say goodbye. He gave her one long, last look and went out the door, closing it gently behind him. He hadn’t really saved her life, she knew, because she hadn’t meant to jump off the bridge. But it made her feel good to think that she owed it to him, that he cared enough to worry about her.

  She had his address, and she’d write. Maybe when she was through the natural grieving process, he’d come back, and she’d have a second chance at happiness. She closed her eyes, savoring the intimacy she’d shared with him. She wondered how she was going to live until she saw him again.

  Chapter 6

  Harden was grumpy when he got home. Not that anybody noticed, because he was always grumpy. His irritation didn’t improve, either, when his brother Connal showed up.

  “Oh, God, no, here he comes again!” Evan groaned when the car pulled up just as he and Harden were coming down the steps.

  “That’s no way to talk about your brother,” Harden chided.

  “Just wait,” the bigger man said curtly.

  “I can’t stand it!” Connal greeted them, throwing up his hands. “We get all the way to the hospital, I make all the necessary phone calls, and they say it’s false labor! Her water hasn’t even broken!”

  Evan and Harden exchanged glances.

  “He needs help,” Evan said. “Broken water?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Connal said heavily, his lean, dark face worn and haggard. “I’ve just left her sleeping long enough to ask Mother to come back with me. Pepi needs a woman around right now.”

  “We’ll starve,” Evan said miserably.

  “No, you won’t,” Harden muttered. “We have a cook, remember.”

  “Mother tells Jeanie May what to cook. You’d better worry, too,” Evan said shortly. “Even if you don’t live here, you’re always around when the food goes on the table.”

  “Don’t you two start, I’ve got enough problems,” Connal muttered darkly.

  Evan’s eyebrows arched. “Don’t look at me. You’re the one who made Pepi pregnant.”

  “I wanted children. So did she.”

  “Then stop muttering and go home.”

  Connal glared at the bigger man. “Your day will come,” he assured Evan. “You’ll be walking the streets dreading your own Waterloo in the delivery room, wait and see!”

  Evan’s face clouded. His usual carefree expression went into eclipse. “Will I?” he asked on a hard laugh. “Don’t bet on it.”

  Connal started to question that look, but Harden stepped in.

  “Theodora’s in the study looking up something about how to repair bathrooms,” he said.

  “The plumber will love that,” Connal said knowingly. “Don’t worry, I’ll have her out of here before she bursts another pipe.”

  “Last one flooded the back hall,” Evan recalled. “I opened the door and almost got swept down to the south forty.”

  “She’s got no business trying to fix things. My God, she had a flat tire on the wheelbarrow!” Harden exclaimed.

  “Takes talent,” Evan agreed. “But don’t keep her too long, will you? She takes my side against him,” he jerked a thumb at Harden.

  “That’s nothing new,” Harden said, lighting a cigarette. “She knows how I feel about her.”

  “One day you’ll regret that,” Connal said. It wasn’t something he usually mentioned, but Harden’s attitude was getting to him. Part of the reason he’d come for Theodora was that he’d noticed her increasing depression since Harden had come home from his unexplained stay in Chicago.

  “Tell Pepi we asked about her,” Harden said easily, refusing to rise to the bait.

  “I’ll do that.”

  Connal asked about Donald, who was away again with his wife, and after a minute he said goodbye and went into the house, leaving Harden and Evan to go about their business.

  Harden climbed behind the wheel before his brother could protest.

  “I’m not riding with you,” he told Evan flatly. “Your foot’s too heavy.”

  “I like speed,” Evan said bluntly.

  “Lately, you like it too much.” Harden glanced at him and away. “You haven’t been yourself since that girl you were dating broke up with you.”

  Evan’s face set and he glanced out the window without speaking.

  “I’m sorry,” he told Evan. “I’m sorry as hell. But there has to be a woman for you somewhere.”

  “I’m thirty-four,” Evan said quietly. “It’s too late. You used to talk about being a minister. Maybe I should consider it myself.”

  “A minister isn’t necessarily celibate,” his brother replied. “You’re thinking of a priest. You aren’t Catholic,” he added.

  “No, I’m not. I’m the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk,” he said wearily. He put his hat back on. “I’m sorry I don’t smoke,” he murmured, eyeing Harden’s smoke. “It might keep me as cool as it seems to keep you.”

  “I’m not cool.” Harden stared out the windshield. “I’ve got problems of my own.”

  “Miranda?” Evan asked slowly.

  Harden stiffened. His dreams haunted him with the images of Miranda as she’d let him see her that last night at her apartment. The taste of her mouth, the exquisite softness of her body made him shiver with pleasure even in memory. He missed her like hell, but he had to be patient.

  He glanced at Evan. He sighed, then, letting it all out. Evan was the only human being alive he could talk to. “Yes.”

  “You came home.”

  “I had to. She’s so damned vulnerable. I could never be sure it was me she wanted and not a way to avoid coping with the grief.”

  “Do you want her?”

  Harden took a draw from the cigarette and turned his head. His eyes were blazing as the memories washed over him. “Like I want to breathe,” he said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  The broad shoulders lifted and fell. “I don’t know. I’ll write to her, I guess. Maybe I’ll fly to Chicago now and again. Until she’s completely over her grief, I don’t dare push too hard. I don’t want half a woman.”

  “Strange,” Evan said quietly, “thinking about you with a woman.”

  “It happens to us all sooner or later, didn’t Connal say?”

  Evan smiled. “Well, Miranda’s a dish. When you finally decide to get involved, you sure pick a winner.”

  “It’s more than the way she looks,” came the reply. “She’s…different.”

  “The woman usually is,” Evan said, his dark eyes sad in his broad face. “Or so they say.”

  “You’ll find out yourself one day, old son.”

  “Think so? I can hope, I suppose.”

  “What we both need is a diversion.”

  Evan brightened. “Great. Let’s go to town and wreck a bar.”

  “Just because you hate alcohol is no reason to do a Carrie Nation on some defenseless bar,” his brother told him firmly.

  Evan shrugged. “Okay, I’m easy. Let’s go to town and wreck a coffee shop.”

  Harden chuckled softly. “Not until my eye heals completely,” he said, touching the yellowish bruise over his cheekbone.

  “Spoilsport. Well, I guess we can go to the hardware store and order that butane we need to heat the branding irons.”

  “That’s better.”

  Harden got his first letter from Miranda the very next day. It didn’t smell of perfume, and it was in a perfectly respectable white envelope instead of a colorful one, but it was newsy and warm.

  She mentioned that she’d had dinner with her brother and sister-in-law twice, and that she’d started going to their church—a Baptist church—with them on Sunday. He smiled, wondering if he’d influenced her. She wasn’t a Baptist, but he was; a deacon in his local church, where he also sang in the choir. She missed seeing him, her letter concluded, and she hoped that he could make time to write her once in a while.

  She was going to be shocked, he decided as he pulled up the chair to his desk and s
tarted the word processing program on his computer. He wrote several pages, about the new bulls they’d bought and the hopes he had for the crossbreeding program he’d spoken about at the conference in Chicago. When he finished, he chuckled at his own unfamiliar verbosity. Of course, reading over what he’d written, he discovered that it was a totally impersonal letter. There was nothing warm about it.

  He frowned, fingering the paper after he’d printed it out. Well, he couldn’t very well say that he missed her like hell and wished he was still in Chicago. That would be overdoing it. With a shrug, he signed the letter with a flourish and sealed it before he could change his mind. Personal touches weren’t his style. She’d just have to get used to that.

  Miranda was so thrilled when she opened the letter two days later that she didn’t at first notice the impersonal style of it. It was only after the excitement subsided that she realized he might have been writing it to a stranger.

  Consequently she began to wonder if he was really interested in her, or if he was trying to find a way of letting her down, now that they were so far apart. She remembered how sweet it had been in his arms, but that had only been desire on his part. She knew men could fool themselves into thinking they cared about a woman when it was only their glands getting involved. She’d given Harden plenty of license with her body, and it still made her uneasy that she’d been that intimate with him so soon after Tim and the baby. Her own glands were giving her fits, because she couldn’t stop remembering how much pleasure Harden had given her. She missed him until it was like being cut in half. But this letter he’d written to her didn’t sound like he was missing her. Not at all.

  She sat down that night as she watched television and tried to write the same sort of note back. If he wanted to play it cool, she’d do her best to follow his lead. She couldn’t let him know how badly she wanted to be with him, or make him feel guilty for the physical closeness they’d shared. She had to keep things light, or she might inadvertently chase him away. She couldn’t bear that. If he wanted impersonal letters, then that’s what he’d get. She pushed her sadness to the back of her mind and began to write.