Always on My Mind Page 0,45

eyes down the length of her body and she actually felt dirty by the time he looked back up at her face. "You could take off every scrap of clothes right here, right now, and I wouldn't be stupid enough to make that mistake again."

No, damn it, she wouldn't let another man tell her she wasn't good enough. She wouldn't let anyone else chip away at her until her insides curled up into a tight little ball of misery.

"Don't worry," she told him in an equally hard tone, "I won't make the mistake of trying to help you again, either. If you want to wither away in your grief and let it eat up your entire life and your future, go right ahead. I thought you were worth helping, that maybe there was a real human being - a man with a beating heart - beneath all the fury and nastiness. But now you've helped me see that you aren't worth anything at all."

She turned to walk out on him, but before she could leave him to stew in his own misery until kingdom come, he said, "Instead of pestering me with your questions, you should be asking yourself what the hell you're doing hiding on my farm. Because we both know this isn't where you belong, Naughty."

God, it hurt to hear him say that, and then to fling the family nickname at her, one she now knew she never should have shared with him, as if every last part of her was tainted. Unlovable.

Because if she didn't belong here with the animals and the land and the bright blue sky - and if she no longer belonged in the dance world - then where did she belong?

Lori knew she just needed to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to keep on walking out of the barn and out of his life. But even as she tried to get away, he kept coming at her with more words aimed where they could do as much damage as possible.

"How would you like it if I turned my focus to fixing you, because it was easier than fixing myself?"

His accusation stopped her cold, even when she knew she should be running from him as fast as she could, before he could do deeper damage than he'd already done. He'd already hurt her with his complete dismissal of her feelings in the cottage during the storm. Badly. And he'd made her doubt her own feelings, made her ask herself if she was really nothing more than the self-absorbed person he'd made her out to be.

"Do you know what I saw that day when you drove into my fence and sent my chickens running down the road?" He didn't wait for her to answer, didn't stop to notice that she was crumbling apart one word at a time. Or if he did see it, he clearly didn't care just how badly he was hurting her. "I saw a scared little girl who's had everything she ever wanted, everything she's ever needed, handed to her on a platter. And then, when she hit one little bump in the road, she was so spoiled that the only option she saw was to give up." He put his hands on her shoulders and spun her around to face him. "If you're a dancer, then you should be dancing, damn it."

She couldn't stop the tears from falling down her cheeks, and not just because he was gripping he shoulders nearly hard enough to leave bruises. "I'm not a dancer anymore."

He stared at her for a long moment, the sparks of heat and anger and a still undeniable connection going off between them, before he dropped his hands from her shoulders. "No, you obviously never were a real dancer if you're able to give up this easily."

She didn't have to stay here and listen to his insults. She could go work on someone else's farm. She could clean someone else's toilets until they sparkled and keep their chickens and pigs fed and weed their rows of vegetables. Not, of course, that she needed the money, considering she had plenty socked away from some of her higher-profile gigs. It was just that she couldn't imagine not having something to do, being left with her thoughts all day long. Even cleaning a stranger's bathrooms would be better than that.

Without saying another word, she made a beeline for the farmhouse, kicking her dirty shoes off on the porch before