The Tycoon's Defiant Southern Belle Page 0,18

so there was a small bit of impatience when he took her into his arms. She’d always just thought that was because they’d been together for so long and she’d never been willing to take it further. Dave had pushed it initially. When they’d first started dating all those years ago she’d resisted becoming intimate with him. But at the time she’d been quite clear that she wasn’t going to have sex with a man before marriage. And Dave had made it very clear that he wanted to marry her, just not yet. So their standoff had continued throughout the years with Dave respecting her need for marriage and not pressing the issue of physical intimacy.

She turned off the lights, checked that Jasper was in his bed and Rufus was on hers, and slipped between the sheets. Yes, Dave was definitely the man she wanted to marry. She didn’t want the crazy excitement that Angelo created within her. That was too much, too scary. Dave was the sweet, gentle, kind and faithful man that was willing to respect her need for tradition. While Angelo was completely out of her league not to mention the kind of man who ignored tradition and played by his own rules. The townspeople seemed to have accepted him into their community, harboring no hard feelings about his management changes, especially since his new executives had bought houses in the area. But that didn’t mean she had to forgive and forget!

Chapter 5

Jade smiled as Dave walked up to take her arm. He gave her a brief kiss on the cheek and Jade smiled warmly at him. “How was your day?” she asked, trying very hard to look interested. This was what was right. This made sense to her. The comfortable feeling of having Dave next to her with his blond, good looks and his gentle smile was warm and comforting. She didn’t need the dark, forbidding silence of Angelo. She didn’t need his overly muscled body. And she definitely didn’t need his arrogant assumption that she would be his next lover which was communicated to her every time she saw him!

“Are you okay?” Dave asked, stopping and looking at her curiously.

“Sure. Why do you ask?” she demanded, irritated by the memory of Angelo’s touch and the way she constantly responded to him as well as the way he was always looking at her!

“You’re gripping my arm with your nails digging into my skin.”

Jade looked down at her fingers and gasped, instantly releasing his arm. “I’m so sorry!” she apologized, horrified that Angelo could get to her when he wasn’t even nearby.

Dave chuckled at her expression and put his arm around here shoulders. “Come on. I think you need a drink.”

She didn’t even realize she was comparing Dave to Angelo until she put her own arm around his waist, feeling the softness there. She looked at him, noticing that she didn’t have to look up at him. In her two inch heels, she and Dave were the same height. That was nice, she thought with a sigh of resignation. She liked this. She preferred this. She didn’t want to have a crick in her neck every time she looked at her man.

Okay, so perhaps Dave could work out a bit. She compared the almost non-existent muscles in his arm to the bulging muscles she’d felt in Angelo’s arms that one night on his lanai. And she noticed the paunch in Dave’s stomach. When had that happened, she wondered. She’d always thought that Dave was more athletic, but looking at him now, she wasn’t so sure.

“Are you still running?” she asked as they walked up the pathway to the party. That had been the one thing they’d initially had in common. Jade still ran about five or six miles a day almost every day of the week. It was her way of shutting out the world and reducing her stress levels but also a great way to stay in shape.

Dave shook his head. “There’s no time for running now. I barely exercise lately. My boss has me running around all day long.”

Jade didn’t like the sound of that. She thought that exercise should be part of one’s daily routine, as basic as eating and brushing one’s teeth. She even loved to swim in the ocean when it was warm enough, enjoying the ability to just run into the surf at the end of a long, exhausting day. She’d actually been doing a lot of that lately now that