Wyoming True - Diana Palmer Page 0,19
he’s the new man, he’s set up cameras outside, just in case...”
“Is he really a cowboy?” Jake asked.
Her small breasts rose and fell with her inner torment. “My attorneys felt that I needed some protection, on the ranch,” she blurted out.
He didn’t say a word. But he was assembling puzzle pieces in his mind. It all became clear quite rapidly.
“Why was he in jail, Ida?” he asked quietly.
“Proprietary information,” she replied, her voice barely audible. “Thanks for transporting me back and forth to Pam’s.”
“Thank you and good night?” he mused.
She sighed and forced a smile. “Something like that.” She started to open the car door, but she was slow.
He beat her to it, opening it for her. She struggled to get out. Her back was painful, like her hip. She ground her teeth together at the pain.
“You okay?” he asked and sounded concerned.
“It’s going to rain, or snow, or something,” she predicted. “My bones hurt really bad when the weather changes.”
“A complaint I hear from my cowboys,” he replied. “They have all sorts of injuries. Working around livestock carries its own dangers.”
She nodded. “My father was thrown from a horse when he was very young. He broke a rib, which punctured a lung. They barely got him to the hospital in time.”
He walked her to her door. “Are you going to be all right?”
“A heating pad and one of those horse pills will ease the pain. Thanks for asking.”
He tilted her face up to his with a big hand under her chin.
“You really are beautiful,” he murmured as his head bent, his coffee-scented breath going right into her mouth seconds before his chiseled lips moved down and settled right on it.
CHAPTER FOUR
IDA’S ONLY RECENT memories of kisses came with terror and pain. She was wary of Jake this way, and it showed.
She felt as stiff as a board under the big, warm hands that settled on her shoulders as his hard lips brushed her soft ones.
He lifted his head and looked down into her eyes under the porch light. His own eyes were shuttered under the wide brim of his Stetson. “You’re frightened,” he said softly. “No need. I don’t have to beat a woman to make me feel like a man.” He said it with absolute disgust.
Her lips parted and the breath she’d been holding sighed out. “Sorry,” she bit off. “I’ve...I’ve had some problems.”
“With a brutal husband.”
She hesitated. Then she nodded.
“So you wear a mask, to keep men at bay, so they won’t know that you’re afraid of them.”
She shifted restlessly under his hands. “It usually works.”
“You’ve damaged your reputation in the process. Doesn’t that matter?”
“I was...rather desperate at the time, when I first came back here. Everywhere I went, men came on to me. Not in droves, but even one was frightening. I wanted to be left alone. I tried to tell them, but of course, nobody believed it. So I developed this personality...”
“The happy hooker,” he mused and actually laughed softly.
“Something like that. You know, I’m so good in bed that I judge men, and almost all of them come up lacking, and then I gossip about them.” Her blue eyes twinkled. “It really worked.”
“Almost too well,” he said under his breath. He cocked his head. “Are you afraid of me?”
“Not so much anymore.”
His fingers smoothed over her cheek. She had exquisitely soft skin, and when she was vulnerable, like this, she made him ache.
“That’s nice to hear.”
As he spoke, his fingers were toying with her mouth, teasing the top lip away from the bottom, arousing her.
She barely recognized the feelings. She’d only really had them for Bailey before they were married. Then, so quickly after the ceremony, he’d brutalized her over and over during their brief marriage. She didn’t trust desire. It had already betrayed her once.
She started to step back, but Jake went with her.
Her long-fingered hands pushed at his shirt with leashed fear.
“I won’t hurt you. Not ever,” he whispered, one big hand covering hers where they rested on the soft cotton of his shirt.
Under the shirt she could feel hard muscle and curious indentations. She recalled that he’d been shot and that he never took his shirt off with women. She blushed at the memory, which had embarrassed her with his telling of it. There was something soft over the muscle. Hair?
Unconsciously, her long nails were teasing his skin as she stood there in the circle of his arms, nervous but trusting.
“I really like that,” he said, his deep voice husky. “So