Miss Greenhorn. Diana Palmer
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on?” he probed. He lifted the cigarette to his lips. “Didn’t you come out here looking for adventure and romance? And what did you find? George.”
“George is intelligent and kind and very nice to talk to,” she faltered. “I like him.”
“He’s not likely to throw you over his saddle and carry you off into the hills,” he pointed out.
“Thank God,” she replied. Her fingers clenched the arms of her chair. Her heart was going crazy. Why wouldn’t he stop baiting her?
He turned his head and watched her, his eyes missing nothing as they ran down her body to her long, elegant legs peeking out from the skirt of the white dress and to her strappy white sandals. “No taste for excitement, Miss Haley?”
“Being carried off like a sack of flour is hardly my idea of excitement, Mr. Lang.”
“Ah. A career woman.” He made it sound like a mutated strain of leprosy.
“I’m not a career woman. I have a job that I like and I’m very satisfied with my life and myself.”
“How old are you?” he persisted.
“Twenty-five,” she said after a minute.
“Not a bad age,” he remarked. He blew out a cloud of smoke. “I’m thirty-seven.” She didn’t say anything and he smiled mockingly. “No comment? No curiosity about my life?”
“What do you do, Mr. Lang, besides run this ranch?” she asked politely and folded her restless hands in her lap.
“I’m a mining engineer. I work for a company near Bisbee. You’ve heard of the Lavendar Pit, I imagine? It was the biggest mine around in the heyday of mining here in southeastern Arizona. Of course, now it’s little more than a tourist attraction. But we have plenty of other mining interests, and I work for one of them.”
“I’ve heard about the Lavendar Pit, but I haven’t seen it yet. I don’t know much about Arizona. Do you like your work?”
“Sometimes. I like geology. Rocks fascinate me. I was a rock hound as a kid and as I got older, I found that I liked it enough for a career. I studied it in college for four years, got my degree, worked briefly for an oil company and finally wound up here.” He took another draw from his cigarette. “I might have gone to Alaska to work, but my father died and mother couldn’t manage the dude ranch alone.”
“You…never married?”
He shrugged. “No reason to,” he said honestly. “It’s a great time to be a man, in a world where women would rather be lovers than wives. All the benefits of marriage, no responsibilities.”
“No security, no shared life, no children,” she added.
He shifted in his chair. “That’s true. Especially, no children. How about you, Miss Haley? Why are you still single yourself?”
“I haven’t ever been in love,” she said simply, smiling as she glanced his way. “I’ve had proposals and propositions but I’ve never cared enough to give my heart.” Or my body, she could have added.
“I can understand that.”
She glanced at him, but she couldn’t see him well enough to gauge his expression.
He leaned toward her, his eyes narrowed. “Why did you come out here?”
“I wanted to do something wild just once in my life, if you must know,” she replied. “My sister—she’s five years older than I am—leads me around like I’m a lost soul. She’s so afraid that I’ll have a terrible accident and die. Our parents are gone, and that would leave her alone in the world. I can’t seem to breathe without Joyce Ann asking if I’ve got asthma. I haven’t been out of Jacksonville in my whole life, so I thought it was time. I escaped on a plane and didn’t tell Joyce Ann where I was going. I left her a note and told her I’d call her in a week and tell her where I was.”
“I imagine she’s worried,” he said quietly.
“Probably.” She stared at her hands. “I guess it was a cowardly thing to do.”
“Why don’t you go inside and call her? You don’t have to tell her where you are. Just tell her you’re all right.”
She hesitated, but only for a minute. “I should, shouldn’t I?” she asked softly.
“Yes, you should.” He got up and reached a lean, very strong hand down to pull her up. For a few seconds, they were almost touching and she had her first really good look at his face.
He had a lean face with a jutting chin and thin lips and high cheekbones. His eyebrows were dark over deep-set eyes and there were little wrinkly lines at the edges of his eyes. His hair was thick and very dark and he combed it all straight back away from his face. He was a hard-looking man, but appearances could be deceptive. He was much more approachable than she’d imagined.
If she was looking, then so was he. His gaze was slow and very thorough, taking in her delicate features like a mop soaking up water. The hand still holding hers contracted with a caressing kind of pressure that made her stomach tighten as if something electric had jumped inside it. She almost gasped at the surge of delicious feeling.
“Don’t stay up too late,” he said. “You’re two hours behind your time in Jacksonville. It will take a couple more days for you to get used to the difference.”
“All right. Thank you, Mr. Lang.”
“Most people call me Nate,” he said quietly.
“Nate.” She liked the way it sounded. He must have liked it, too, because he actually smiled. He dropped her hand and stood back, letting her move around the chair and back to the small guest cabin she occupied. She paused at the corner of the patio and looked back. She made a little farewell gesture with her hand, smiled back self-consciously, and went on her way.
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