His Virgin Wife: The Wedding in White / Caught in the Crossfire / The Virgin's Secret Marriage. Diana Palmer
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fingers trailed into her hair and speared into its softness. “I’ll tell you what to do, when the time comes. This isn’t it,” he added only half humorously.
She eyed him mischievously. “Are you sure?” She moved deliberately and smiled as he shuddered.
He caught her hip and held her down. “I’m sure,” he resigned.
“Okay.” She sighed and relaxed into the carpet. “I guess I can live on dreams if I have to.”
He pursed his lips. “Do you dream about me?”
“Emphatically,” she confessed.
“Should I ask how you dream about me?”
“I’ll spare you the blushes,” she told him, and moved away so that she could sit up. She pushed back her disheveled hair.
“So they’re that sort of dreams, are they?” he asked, chuckling.
“I don’t suppose you dream about me,” she fished.
He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Finally, he sat up and got to his feet gracefully. “I’m leaving while there’s still time,” he said, and he grinned at her.
“Craven coward,” she muttered. “You’d never make a teacher. You have no patience with curious students.”
“You’ve got enough curiosity for both of us,” he told her. “Walk me to the door.”
“If I must.”
He paused with the door open and looked down at her with open possession. “One step at a time, Nat,” he said softly. “Slow and easy.”
She blushed at the tone and the soft insinuation.
He bent and brushed his mouth briefly against hers. “Get some sleep. I’ll see you Friday.”
“We’re still going to Billings?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said gently. “Good night.”
Frustrated and weak in her knees, she watched him stride to his car. She didn’t know how it was going to work out, but she knew that there was no going back to the old easy friendship they’d once enjoyed. She wasn’t sure if she was glad or not.
Chapter 4
There were plenty of nervous faces and anxious conversations when Natalie sat in the biology classroom to wait for the professor to hand out the written test questions. She’d assumed that the lab questions would require everyone to file into the lab with another sheet of paper and identify the labeled exhibits there. But the professor announced that the dissection questions were on a separate sheet included with the exam. Everybody was on edge. It was common knowledge that many people failed the finals in this subject and had to retake the course. Natalie prayed that she wouldn’t. She couldn’t graduate with her class if she flubbed it.
When the papers were handed out, the professor gave the go-ahead. Natalie read each question carefully before she began to fill in the tiny circles of the multiple choice questions. As she studied the drawing of the dissected rat and noted the placement of the various marks, she found that she remembered almost every single one. She was certain that she was going to pass the course. Mack had made sure of it. She almost whooped for joy when she turned in her paper and pencil. There was one more thing required—she had to fill out a rating sheet for the professor and the course, a routine part of finals. She loved the class and respected the professor, so her answers were positive. She turned in that sheet, too, and left the room. There were still fifteen people huddled over their papers when she went out the door, with only five minutes left for completion.
She almost danced to her car. One down, she thought delightedly. Three to go. And then, graduation! She could hardly wait to share her good news with Mack.
The week went by very quickly. Natalie was almost certain to graduate, because she knew she did well on her finals. The only real surprise would be her final grade, and it would include the marks she received for her practice teaching. She hoped her scores would be good enough to satisfy the school where she would begin her career next term.
When Friday rolled around, she breathed a sigh of relief as she left the English classroom where she’d finished her final round of questions. It was like being freed from jail, she reflected. Although she would miss her classmates and her professors, it had been a long four years. She was ready to go out into the world.
She hadn’t heard from Mack all week. Vivian called her Thursday night to ask if she was still planning to go out with them. She didn’t sound very enthusiastic about the double date. Natalie tried to smooth it over, but she knew that her friend was jealous, and she didn’t know what to do about it. She must discuss it with Mack, she decided.
She tried his cell phone, and he answered with a voice that held both terse authority and irritation.
“Mack?” she asked, surprised by the tone, which he never used with her.
“Nat?” The impatience was gone immediately. “I thought you’d have forgotten this number by now,” he added in a slow, smooth tone that sounded amused. “What do you want?”
“I need to talk to you.”
There was a pause. She heard him cover the mouthpiece and talk to someone in the tone she’d heard when he first answered the phone. Then his voice came back to her. “Okay. Go ahead.”
“Not over the phone,” she said uncomfortably.
“All right. I’ll come over.”
“But I’m ready to leave,” she protested. “I have to drive to town to buy a dress for tonight.”
There was a pause. “Good for you.”
“It’s your fault. You keep making fun of the only dress I’ve got.”
“I’ll pick you up in ten minutes,” he said.
“I told you, I’m going—”
“I’m going with you,” he said. “Ten minutes.”
The line went dead. Oh, no, she thought, foreseeing disaster. He’d have the women in the clothing store standing on their heads, and before he was through, the security guards would probably carry him out in a net.
But she realized it wasn’t going to be easy to thwart him. Even if she jumped in her car and left, he knew where she was going. He’d simply follow her. It might be better to humor him. After all, she didn’t have to buy a dress today. She could wear the one he didn’t like.
He drew up in front of the door exactly ten minutes later, pushing the passenger door open when she came out of the house and locked it.
His dark gaze traveled over her neat figure in gray slacks and a gray and white patterned knit top. He wasn’t wearing chaps or work boots. She assumed he’d been instructing his men on how to work cattle instead of helping with roundup. He looked clean and unruffled. She was willing to bet his men didn’t.
“How many of your men have quit since this morning?” she asked amusedly after she’d fastened her seat belt.
He gave her a quick glare before he pulled the big, double-cabbed truck out of her driveway and into the ranch road that led to the highway. “Why do you think anyone quit?”
“It’s roundup,” she pointed out. She leaned against the door and studied him with a wicked grin. “Somebody always quits. Usually,” she added, “it’s the man who thinks he knows more than you do about vaccinations and computer-chip ear tags.”
He made an uncomfortable movement and gave her a piercing glance before his foot went down harder on the accelerator. She noticed his boots. Clean and nicely polished.
“Jones quit,” he confessed after a minute. “But he was going to quit anyway,” he added immediately. “He thinks