Darling Enemy. Diana Palmer
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her.
“You make it sound like a game,” she grumbled.
“Oh, no, it’s stopped being that,” he replied, his eyes on the dining hall ahead. “It stopped being that at Easter.”
She colored delicately, her eyes closing for an instant to try to blot out the memory. She hated him for reminding her of what had almost happened.
“I should have taken you right there in that stall instead of pushing you away,” he said in a husky, deep whisper.
She moved jerkily away from him. “Please don’t remind me of the fool I was,” she said tightly, avoiding his glittering eyes. “I had you mixed up with someone else in my mind,” she added to salvage what she could of her pride.
His features seemed to harden even more. “And we both know who, don’t we, honey?”
She didn’t understand, but was too angry to ask questions. “If you’re quite through, I’m hungry.”
His darkening eyes traced her face, the slender lines of her body, as if the word triggered a hunger of his own.
He moved closer and she stiffened, catching the amused, curious glances of the other students on their way to and from the dining hall. “People are staring,” she murmured nervously.
“Afraid they’ll think we’re lovers, honey?” he asked with magnificent insolence.
She reacted without thinking, her fingers flashing up toward his hard, tanned cheek. But he caught her wrist just in time to avoid the blow, holding it firm in a steely, warm grip.
“Temper, temper,” he chided, as if the flash of fury amused him. “Think of the gossip it would cause.”
“As if you’d ever worry about what people thought of you,” she returned hotly. “It must be nice to have enough wealth and power to be above caring.”
He searched her dark, dark eyes for a long time. “Your parents were poor, weren’t they?” he asked in an uncommonly quiet tone.
She flushed violently. “I loved them,” she muttered. “It didn’t matter.”
“You push yourself way too hard for a girl your age,” he said. “Who are you trying to show, Teddi? What are you trying to prove? Jenna says you’re studying for a major in English—what good is that going to do you as a model?”
She tugged at his imprisoning hand. “None at all,” she admitted, grinding the words out, “but it’ll be great when I start teaching.”
“Teaching?” He stood very still, staring down at her as if he doubted the evidence of his own ears. “You?”
“Please let me go...” she asked curtly, giving up the unequal struggle.
His fingers abruptly entwined with hers, the simple action knocking every small protest, even speech, out of her mind as he drew her along the cobblestoned path beside him. She wondered at her own uncharacteristic meekness as the unfamiliar contact made music in her blood.
“You’ll come home with us,” he said quietly. “The last thing you need is to be alone in that damned apartment, while your dizzy aunt bed-hops across Europe, with no one about to look after you.”
She knew he disliked her aunt Dilly, he’d made no secret of the fact. She’d often thought that his dislike for her aunt had extended automatically to herself, even though she was nothing like her father’s sister.
“You don’t have to pretend that you care what happens to me,” she said coldly. “You’ve already made it quite clear that you don’t.”
His fingers tightened. “You weren’t meant to hear that,” he said. He glanced down at her. “I say a hell of a lot of things to Jenna to keep the issue clouded.”
She blinked up at him. “I don’t understand,” she murmured.
He returned her searching look with a smoldering fire deep in his gray eyes that made her feel trembly. His jaw tautened. “You never have,” he ground out. “You’re too damned afraid of me to try.”
“I’m not afraid of you!” she said, eyes flashing.
“You are,” he corrected. “Because I’d want it all, or nothing, and you know that, don’t you?”
She felt her knees going weak as she stared up at him, the words only half making sense in her whirling mind. One of Teddi’s friends walked past, grinning at the big, handsome man holding Teddi’s hand, and King grinned back. Women loved him, their eyes openly interested, covetous. But the looks they were attracting embarrassed Teddi, and she tried to pull loose.
“Don’t,” King murmured, tightening his warm fingers with a wicked smile. “Don’t read anything into it, it’s simple self-preservation. If I hold your little hand, you can’t slap me with it,” he added with a chuckle.
It was one of the few times she’d ever heard him laugh when they were together, and she studied his lofty face, fascinated. She was of above average height, but King towered over her. He wasn’t only tall, he was broad—like a football player.
“Like what you see?” he challenged.
“I was just thinking how big they grow them in Australia,” she hedged.
“I’m Australian born,” he agreed. “And you’re from Georgia, aren’t you? I love that accent...early plantation?”
She pouted. “I have a very nice accent. Nothing like that long, twanging drawl of yours,” she countered.
“A souvenir from Queensland,” he agreed without rancor.
She searched his eyes. “You spent a lot of your life there,” she recalled.
He nodded. “Mother was a Canadian. When she inherited the Calgary farm, we left Australia and moved to Canada. That was before Jenna was born. Dad and I spent a lot of time traveling between the two properties, so Mother and I were little more than strangers when I was younger.”
“You don’t let anyone get close, do you?”
He stopped at the door of the dining hall and looked down at her. “How close do you want to get, honey—within grabbing distance of my wallet?” he asked with a cold smile.
She glared up at him. “I’m not money crazy,” she said proudly. She jerked her hand out of his grasp, and this time he let it go. “I have everything I need.”
“Do you really?” he retorted. “Then why do you live with your aunt—why does she have to keep you?”
She wanted to tell him that she made quite enough modeling to pay her school fees and to support herself. But she hadn’t seen the sense in trying to maintain an apartment of her own when she was in school nine months out of the year. Besides, she thought bitterly, Dilly was rarely at the New York apartment these days. There was always a man....
“Think what you like,” she told him. “You will, anyway.”
He looked down at her quietly. “Does it bother you?”
She shrugged carelessly. “You don’t really know anything about me.”
His eyes dropped to her soft, full mouth. “I know that underneath that perfect bone structure and bristling pride, you burn with sweet fires when you want a man to kiss you....”
Her face flamed. She moved away as he opened the door for her, standing in such a way that she had to brush against his powerful body to enter the dining hall. She glanced up at him as she eased past, her eyes telling him reluctantly how much the contact disturbed her.
“Soft little thing, aren’t you?” he asked in a deep, lazy drawl, his eyes pointedly on the high thrust of her breasts as they flattened slightly against his broad chest in passing.
Teddi was grateful that Jenna was already at a table