Free Hard to Handle by Diana Palmer Page A

betray so much as a flicker of an eyelash, but the words hit home. She’d accidentally betrayed what he’d suspected all along, that she coveted him because he was a new experience for her. Like another white woman, years before, who’d been entranced not by who he was so much as what he was.
    “Different,” she emphasized. “Hardheaded, cold-eyed, bad tempered, unpredictable and totally exasperating!”
    None of which had anything to do with being Apache, he mused, relaxing a little. He smiled with reluctant amusement.
    “I could go on,” she added. “But I do have a job to do.”
    “I’m not the only one here with a bad temper,” he replied as they started out. “And you have a hard head of your own.”
    “I wouldn’t have a bad temper if you’d stop stripping around me,” she blurted out.
    His eyebrows arched. “When did I do that?”
    “At the motel.”
    “Oh.” He chuckled as he strode along beside her. “I wanted to see if it would affect you.” He glanced down. “It did.”
    “Most men your age are as white as dead fish and flabby,” she remarked, refusing to let him get to her. “I can’t be the only woman who’s ever found you fascinating without your shirt.”
    No, but she was the only one it mattered with, he admitted to himself. He found her equally disturbing, but it wasn’t a good time to say so. His eyes were alert, watching for signs.
    “Look!” she exclaimed, bending down at the creek where tracks were visible in the wet sand. “A cougar!”
    He knelt down beside her. “So it is. How did you know?”
    “Big print, no claw marks,” she explained. “Dogs and wolvescan’t draw their claws back in like a cat can, and they leave claw marks. Look at this. It’s a buck deer—cloven hoofprint. A doe’s is rounded.”
    He met her eyes with grudging admiration. “Tracking interests you, I gather?”
    “It always has. My father hunts deer every fall. He taught me.”
    “Kill Bambi?” he exclaimed with mock horror.
    It was the first real flash of amusement she’d seen in him. She laughed delightedly and impulsively pushed him. He fell heavily onto his side, laughing, too.
    “You hellcat,” he murmured, reaching out with a lightning movement to drag her down heavily against him. He rolled her in the damp sand, pinning her, his face hard, his eyes glittering with excitement as he loomed over her. His gaze went down to her breasts, where the buttons of her blouse had parted during the struggle, leaving her cleavage bare. His breath quickened as he looked at her, his expression changing from humor to intent male appreciation.
    The feel of all that hard muscle so close made her tremble with pure need. She could smell the scent of his clothing, the cologne that clung to his skin. She looked up into his black eyes and knew in that moment that he was everything she’d ever want. She wanted him to bend down, to pin her body to the damp sand. She wanted his hard, warm mouth to crush into hers and kiss her senseless. She wanted him.
    And the ferocity of her desire made her ache. “Kiss me,” she whispered, unbearably hungry for him. She reached up and touched his lean, hard face with hands that trembled, loving the warm strength of him. “Hunter…!” She managed to lift herself enough to reach his hard mouth, and hers touched it with helpless need.
    He froze at the contact, his breath catching as he felt her lips so soft and warm against his own. For one insane second he almost gave in to his own hunger. But she was off-limits. She had to be, because there was no future in it for either of them. He forced himself to go rigid, despite the fact that his damned heart was beating him to death as he struggled with desire.
    His lean hands caught her wrists and he pushed her down, tearing her mouth from his as he loomed over her, looking cold and dangerous. “Stop it,” he said curtly, forcing the words out.
    She felt the rejection right through to her heart. He didn’t want her, so