Free Mountain Laurel by Donna Clayton Page B

a little worried about exactly how far she expects me to take this."
    "Listen," he said. Not wanting her to sense the irritation he himself couldn't understand, he lounged back against the tree trunk, hoping he looked cool and collected. "I don't know if this little wager you have with Ginny is such a good idea."
    Frowning, Laurel swallowed a bite of apple and waited for him to elaborate.
    "You don't seem like you're the kind of person who can handle a casual affair." The words hadn't come out quite as he'd intended, and watching her take a tiny bite of apple and chew it slowly, he was unable to read her expression.
    "Your sister can't expect you to compromise your morals for her sake." Another rash statement, he thought. This one made Laurel stop chewing and lower her gaze. Good Lord, now he'd embarrassed her.
    "What I mean is, Ginny has to learn to appreciate you for what you are."
    She raised her head. Her green eyes connected with his, making him wonder what she was thinking.
    "Besides, you can't give in to her every whim." Seeing a storm brewing in her the sudden tenseness around her eyes and mouth, he thought he should have quit while he was ahead.
    "And you think that's what I'm doing?" She gestured toward him with the half-eaten apple.
    The sharpness in her question sparked his irritation to an explosive level.
    "Well, you can't teach the girl responsibility if you're off Lord knows where with Lord knows who doing Lord knows what!" He returned her glare until she turned her gaze toward the horizon.
    Was he right? Laurel asked herself. Was she compromising her morals for her sister? Was she giving Ginny's every frivolous impulse top priority? Laurel felt entangled as the maze of questions twisted around in her head.
    For goodness' sake, she was only planning on a date or two! He made it sound...dirty. But he was right about her giving in to Ginny. It was something she'd always done. Wasn't that how you showed someone that you loved them? Maybe not. Not this time, anyway.
    Michael was right, Laurel finally realized. She couldn't do this. She would have to find another way.
    The annoyance Michael had felt left him as quickly as it had come. He had no idea what it was that had pushed him to question her reasoning as he had, but he'd succeeded in telling this woman, whom he hardly knew, that she was frigid, loose and weak of character all in a span of about thirty seconds. He was baffled by his behavior. But the drive he'd felt to dissuade Laurel from her plans was insistent and stronger than he could resist.
    "Listen, Laurel, I'm really sorry..." he began, but her huge sigh caused him to stop.
    "It's all right," she told him.
    He was surprised to see that her eyes had gone soft, that her lips, still moist with juice from the apple, curled at corners in a small smile.
    "Don't apologize. You're right. You're right about everything. The bet was a bad idea and I'll talk to Ginny about it as soon as I get back to the cabin."
    Relief flooded through his body. Michael didn't care whether he was right or not. He was just awfully glad she wasn't going through with the crazy wager.
    ~ ~ ~
    "You blew it, didn't you?" Ginny twisted her mouth snidely.
    Panic wrapped around Laurel's chest, making it extremely hard to breathe. She looked at her sister's expression and tried to remain calm. Having thought long and hard, she was sure she had come up with the perfect speech to tell Ginny that their bet was off. She had planned to say that it was foolish to play games with life and that that was something adults didn't do. She was going to explain that there was a right way to do things and there was a wrong way.
    But Laurel hadn't planned on her sister's having one of her wild mood swings. Having heard the front door slam, then seeing Ginny's tight expression and hunched shoulders when she stomped into the kitchen, Laurel knew something was wrong. But before she could find out what it was, Ginny had verbally attacked her.
    "You don't have