Free Dream's End by Diana Palmer Page A

about it.
    â€œHe what?” he asked sharply.
    â€œI told you before, he’s my friend, not my lover, and what right have you got to pry into my life?” she demanded.
    He shifted, turning so that one long arm rested across the back of the sofa, and his eyes burned where they touched her.
    â€œNot much, I suppose,” he admitted. He ran a lean, brown hand through his tousled hair, and watching it, she wondered how that thick, charcoal-colored hair would feel under her fingers.
    â€œI’ve been rough on you this week,” he said without malice. “I don’t even know why, but I seem to want to hurt you lately. Maybe it’s for the best that you do go. I’ve never had a complaint about your work, Eleanor, if that’s any consolation. I couldn’t have asked for a better secretary.”
    â€œThank you,” she said demurely, lowering her eyes to her glass as she took another sip of the fiery liquid. It was beginning to relax her a little and she sighed as she rocked the glass so that the ice clinked.
    She made a pattern in the condensation on the cool surface of the squatty container. “Is that all that’s wrong with you?” she asked after a minute. “That Mandy doesn’t want to live on the ranch?”
    He took another deep, harsh breath. “She’s trying to move up the wedding,” he admitted. “We never discussed a definite date, but now she’s pushing for next month. I’ll be damned if I like being pushed!”
    â€œShe loves you,” she said, hurting inside even as she defended the redhead. “Naturally, she’s…”
    â€œThat isn’t it. Something’s not right about this whole damned thing, and I’m wearing out my mind trying to figure it. She tried to seduce me tonight,” he saidfrankly. “And she damned near succeeded. I’m so hot-blooded, it was all I could do to get out the door.”
    â€œPlease, you shouldn’t be telling me this….” she protested.
    â€œI’ve got to tell somebody, damn it, who else is there?” He clenched his fingers around the glass and leaned forward, staring blankly ahead. “I don’t know what kind of game she’s playing, but I don’t like it. She’s always said ‘no’ before. Now, all of a sudden, anything goes. It looks very much as if she wants a guarantee. And she knows I’d never turn back if there was the risk of a child.”
    She got up and moved to the bar, reaching idly for the whiskey bottle.
    â€œWhat’s the matter, little saint, can’t you even discuss adult subjects without trying to climb into an alcoholic haze?” he shot at her.
    She froze with her hands on the bottle. “It embarrasses me, if you must know,” she said in a choked voice.
    â€œYou should have entered a convent, then. How old are you now?” he asked gruffly.
    â€œAlmost twenty-one.”
    There was a long pause. “Twenty?” he asked incredulously.
    â€œI’d just turned eighteen when you hired me,” she reminded him.
    â€œYou always seemed so much older…but that was part of the disguise, too, wasn’t it?” he asked bitterly. “You’re young with Black, like a filly just feeling her legs. Yet with me, there’s something matronly about you, a kind of reserve…even when I took your mouth that night, you turned to stone against me. And I hurt you, didn’t I?” he asked with a strange, sweet tenderness in his deep voice. “I bruised you all over because I couldn’t make you give in. Not a very satisfactory introduction to passion, was it, Jadebud?”
    She felt a shudder run the length of her body as he brought it all back again. “Ididn’t know…men got like that,” she admitted weakly. “I…I thought the first time it was gentle.”
    â€œThe first time is usually with a boy your own age who’d be afraid to