Free Her Kind of Hero by Diana Palmer

thirty-six. You’re barely twenty-two. The sort of woman I prefer is sophisticated and street-smart and has no qualms about sex. You’re still at the kissing-in-parked-cars stage.”
    She flushed and searched his eyes. “I don’t kiss people in parked cars because I don’t date anybody,” she told him with blunt honesty. “I can’t leave Dad alone in the evenings. Besides, too many men around Jacobsville remember my mother, and think I’m like her.” Her face stiffened and she looked away. “Including you.”
    He didn’t speak. There was little softness left in him after all the violent years, but she was able to touch some last, sensitive place with her sweet voice. Waves of guilt ran over him. Yes, he’d compared her to her mother that Christmas. He’d said harsh, cruel things. He regretted them, but there was no going back. His feelings about Callie unnerved him. She was the only weak spot in his armor that he’d ever known. And what a good thing that she didn’t know that, he told himself.
    â€œYou don’t know what was really going on that night, Callie,” he said after a minute.
    She looked up at him. “Don’t you think it’s time I did?” she asked softly.
    He toyed with her fingers, causing ripples of pleasure to run along her spine. “Why not? You’re old enough to hear it now.” He glanced around them cautiously before he looked at her again. “You were wearing an emerald velvet dress that night, the same one you’d worn to your eighteenth birthday party. They were watching a movie while you finished decorating the Christmas tree,” he continued absently. “You’d just bent over to pick up an ornament when I came into the room. The dress had a deep neckline. You weren’t wearing a bra under it, and your breasts were visible in that position, right to the nipples. You looked up at me and your nipples were suddenly hard.”
    She gaped at him. The comment about her nipples was disturbing, but she had no idea what he meant by emphasizing them. “I had no idea I was showing like that!”
    â€œI didn’t realize that. Not at first.” He held her fingers tighter. “You saw me and came right up against me, drowning me in that floral perfume you wore. You stood on tiptoe, like you did a minute ago, trying to tempt me into kissing you.”
    She averted her embarrassed eyes. “You said terrible things…”
    â€œThe sight of you like that had aroused me passionately,” hesaid frankly, nodding when her shocked eyes jumped to his face. “That’s right. And I couldn’t let you know it. I had to make you keep your distance, not an easy accomplishment after the alcohol you’d had. For which,” he added coldly, “your mother should have been shot! It was illegal for her to let you drink, even at home. Anyway, I read you the riot act, pushed you away and walked down the hall, right into your mother. She recognized immediately what you hadn’t even noticed about my body, and she thought it was the sight of her in that slinky silver dress that had caused it. So she buried herself against me and started kissing me.” He let out an angry breath. “Your father saw us like that before I could push her away. And I couldn’t tell him the truth, because you were just barely eighteen. I was already thirty-two.”
    The bitterness in his deep voice was blatant. She didn’t feel herself breathing. She’d only been eighteen, but he’d wanted her. She’d never realized it. Everything that didn’t make sense was suddenly crystal clear—except that comment about his body. She wondered what her mother had seen and recognized about him that she hadn’t.
    â€œYou never told me.”
    â€œYou were a child, Callie,” he said tautly. “In some ways, you still are. I was never low enough to take advantage