Free Darling Enemy by Diana Palmer Page B

it to make coffee.
    Normally Miss Peake would have been busy making breakfast, but everyone had managed with toast and coffee in her absence. Up until now, Teddi thought, deciding that making breakfast might, in some magical way, help her make up her mind what to do.
    She dug out bacon, eggs, and butter and two frying pans and got busy. While the bacon was frying, she made the huge cat’s head biscuits that King liked, and had them ready to go in the oven when the bacon was done. While the biscuits cooked, she made a huge platter of scrambled eggs, and by then the coffee was ready as well.
    She was setting the table when King walked in and stopped short in the doorway.
    He was devastatingly masculine in his jeans and denim shirt. She glanced at him quickly and turned her attention back to the table, her heart beating madly.
    “If you wouldn’t mind calling the others,” she said quietly, “I’m just putting breakfast on the table.”
    “You’re not a servant in this house,” he said curtly.
    She glared back at him, and suddenly her mind was made up. “I know that, but I’d like a good breakfast before I catch my flight and as I’m sure you’ve noticed, Miss Peake isn’t here to cook it.”
    “What flight?” He stood stock-still, watching her.
    “My flight to New York.” She turned to go back into the kitchen.
    He followed, his boots making harsh thuds as he walked. “Cancel it,” he said.
    She glanced at him from the coffeepot, where she was filling cups. “I will not.” How could she, anyway, when she hadn’t made a reservation yet?
    “Then I will.”
    She set the pot down, hard. “I won’t be held prisoner!”
    “I want you to stay,” he said quietly.
    The faint emphasis on “I” froze her. She looked into eyes that stared back with unnerving intensity, faintly bloodshot, as if he hadn’t slept any better than she had.
    “Why?” she asked softly. “So you can start on me all over again? Carry on where you left off yesterday?”
    He drew in a slow breath, ramming his hands into his jean pockets as he leaned back against the wall and stared at her. “I found out everything I wanted to know about you yesterday,” he said. “Every single thing, in the one way I could without the risk of being lied to. I didn’t mean to frighten you quite so badly, but I wanted answers you wouldn’t have given me any other way.”
    She stiffened. “You mean you did that on purpose?”
    He nodded solemnly. “It was a revelation. I had a feeling that you weren’t half as sophisticated as I’d given you credit for being. The first time I kissed you, I had to force you to open your mouth—hardly the response of a woman who knows much about kissing,” he added with a faint smile. “And you were far too devastated by what happened at the lake, as if it was something totally new. It all added up to one thing. When I kissed you on the way home, the way you reacted clinched it. What I didn’t bargain for,” he added on a weary sigh, “was the fear. Surely to God you knew I wouldn’t force you?”
    “No,” she admitted, turning back to the coffeepot. “I didn’t know that. You...you were so rough.”
    “Someday you might understand why,” he told her. “But I don’t think I’ll try to explain it right now.”
    He was across the room in three long strides, his nearness sudden enough to be startling. She could feel the heat from his body, feel his warm, smoky breath stirring the hair at her temples, but still he didn’t touch her.
    She looked up apprehensively, helpless in the pull of his silvery eyes.
    “I don’t want you to go,” he said quietly. “Now that I know the truth, I’ll never handle you so roughly again.”
    Kindness from him was so new that it was startling. “But we’re enemies,” she whispered.
    A muscle flinched in his square jaw. “We were,” he agreed.
    “You don’t even like me,” she persisted. “Why keep me around to irritate you even more?”
    His face relaxed a