Free Cougar's Conquest by Linda O. Johnston Page A

breasts, that wasn’t why he had come.
    Although given the opportunity…well, sure. He’d enjoy making love with her just once again. For old times’ sake.
    “No, actually, I can’t,” she said. “I don’t know why you’re here. I should think it would be pretty obvious that I didn’t want to see you again after I left Denver.”
    “Ah, but I definitely wanted to see you again,” he said, broadening his smile. Her eyes widened for an instant as if in utter terror.
    Damn. He knew how vulnerable she had seemed before. But he had come to believe that was just part of her act. Her seduction of him. Her method of playing him as a fool.
    But what if it was real? Had she genuinely felt vulnerable because of who she was, even when no one was aware of it?
    Or was it all a pretense?
    He would find out.
    “Well, you’ve seen me,” she said in a tone so icy that he felt transported for an instant to the cold Aspen mountain slope where they had skied together months before she had disappeared. “Now go back to Denver.”
    “I don’t live in Denver anymore,” he told her.
    That appeared to shock her. “Really? I thought you loved it there.”
    “Too many memories,” he said casually, although he felt anything but casual.
    Her eyes closed for an instant before opening again. “I…I’m not sure what to say.”
    He regarded her for a minute, not saying anything, either.
    She was as beautiful as ever. Her prominent cheekbones underscored deep chocolate eyes that looked even more haunted now, and perhaps afraid as she regarded him warily and, maybe, with a touch of regret—or was he only hoping for that? Her pink lips were less glowing and pouty today than in his memories of her, since she had initially drawn them into a taut line of displeasure while watching him. Now, they were slightly open, all alluring, suggesting silently that he kiss her. Or was that just another thing he wanted to read there?
    Her tawny hair was rolled into a knot at the nape of her neck, which suggested it was still long and sexy. She wore a blue shirt and gray slacks, a nice outfit for a schoolteacher, he supposed. As before, she looked slender and sleek. And of course now he knew why.
    Had known it for over a year.
    Brett had watched Gwynn change, under a full moon, from this incredibly sensuous, attractive woman he had once loved into a wild, stalking cougar. Oh, and not the euphemistic term now used for an older woman who dated younger men.
    No, Gwynn was an actual mountain lion. A shape-shifter.
    And now he had come to see her for a reason other than seduction and self-satisfaction.
    He had a proposition for her. One that would be of great value to her.
    He just needed to get her to listen to it.
     
    “You don’t need to say anything,” Brett told her. But she could see in the studiously bland way he looked at her that he blamed her. She’d known so many of his expressions, and blankness on his face was a way of hiding what he really felt.
    She had thought she couldn’t feel much worse after running away, knowing she had hurt him. Had hurt herself, too, of course, but that didn’t matter.
    The kind of hurt she’d evidently caused him, though—it was more than simply disappearing and ending a relationship that should never have existed in the first place. From what he’d said, she had caused repercussions in his life that she hadn’t anticipated at all.
    She had somehow made him move away from the city, and therefore the job, that he had loved.
    “Brett, I’m so sorry,” she breathed, wishing there was some way she could make things better for him. She had no illusions that she could ever have made them much better for herself, although she was still weighing options. “I never meant to—”
    “Of course you did,” he said easily, as if they were talking about the weather. “Or you wouldn’t have gotten involved at all, under the circumstances. But it’s okay. I’m not here to issue any blame. Or to make you feel