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He sighed and smiled. “There isn’t much difference,” he murmured. “And there still isn’t any future in it.”
“Not for a man who just wants to have a little fun occasionally,” she said sarcastically.
“You certainly don’t fall into that category,” he agreed. “I’ve got two brothers and a sister to take care of here. There isn’t room for a wife.”
“Okay. Just forget that I proposed.”
His fingers trailed gently across her soft, swollen mouth. “Besides the responsibilities, I’m not ready to settle down. Not for years yet.”
“I’m sure they’ll take back the engagement ring if I ask them nicely.”
He blinked. “Are we having the same conversation?”
“I only bought you a cheap engagement ring, anyway,” she continued outrageously. “It probably wouldn’t have fit, so don’t worry about it.”
He started laughing. He couldn’t help it. She really was a pain in the neck. “Damn it, Natalie!” He hugged her close and hard, an affectionate hug with bare overtones of unsatisfied lust.
She hugged him back with a long sigh, and her eyes closed. “I think it’s like baby ducks,” she murmured absently.
“What is?”
“Imprinting. They follow the first moving thing they see when they hatch, assuming it’s their mother. Maybe it’s like that with men and women. You were the first man I was ever barely intimate with, so I’ve imprinted on you.”
His heart jumped wildly and his arms tightened around her. “The world is full of men who want to get married and have kids.”
“And I’ll find one some day,” she finished for him. “Have it your own way. But if you really want me to find someone else to fixate on, I have to tell you that dragging me into dark corners and pulling my dress half off isn’t the way to go about it.”
He was really laughing now, so hard that he had to let her go. “I give up,” he said helplessly.
“It’s too late now,” she returned, going to fetch her purse from the floor. “You’ve said you don’t want the ring.”
“Let’s go inside while there’s still time,” he replied as he moved toward the door.
“Not yet,” she said quickly. She moved into a patch of light and looked into her compact mirror, taking time to replace her lipstick and fix her hair.
He watched her calmly, his gaze narrow and intense.
She put the compact in her evening bag and moved toward him. “You’d better do some quick repairs of your own,” she murmured after she examined his face. “That shade of lipstick definitely doesn’t suit you.”
He gave her a glare, but he pulled out his handkerchief and let her remove the stains from his cheek and neck. Fortunately, the lipstick had missed his white collar or there wouldn’t be any disguising it.
“Next time, don’t put on six layers of it before you come over here,” he advised coolly.
“Next time, keep your hands in your pockets.”
He chuckled dryly. “Fat chance, with your dress showing off your breasts like that.”
She unfastened her lacy shawl and draped it across her bodice and over her shoulder. She gave him a haughty glance and waited for him to open the front door.
“The next dress I buy will have a mandarin neckline, you can bet on that,” she told him under her breath.
“Make sure it doesn’t have buttons, then,” he whispered outrageously as he stood aside to let her pass.
“Lecher,” she whispered.
“Temptress,” he whispered back.
She walked past him and into the living room before he could think up any more smart remarks to throw at her. She looked calm, but inside, she was rippling with tiny fears and remnants of pleasure from his touch. It occurred to her that, over the years, she’d been more intimate with him than any other man she’d ever known, but he’d never kissed her.
Thinking about that didn’t help her situation, so she smiled warmly at Bob and Charles as they rose to their feet, and then at Vivian and the tall, blond man who stood up from his seat on the sofa beside her.
“Natalie, this is Whit,” Vivian introduced them. Her blue eyes looked at the blond man with total possession. Whit, in turn, looked at Natalie as if he’d just discovered oil.
Oh, boy, Natalie thought miserably as she registered the gleam in Whit’s blue eyes when they shook hands. He held hers for just a few seconds too long, and she grimaced. Here was a complication she hadn’t counted on.
Chapter 3
It didn’t help matters that Whit was a graduate of the same community college Natalie attended and had taken classes with some of the professors who taught her. Vivian had never wanted to go to college, and was unsure what she wanted to do with her life. Just recently, Mack had put his foot down and insisted that she get either a job or a degree. Vivian had been horrified, but she’d finally agreed to try a course in computer programming at the local vocational school. That was where she’d met Whit, who taught English there.
As they ate dinner, Natalie carefully maneuvered the conversation toward the vocational school, so that Vivian could join in. Vivian was livid and getting more upset by the minute. Natalie could have kicked Mack for putting her in this position. If only he’d let Vivian invite Whit over unconditionally!
“Why didn’t you go to college to study computer programming?” Whit asked Vivian, and managed to make it sound condescending.
“The classes were already full when I decided to go,” Vivian said with a forced smile. “Besides, I’d never have met you if I’d gone to college instead of the vocational school.”
“I suppose not.” He smiled at her, but his attention went immediately back to Natalie. “What grade do you plan to teach?”
“First or second,” Natalie said. “And I have to leave very soon, I’m afraid. I have exams next week, so I expect to be up very late tonight studying.”
“You can’t even stay for dessert?” Whit asked.
“Nope…sorry.”
“What a shame,” Whit said.
“Yes, what a shame.” Vivian echoed the words, but the tone was totally different.
“I’ll walk you out to your car,” Mack said before Whit could volunteer.
Whit knew when he was beaten. He smiled sheepishly and asked Vivian if she’d pour him a second cup of coffee.
It was pitch black outside. Mack held Natalie’s arm on the way down the steps, but not in any affectionate way. He was all but cutting off the circulation.
“Well, that was a disaster,” he said through his teeth.
“It was your disaster,” she pointed out irritably. “If you hadn’t insisted that I come over, too—”
“Disaster is my middle name lately,” he replied with halfhearted amusement.
“He isn’t a bad man,” she told him. “He’s just normal. He likes anything with a passable figure. Sooner or later, Viv is going to realize that he has a wandering eye, and she’ll drop him. If,” she added forcibly, “you don’t put her back up by disapproving of him. In that case, she’ll probably marry him out of spite!”
He stopped at the driver’s side of her car and let her arm fall. “Not if you’re around, she won’t.”
“I won’t be around. He gives me the willies,” she said flatly. “If I hadn’t had this shawl on, I’d have pulled the tablecloth over my head!”
“I told you not to wear anything low-cut.”
“I only did that to spite you,” she admitted. “Next time, I’ll wear an overcoat.” She dug in her evening bag for her car keys. “And I thought you said he was a boy. He isn’t. He’s a teacher.”
“He’s a boy compared to me.”
“Most men are boys compared to you,” she said impatiently. “If Viv used you as a yardstick, she’d never date anybody at all!”
He glared at her. “That doesn’t sound very much like a compliment.”
“It isn’t. You expect anything male to be just like you.”
“I’m successful.”
“Yes, you’re successful,” she conceded. “But you’re a social disaster! You open your mouth, and people run for the exits!”
“Is it my fault if people can’t do their jobs properly?” he shot back. “I try not to interfere unless I see people making really big mistakes,” he began.
“Waitresses who can’t get the coffee strong enough,” she interrupted, counting on her fingers. “Bandleaders who don’t conduct with enough spirit, firemen who don’t hold the hoses right, police officers who forget to give turn signals when you’re following them, little children whose shoelaces aren’t tied properly—”
“Maybe I interfere a little,” he defended himself.
“You’re a walking consumer advocate group,” she countered, exasperated. “If you ever get captured by an enemy force, they’ll shoot themselves!”
He started to smile. “Think so?”
She threw up her hands. “I’m going home.”
“Good idea. Maybe the English expert will follow suit.”
“If he doesn’t, you could always correct his grammar,” she suggested.
“That’s the spirit.”
She opened the door and got into the car.
“Don’t speed,” he said, leaning to the open window, and he wasn’t smiling. “There’s more than a little fog out here. Take your time getting home, and keep your doors locked.”
“Stop nursemaiding me,” she muttered.
“You do it to me all the time,” he pointed out.
“You don’t take care of yourself,” she replied quietly.
“Why should I bother, when you’re so good at doing it for me?” he queried.
She was losing the battle. It did serve to keep her mind off the way he’d held her earlier, the touch of those strong hands on her bare flesh. She had to stop thinking about it.
“Keep next Friday night open,” he said unexpectedly.
She frowned. “Why?”
“I thought we might take Vivian and the professor over to Billings to have dinner and see a play.”
She hesitated. “I don’t know…”
“What’s your exam schedule?”
“One on Monday, one on Tuesday, one on Thursday and one on Friday.”
“You’ll be ready to cut loose by then,” he said confidently. “You can afford one new dress, surely?”
“I’ll buy myself some chain mail,” she promised.
He grinned. It changed him, made him look younger, more approachable. It made her tingle when he looked like that.
“We’ll pick you up about five.”
She smiled at him. “Okay.”
He moved away from the car, waiting until she started it and put it in gear before he waved and walked toward the porch. She watched him helplessly for several seconds. There had been a shift in their relationship. Part of her was terrified of it. Another part was excited.
She drove home, forcing herself not to think about it.
That night, Natalie had passionate, hot dreams of herself and Mack in a big double bed somewhere. She woke sweating and couldn’t go back to sleep. She felt guilty enough to go to church. But when she got home and fixed herself a bowl of soup for lunch, she started thinking about Mack again and couldn’t quit.
The rain was coming down steadily. If the temperature had been just a little lower, it might have turned to snow, even this late in the spring. Montana weather was unpredictable at best.
She got out her biology textbook and grimaced as she tried to read her notes. This was her second course on the subject, and she was uncomfortable about the upcoming exam. No matter how hard she studied, science just went right through her head. Genetics was a nightmare, and animal anatomy was a disaster. Her professor warned them that they’d better spend a lot of time in the lab, because they were going to be expected to trace blood flow through the various arteries and veins and the lymphatic system. Despite the extra hours she’d put in with her small lab study group, she was tearing her hair out trying to remember everything she’d learned over the course of the semester.
She’d been hard at it all afternoon when there was a knock at the front door. It was almost dark, and she was hungry. She’d have to find something to eat, she supposed. Halfway expecting Vivian, she went to the door barefooted, in jeans and a loose button-up green shirt with no makeup on and her hair uncombed. She opened the door and found Mack there, dressed in jeans and a yellow knit shirt, carrying a bag of food.
“Fish and chips,” he announced.
“For me?” she asked, surprised.
“For us,” he countered, elbowing his way in. “I came to coach you.”
“You did?” She was beginning to feel like a parrot.
“For the biology exam,” he continued. “Or don’t you need help?”
“I’m considering around-the-clock prayer and going to class on crutches for a sympathy concession from my professor.”
