His Virgin Wife: The Wedding in White / Caught in the Crossfire / The Virgin's Secret Marriage. Diana Palmer
“It isn’t my fault that I can’t resist you,” she pointed out. “And if you’d stop undressing me—”
“I can’t do that,” he interrupted. “I’d have nothing left to live for.” He backed up until he could pull onto the highway. “Besides,” he added with a grin, “how would you ever get any practical experience?”
“I think I may be getting too much,” she replied. Her eyes slipped over him possessively, but she looked away before he noticed.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t push you into doing something you don’t really want.”
“Do you think you could?”
“I know I could,” he replied quietly. “But you’d hate me for it. Maybe I’d hate myself. Whatever happens, it has to be honest and aboveboard. No sneak attacks or seduction.”
“I won’t sleep with you,” she said defensively.
“You would, but I’m not going to let it go that far between us. I’ve got as much responsibility as I can handle already.” His face seemed to harden before her eyes. “The boys can take care of themselves, but Viv can’t. She seems to get less mature by the day.” He glanced at her. “And she’s poisonously angry at you right now.”
“Because Whit paid me too much attention, I gather,” she said miserably.
“Exactly.”
“But that wasn’t my fault,” she muttered.
“I know that. Vivian won’t believe it. Have you forgotten how she was just after Carl was killed?” he added. “She never considered you his girlfriend. She swore he only dated you to get near her. I love my sister, but she has enough conceit for two women.”
“Vivian is really beautiful,” she pointed out. “I’m not.”
He looked at her and smiled slowly. “You’re worth any ten beauty queens, Nat,” he said in a tone that was like being stroked with a velvet glove. “You have a big heart and you’re kind. Too kind, sometimes. You can’t refuse people, and they take advantage of you.”
“Yes, I noticed,” she said pointedly. “Just because I let you kiss me—”
“Stop while you’re ahead,” he cautioned with a bland look. “That was as mutual a passion as any two people ever shared. You love having my mouth on your body. You can’t even hide it.”
She crossed her legs and glared out the window with her arms folded. “I don’t know beans about men, so I’m a pushover.”
“Really? Then why won’t you let the fellow teacher touch you?”
She gave him a hard glare, which he ignored. “You came along when I was at an impressionable age,” she reminded him. “Remember what I said about baby ducks and imprinting?”
“You’re no baby duck.”
“I’m imprinted, just the same,” she said angrily. “Seventeen years old, and spoiled for other men in the course of a night. You should never have come near me while I was in such a vulnerable state!”
“I couldn’t leave you by yourself to grieve,” he pointed out. “And you may have been vulnerable, but you didn’t protest very much.”
“You didn’t leave me enough breath to protest with,” she reminded him. “I may have been stupid about men, but you were no novice! I was outflanked and outgunned!”
“I’m sorry about Carl, but you were no match for him. He liked a more flighty sort of girl altogether, and he had no plans to marry until he finished college. You’d have broken your heart over him.”
“It was my heart to break.”
He stopped at a traffic light and turned to meet her angry eyes. “For an intelligent woman, you are unbelievably naïve. Did you really think he took you out because he was in love with you?”
“He was,” she said. “He told me he was!”
“He told his friends that he dated you because his brother bet him he couldn’t get you to go out with him. There was more to it than that,” he added somberly, “but I’ll spare you the rest.”
“How do you know what he was planning?” she demanded, outraged.
“His younger brother and Bob were good friends,” he reminded her. “When Bob got wind of it, he came to me. That’s why I had words with Carl and his parents before he tried anything with you.”
She was devastated. She’d mourned Carl for months when she was seventeen, and now it turned out that he’d only dated her on a dare. He hadn’t loved her. He’d been playing a game. She leaned her head against her window and bit back tears. She was a bigger fool than she’d realized. Why hadn’t she guessed? And why hadn’t Mack told her years ago?
Chapter 5
Mack saw the glitter of tears in her eyes and he grimaced. “I’m sorry,” he said tersely. “I should never have told you.”
She pushed back a wisp of hair and dug in her purse for a tissue so she could wipe her eyes. “You should have told me years ago,” she corrected. “What an idiot I was!”
“You were naïve,” he said gently. “You saw what you wanted to see.”
His face was grim, and she realized belatedly that he was angry. She wondered what else Carl had said to his brother, but she was leery of asking.
He glanced at her and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “You were seventeen and bent on putting him on a pedestal for life. It would have been a waste.”
That note in his voice was almost defensive. She turned in the seat and looked at him openly. She was seeing things she didn’t want to see. “What you did…that night,” she faltered. “It was deliberate.”
“It was,” he confessed quietly. “I wanted to give you something to think about, at least something to compare with what you’d already experienced.” His jaw tensed. “I didn’t realize how innocent you were until it was too late.”
“Too late?”
He slowed for a turn and he looked so formidable that she didn’t say another word. A tense silence lay between them for several long seconds.
“Maybe it really was like imprinting,” he said heavily. “I should never have touched you. You were far too young for what happened.”
She felt her face coloring. The hungry passion they’d shared today and the night at his house was almost as explosive as what they’d shared all those years ago. Even in memory, her body burned as she relived her first experience of Mack.
“Do you think I blame you?” she asked finally, but she didn’t look at him.
“I blame myself. You’ve lived like a recluse ever since.”
She leaned her face against the glass of the window and smiled. “You were a pretty hard act to follow,” she said huskily.
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “So were you.” He sounded as if the words were dragged out of him, and she turned her head to encounter a stare that stopped her heart.
It was as if she could see right into his mind, and she ached at the images that flashed at her, memories they shared.
“I didn’t really expect that you’d be inexperienced just because I warned your boyfriend off,” he added after a minute. “I got the shock of my life when I realized that you’d never experienced even the mildest form of intimacy.”
“Men always say they know, but how do they?” she asked irritably.
He forced his gaze to the road. “Because of the way you reacted,”