A Colorado Match by Deb Kastner

Author:Deb Kastner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steeple Hill
Published: 2011-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Oh, wow. Melanie leaned her arms against the sink in the small bathroom connected to her room at the lodge. She stared disparagingly at her reflection in the mirror.

What in the world had she done?

She watched as the unfortunate scarlet color crept up her neck, over her cheeks and then all the way up to her forehead. Blushing made her clash with her own self.

Kissing Vince made her wonder if she’d completely lost her hold on things.

That man brought out so many emotions in her that she couldn’t even list them, much less analyze them. Unnamed and uncomfortable feelings dizzily swirled around and around in her heart and head.

She wasn’t used to things she couldn’t put into order, and it grated against her like a metal rake against a cement sidewalk that she’d somehow lost control of herself around Vince.

She forced herself to breathe in and out slowly.

She could handle this. She would handle this.

She hadn’t had a real, committed relationship with a man since, well, ever. The abusive relationship between her stepdad and her mother was enough to convince Melanie that a happy marriage was nothing but a myth, and having a family was a bad, bad idea.

Consequently, every time a man showed any real attraction to her, she’d draw back both physically and emotionally until he lost interest. No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t commit. She wasn’t a runaway bride; she was a runaway first date.

In her defense, she’d never experienced a kiss with the fierce, fiery impact made between her and Vince—the instant connection, the sparkling electricity and the feeling, just for a moment, that it was something special. That she meant something to him.

Which made less than no sense because she’d instigated the kiss—short, sweet and over before it started.

And now she had to go and face him and pretend nothing had happened between them. This was, in a sense, new ground she was breaking; yet in some ways it felt all too familiar.

She was good at pretending. Pretending her real father had not abandoned her and her mother when she was born. Pretending she hadn’t hid under the bed as a child to avoid her violent and abusive stepfather, who spat fire-and-brimstone Bible verses at her and her mother while threatening to beat them up for their sins.

The easiest route, she recognized, was simply to walk away from this new situation, which frightened her in a completely different way, elevating her emotions rather than deflating them.

The business project was keeping her here, but she knew it was so much more than that. A business project she could walk away from if she had to. She wasn’t certain she could walk away from Vince. There was the softest whisper in her ear suggesting that no, with Vince, this time was different.

This man was different.

Different from her stepfather. Different than any of the men she’d dated in the past—big-city businessmen whose main goals in life were wealth and status.

She’d thought she was one of them.

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