Round-the-Clock Temptation by Michelle Celmer

Author:Michelle Celmer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Silhouette
Published: 2005-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

Eight

Connor sat in a leather arm chair in the cigar lounge of the Cattleman’s Club, head resting on his fisted hand, struggling to stay awake. Figuring Nita would make good on her threat last night in the stable, Connor had slept sitting up on the bench in the foyer. Far enough away that he couldn’t hear her cry out, as she’d put it, but where he could catch her if she tried to sneak down the stairs and give him the slip again—which she had, at 5:45 that morning. And though he’d slept in far worse conditions in the Rangers, sheer sexual frustration had kept him awake most of the night. That and his own self-doubt.

He couldn’t stop thinking about what his brother had said, about what the right woman could do to a man, and how Connor needed to do something for himself. It was true that, since he’d been away from the engineering firm, since he’d started working the farm with Nita, he’d lost that feeling of restlessness, the bone-deep frustration he always seemed to feel whenever he let himself take a step back and look good and hard at his life. That frustration had always been the catalyst, the trigger for the irrepressible rage.

Not that he hadn’t felt frustration lately, but this was an entirely different variety. It was born from the need to keep Nita safe, from her constant refusal to listen to him. From the affection and attraction that he knew was wrong, and felt despite that.

Every so often he’d felt a flicker of something else, too. An emotion he hadn’t experienced in so long he’d barely recognized it.

He’d felt content.

Not that he expected it to last. It never did.

Jake dropped into the chair next to his. “You look like hell.”

Connor shot him an annoyed look. “Thanks.”

“Being a newlywed, I have a valid reason for being up half the night. What’s your excuse? Don’t tell me you turned her down.”

The look went from annoyed to deadly.

Jake laughed. “I don’t understand why you’re fighting it. You two are meant for each other.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Because I know Nita and I know you. She needs someone who won’t be threatened by her strength, someone who won’t try to change her, and you need someone who can show you how to have fun. I would say that makes you a perfect match.”

If what his brother was saying made a weird sort of sense, Connor wrote it off as the direct result of sleep deprivation. He knew he was loopy when the next question popped from his mouth. “What did you mean about what finding the right woman can do to a man?”

“Something just…clicks. You start to look at things differently, to see yourself differently. Your priorities change.”

“But you must have dated a hundred different women. How did you know Chris was the one?”

“It was the freckles,” Jake said with that goofy grin of his. “I’m a sucker for that woman’s freckles.”

“Freckles?” Leave it to Jake to give him such a ridiculous answer.

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