Too Hot To Handle by Elizabeth Lowell

Author:Elizabeth Lowell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Purple Papaya, LLC
Published: 1986-10-18T04:00:00+00:00

6

Awkwardly Tory moved around the kitchen, trying to favor her right knee without being obvious about it. If Reever saw her limping he would just tear an­other strip off her for being a clumsy city girl. She couldn’t take that right now. She was still too raw from the afternoon. She didn’t know what she would do if he turned on her again.

She didn’t want to know.

Just as she didn’t want to remember the wild magic of his kiss, his touch, the look of raw longing she had caught on his face more than once. She knew he wanted her. Knew he didn’t want to. She didn’t match the picture in his mind of the woman he would love.

Yet in defiance of common sense and her own usual clear-eyed ap­proach to life, she had managed to fall in love with him during the long, sweet, maddening weeks that she had spent side by side with him on the Sundance.

Every day she had spent on the ranch, every hour, every minute, had increased her initial attraction to Reever. She had come to deeply respect his skill and endurance and intelligence. He had taken a ruined ranch and transformed it into a land both productive and beautiful. Although she didn’t know enough about ranching to understand all the thousands of hours of sweat and determination the Sundance’s transformation had required, she did appreciate the results—fat cattle and sheep, clear streams and lakes, grass everywhere she looked, a land that was obviously cared for with an eye to the future as well as to the bottom line on a budget ledger.

She hadn’t wanted to admit that her growing love for Reever was why she was so endlessly vulnerable to his touch.

She had told herself that she thought of him as just one more coach she had to please, but she could no longer keep up that pre­tense. No coach had ever reduced her to tears with a few cold words. No coach had ever made her breath shorten simply by walking past her. No coach had ever set her to secretly dreaming of what it would be like to be a woman with the man she loved, to have a home and children, a chance to build a lifetime of love.

As Tory had walked back to the ranch house, she had finally understood why she hadn’t been able to save up enough money to leave the Sundance.

She didn’t want to leave.

She had seen Reever watching her when he thought she wouldn’t notice. She had seen and savored the gentleness that lay beneath his harsh exterior, a gentleness he fought against revealing to anyone, especially to her. She had seen him wanting her, and she had kept hoping that if he would only let her close, he would come to love her as she loved him.

Tory bent her head and leaned against the counter until the edge bit deeply into her palms. Silently she raged at herself.

You’re a fool, Victoria Wells. You’ve let yourself in for a world of hurt.

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