by Diana Palmer
“Ready?” he asked curtly.
She nodded, rising. He took her hand to help her out of the chair and she trembled at just the touch of it.
He jerked her chin up, catching the helpless attraction that she couldn’t hide as it glowed from her dark eyes.
He scowled at her. “You might have given it a chance, Shelby,” he said quietly. “At least you don’t find me repulsive. That’s a start.”
“I don’t understand,” she whispered. “Given what a chance, King?”
The scowl got worse. His eyes narrowed, glittering down at her. “I think it might help if you tell me why you bolted out of the car like that.”
“Why, because of the story in the paper,” she told him quietly. “Because I knew you thought I did it, and I was afraid I couldn’t convince you that I didn’t. You see, Danny…”
“You thought what?” he burst out.
She backed away from the dangerous look in his eyes. “That you’d blame me,” she repeated, wide-eyed.
All the hard lines left his face suddenly, and he looked down at her with blank astonishment in the place of anger.
“My God, Shelby,” he said harshly, “you’d rather run under a truck than face my temper? My God!”
She couldn’t understand the anguish in his deep voice. He turned away from her and rammed his hands in his pockets.
“I didn’t realize how hard I’d been on you until now,” he said in a strange, deep tone. “I didn’t realize I affected you to that extent.”
“It’s all right,” she said softly. “I…I can understand how you felt.”
“No, you can’t,” he said with a mirthless laugh. “You can’t imagine.” He whirled on his heel and studied her quietly, his eyes unreadable. “I’ve left my mark on you, haven’t I?” he asked with smooth self-contempt. “You look like a walking skeleton, your eyes are red, and where there once was a carefree girl, now there’s a tired old woman. God, I’m good for you!” he growled harshly. He turned and started toward the car. “Come on. I’m going to put you back where I found you before I get you killed trying to run from me.”
She followed him like a sleepwalker, still puzzled about the way he was behaving. Something seemed to be eating him alive, but she didn’t know what.
She sat beside him in a daze as he headed back toward the downtown area.
“No, don’t take me back to the show,” she asked softly. “I couldn’t bear it. My apartment’s on the next street to the right, if you don’t mind going out of your way…”
“I don’t mind.”
She didn’t say another word until he pulled into the one vacant parking space outside the apartment building where she lived. She sat there, not knowing what to say, or how to say it, knowing this was the last time she’d ever see him….
“We’ve already said it all,” he told her with inhuman calm. “Goodbye, Shelby.”
She nodded. Her eyes searched his in a breathtaking silence while she tried to memorize every line of his face. Tears blurred him in her vision; tears that were hot and painful and unmistakable.
He scowled suddenly. “Shelby…?” he whispered, reaching out to brush a tear from her cheek.
She caught his fingers and held them against the softness of her cheek involuntarily. She could hear her pride shattering around her as she searched his eyes one last time.
“Kiss me goodbye,” she pleaded in a broken whisper. “Please!”
In slow motion, she felt his lean, strong hands cupping her face, watched his eyes widen with disbelief and darken with certainty.
He bent, touching his hard mouth to hers with a tenderness that brought the hot tears swimming in her eyes, a soft pressure that ached with promise.
“Not like that,” she whispered at his lips.
His hands tightened on her face. “How do you want it, then?” he asked huskily.
“Like this, King,” she replied, reaching up to lock her arms around his neck, to draw his mouth down in the sudden trembling silence of the car.
She eased over the console with her lips clinging tenderly to his and slid onto his lap, feeling his arms come around her with a sense of wonder.
“Sports cars weren’t designed for this,” he whispered unsteadily as her mouth brushed temptingly across his.
“Weren’t they?” she asked dizzily, giving in to a wild impulse to feather kisses all over his hard face. She pressed closer against him, glorying in the effect she seemed to have on him.
His hands tightened painfully at her back, bruising her against his hard chest. His teeth nipped at her lower lip.
“What the hell are you doing?” he growled huskily.
“It’s called making love, I think,” she murmured against his answering lips.
“You’re starting something you may not be able to stop,” he warned softly.
“Promises, promises…”
He took her mouth roughly, his arms swallowing her, crushing her, as the devouring kiss went on and on until she thought she’d never breathe again, or want to.
“If you feel like this,” he whispered, his voice husky with emotion, “then why the hell won’t you marry me?”
She froze in his arms, looking up at him incredulously. “Marry you?”
He drew a steadying breath and smoothed her silky hair. “Shelby, I put the announcement in the paper. It was my way of telling you I wanted you for keeps. When you ran, I thought it was because you couldn’t bear the thought of marrying me. Then, when I realized what was wrong, it froze me in my tracks.” He caressed her flushed face with lazy fingers. “If you were that afraid of me, I thought it would be better if we forgot the whole thing.”
She looked into his eyes with her whole heart in hers. “I ran because I loved you so much,” she admitted jerkily. “And I knew it was always going to be one-sided….”
He pressed a gentle finger across her trembling lips. “One-sided, Shelby?” he asked gently. “Let me show you how one-sided it is with us.”
He drew her up against him and eased her mouth under his, cherishing it so tenderly that she couldn’t stem the tears that fell like liquid pearls from her eyes.
“You see?” he whispered softly. “I love you until I ache all over with it. I want children with you. I want everything with you, Shelby, good times and bad. But not if you’re going to spend all those years running from my temper.”
She smiled up at him. “But now I know what to do about it, don’t I?” she whispered, drawing his head down to hers.
“It’ll take more than this sometimes,” he murmured against her ardent mouth.
“Then you’ll have to marry me and teach me what else to do, won’t you?” she asked impishly.
“Be sure, Shelby,” he said gently, and his dark eyes were serious. “Forever is a hell of a long time.”
She nodded. “Maybe it will be long enough,” she murmured.
He wrapped her up in his hard arms and held her close against him. She buried her face in his warm throat and closed her eyes. Heaven could wait, she thought contentedly. This was paradise enough for one lifetime.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-4369-3
TO LOVE AND CHERISH
First published in North America as a MacFadden Romance by Kim Publishing Corporation.
Copyright © 1979 by Diana Palmer.
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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
&n
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