Dear Reader,

I really can’t express how flattered I am and also how grateful I am to Mills & Boon Books for releasing this collection of my published works. It came as a great surprise. I never think of myself as writing books that are collectible. In fact, there are days when I forget that writing is work at all. What I do for a living is so much fun that it never seems like a job. And since I reside in a small community, and my daily life is confined to such mundane things as feeding the wild birds and looking after my herb patch in the backyard, I feel rather unconnected from what many would think of as a glamorous profession.

But when I read my email, or when I get letters from readers, or when I go on signing trips to bookstores to meet all of you, I feel truly blessed. Over the past thirty years, I have made lasting friendships with many of you. And quite frankly, most of you are like part of my family. You can’t imagine how much you enrich my life. Thank you so much.

I also need to extend thanks to my family (my husband, James, son, Blayne, daughter-in-law, Christina, and granddaughter, Selena Marie), to my best friend, Ann, to my readers, booksellers and the wonderful people at Mills & Boon Books—from my editor of many years, Tara, to all the other fine and talented people who make up our publishing house. Thanks to all of you for making this job and my private life so worth living.

Thank you for this tribute, Mills & Boon, and

for putting up with me for thirty long years!

Love to all of you.

Diana Palmer

DIANA PALMER

The prolific author of more than one hundred books, Diana Palmer got her start as a newspaper reporter. A multi–New York Times bestselling author and one of the top ten romance writers in America, she has a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humor. Diana lives with her family in Cornelia, Georgia.

Visit her website at www.DianaPalmer.com.

The Wedding in White

New York Times and USA TODAY Bestselling Author

Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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For Irene Sullivan, my friend

New York Times and USA TODAY
Bestselling Author
Diana Palmer

The Essential Collection

Long, Tall Texans…and More!

AVAILABLE FEBRUARY 2011

Calhoun

Tyler

Ethan

Connal

Harden

Evan

AVAILABLE MARCH 2011

Donavan

Emmett

Regan’s Pride

That Burke Man

Circle of Gold

Cattleman’s Pride

AVAILABLE APRIL 2011

The Princess Bride

Coltrain’s Proposal

A Man of Means

Lionhearted

Maggie’s Dad

Rage of Passion

AVAILABLE MAY 2011

Lacy

Beloved

Love with a Long, Tall Texan

(containing “Guy,” “Luke” and “Christopher”)

Heart of Ice

Noelle

Fit for a King

The Rawhide Man

AVAILABLE JUNE 2011

A Long, Tall Texan Summer

(containing “Tom,” “Drew” and “Jobe”)

Nora

Dream’s End

Champagne Girl

Friends and Lovers

The Wedding in White

AVAILABLE JULY 2011

Heather’s Song

Snow Kisses

To Love and Cherish

Long, Tall and Tempted

(containing “Redbird,” “Paper Husband” and

“Christmas Cowboy”)

The Australian

Darling Enemy

Trilby

AVAILABLE AUGUST 2011

Sweet Enemy

Soldier of Fortune

The Tender Stranger

Enamored

After the Music

The Patient Nurse

AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 2011

The Case of the Mesmerizing Boss

The Case of the Confirmed Bachelor

The Case of the Missing Secretary

September Morning

Diamond Girl

Eye of the Tiger

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter One

“I’ll never get married!” Vivian wailed. “He won’t let me have Whit here at all. I only wanted him to come for supper, and now I have to call him and say it’s off! Mack’s just hateful!”

“There, there,” Natalie Brock soothed, hugging the younger girl. “He’s not hateful. He just doesn’t understand how you feel about Whit. And you have to remember, he’s been totally responsible for you since you were fifteen.”

“But he’s my brother, not my father,” came the sniffling reply. Vivian dashed tears off on the back of her hand. “I’m twenty-two,” she added in a plaintive tone. “He can’t tell me what to do anymore, anyway!”

“He can, on Medicine Ridge Ranch,” Natalie reminded her wryly. Medicine Ridge Ranch was the largest spread in this part of Montana—even the town was named after it. “He’s the big boss.”

“Humph!” Vivian dabbed at her red eyes with a handkerchief. “Only because Daddy left it to him.”

“That isn’t quite true,” came the amused rejoinder. “Your father left him a ranch that was almost bankrupt, on land the bank was trying to repossess.” She waved her hand around the expensive Victorian furnishings of the living room. “All this came from his hard work, not a will.”

“And so whatever McKinzey Donald Killain wants, he gets,” Vivian raged.

It was odd to hear him called by his complete name. For years, everyone around Medicine Ridge, Montana, which had grown up around the Killain ranch, had called him Mack. It was an abbreviation of his first name, which few of his childhood friends could pronounce.

“He only wants you to be happy,” Natalie said softly, kissing the flushed cheek of the blond girl. “I’ll go talk to him.”

“Would you?” Bright blue eyes looked up hopefully.

“I will.”

“You’re just the nicest friend anybody ever had, Nat,” Vivian said fervently. “Nobody else around here has the guts to say anything to him,” she added.

“Bob and Charles don’t feel comfortable telling him what to do.” Natalie defended the younger brothers of the household. Mack had been responsible for all three of his siblings from his early twenties. He was twenty-eight now, crusty and impatient, a real hell-raiser whom most people found intimidating. Natalie had teased him and picked at him from her teens, and she still did. She adored him, despite his fiery temper and legendary impatience. A lot of that ill humor came from having one eye, and she knew it.

Soon after the accident that could as easily have killed him as blinded him, she told him that the rakish patch over his left eye made him look like a sexy pirate. He’d told her to go home and mind her own damned business. She ignored him and continued to help Vivian nurse him, even when he’d come home from the hospital. That hadn’t been easy. Natalie was a senior in high school at the time. She’d just gone from the orphanage where she’d spent most of her life to her maiden aunt’s house the year before the accident occurred. Her aunt, old Mrs. Barnes, didn’t approve of Mack Killain, although she respected him. Natalie had had to beg to get her aunt to drive her first to the hospital and then to the Killain ranch every day to look after Mack. Her aunt had felt it was Vivian’s job—not Natalie’s—but Vivian couldn’t do a thing with her elder brother. Left alone, Mack would have been out on the northern border with his men helping to brand calves.

At first, the doctors feared that he’d lost the sight in both eyes. But later, it had become evident that the right one still functioned. During that time of uncertainty, Natalie had attached herself to him and refused to go away, teasing him when he became despondent, cheering him up when he wanted to quit. She wouldn’t let him give up, and soon there had been visible progress in his recovery.

Of course, he’d tossed her out the minute he was back on his feet, and she hadn’t protested. She knew him right down to his bones, and he realized it and resented it. He didn’t want her for a friend and made it obvious. She didn’t push. As an orphan, she was used to rejection. Her aunt hadn’t taken her in until the dignified lady was diagnosed with heart failure and needed someone to take care of her. Natalie had gone willingly, not only because she was tired of the orphanage, but also because her aunt lived on Killain’s southern border. Natalie visited her new friend Vivian most every day after that. It wasn’t until her aunt had died unexpectedly and left her a sizeable nest egg that she’d been able to put herself through college and keep up the payments on the little house she and her aunt had occupied together.

She lived frugally, and she’d managed all by herself. The money was almost gone now, but she’d made good grades and she had the promise of a teaching position at the local elementary school when she graduated. Life at the age of twenty-two looked much better than life at age six, when a grieving child had been taken from her family home and placed in the orphanage after a fire had killed both her parents. Like Mack, she’d had her share of tragedy and grief.

But teaching was wonderful. She loved first graders, so open and loving and curious. That was going to be her future. She and Dave Markham, a sixth-grade teacher at the school, had been dating for several weeks. No one knew that they were more friends than a romantic couple. Dave was sweet on the clerk at the local insurance agency, who was mooning over one of the men she worked with. Natalie wasn’t interested in marriage anytime soon. Her only taste of love had been a crush on an older teenager when she was in her senior year. He’d just started noticing her when he was killed in a wreck while driving home from an out-of-town weekend fishing trip with his cousin. Losing her parents, then the one love of her short life, had taught her the danger of loving. She wanted to be safe. She wanted to be alone.

Besides that, she was far too fastidious for the impulsive leap-into-bed relationships that seemed the goal of many modern young women. She had no interest in falling in love, or in a purely physical affair. So until Dave came along, she hadn’t dated at all. Well, that wasn’t quite true, she conceded.

There was the dance she’d coaxed Mack into taking her to, but he’d been far older than the boys at the local community college who had attended. Nevertheless, he’d made Natalie the belle of the ball just by escorting her. Mack was a dish, by anybody’s standards, even if he did lack social graces. By the time they left, he’d put more backs up than a debating team. She hadn’t asked him to take her anywhere else, though. He seemed to dislike everybody these days. Especially Natalie.

Natalie hadn’t really minded his abrasive company. She admired his penchant for telling the truth even when it wasn’t welcome, and for saying what he thought, not what was socially acceptable. She tended to speak her own mind, too. She’d learned that from Mack. He’d forced her to fight back soon after she became friends with his sister. He put her back up and kept it up, refusing to let her rush off and cry. He taught her to stand her ground, to have the courage of her convictions. He made her strong enough to bear up under almost anything.

She remembered that they had an argument the night she’d coaxed him to the dance. He’d left her at her front door with one poisonous remark too many, his black eye narrow and no smile to ease the hard, lean contours of his face. There was too much between them to let a disagreement keep them apart, though.

Mack looked much older than twenty-eight. He’d had so much responsibility on his broad shoulders that he’d been robbed of a real childhood. His mother had died young, and his father had succumbed to drink, and then became abusive to the kids. Mack had stood up to him, many times taking blows meant for the other three. In the end, their father had suffered a stroke and been placed in a nursing home while Mack kept the younger Killains together and supported them by working as a mechanic in town. When Mack was twenty-one, his father had died, leaving Mack with three teenagers to raise.

Meanwhile, he’d invested carefully, bought good stock and started breeding his own strain of Red Angus. He was successful at everything he touched. His only run of real bad luck had been when he’d been thrown from his horse in the pasture with a big Angus bull. When the bull had charged him and he’d tried to catch it by the horns to save himself, he’d been gored in the face. He’d lost his sight, but fortunately only in one eye. The rest of him was still pure, splendid male, and women found him very appealing physically. He was every woman’s secret desire, until he opened his mouth. His lack of diplomacy kept him single.

Natalie left Vivian crying in the living room and went to find Mack. He was on one knee in a stall on the cobblestones of the spacious, clean barn, ruffling the fur of one of his border collies. He was a kind man, for the most part, and he did love animals. Every stray in Baker County made a beeline for the Killain place, and there were always furry friends around to pet. The border collies were working dogs, of course, and used to help herd cattle on the vast plains. But Mack adored them, and it was mutual.

Natalie leaned against the doorway of the barn with her arms folded and smiled at the picture he made with the pup.

As if he sensed her presence, his head rose. She couldn’t see his eyes under the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat, but she knew he was probably glaring at her. He didn’t like letting people see how very human he was.

“Slumming, Miss Educator?” he drawled, rising gracefully to his feet.

She only smiled, used to his remarks. “Seeing how the other half lives, Mr. Cattle Rancher,” she shot back. “Vivian says you won’t let the love of her life through the front door.”

“So what are you, a virgin sacrifice to appease me?” he asked, approaching her with that quick, menacing stride that made her heart jump.

“You aren’t supposed to know that I’m a virgin,” she pointed out when he stopped just an arm’s length away.

He let out a nasty word and smiled mockingly, waiting to see what she’d say.

She ignored the bad language, refusing to rise to the bait. She grinned at him instead.

That disconcerted him, apparently. He pushed his hat over his jet black hair and stared at her. He had Lakota blood two generations back. He could speak that language as fluently as French and German. He took classes from far-flung colleges on the internet. He was a great student; everything fascinated him.

His bold gaze roamed down her slender body in the neat, fairly loose jeans and soft yellow V-neck sweater she wore. She had short dark hair, very wavy, and emerald green eyes. She wasn’t pretty, but her eyes and her soft bow mouth were. Her figure drew far more attention than she was comfortable with, especially from Mack.

“Viv’s would-be boyfriend got the Henry girl pregnant last year,” he said abruptly.

Her gasp made his eye narrow.

“You didn’t have a clue, did you?” he mused. “You and Viv are just alike.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Pitiful taste in men,” he added.

She gave him a look of mock indignation. “And I was just going to say how very sexy you were!”

“Pull the other one,” he said with amazing coldness.

Her eyebrows arched. “My, we’re touchy today!”

He glared at her. “What do you want? If it’s an invitation to supper for Viv’s heartthrob, he can’t come unless you do.”

That surprised her. He usually couldn’t wait to shoo her off the place. “Three’s a crowd?” she murmured dryly.

“Four. I live here,” he pointed out. He frowned. “More than four,” he continued. “Vivian, Bob and Charles and me. You and the would-be Romeo make six.”

“That’s splitting hairs,” she pointed out. “You’re suggesting that I come over to make the numbers even, of course,” she chided.

His face didn’t betray any emotion at all. “Wear a dress.”

That really surprised her. “Listen, you aren’t planning any pagan sacrificial rites at a volcano?” she asked, rubbing in the virgin sacrifice notion.

“Something low-cut,” he persisted, his gaze narrow and faintly sensual on her pert breasts under the sweater.

“Stop staring at my breasts!” she burst out indignantly, crossing her arms over them.

“Wear a bra,” he returned imperturbably.

Her face flamed. “I am wearing a bra!”

His black eye twinkled. “Wear a thicker bra.”

She glared at him. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you!”

He lifted an eyebrow and his eye slid down her body appraisingly. “Lust,” he said matter-of-factly. “I haven’t had sex for so long, I’m not even sure I remember how.”

She couldn’t handle a remark like that. They shared such intimate memories for two old sparring partners. She couldn’t fence with him verbally when he let his voice drop like that, an octave lower than normal. It was so sensuous that it made her knees weak. So was the memory of that one unforgettable night they’d shared. Warning signals shot to her brain.

He sighed theatrically when her cheeks turned pink. “So much for all that sophistication you pretend to have,” he mused.

She cleared her throat. “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that to me,” she said worriedly.

“Maybe I shouldn’t,” he conceded. His hand went out and pushed a strand of hair behind her small ear. She jerked at his touch, and he moved a step closer. “I’d never hurt you, Natalie,” he said quietly.

She managed a nervous smile. “I’d like that in writing,” she said, trying to move away without making it look as if she was intimidated, even though she was.

The barn door was at her back, though, and there was no way to escape. He knew that. She could see it on his face as he slid one long arm beside her head and rested his hand by her ear.

Her heart jumped into her throat. She looked at him with all her darkest fears reflecting in her emerald eyes.

He searched them without speaking for a long moment. “Carl would never have made you happy,” he said suddenly. “His people had money. They wouldn’t have let him marry an orphan with no assets.”

Her eyes darkened with pain. “You don’t know that.”

“I do know that,” he returned sharply. “They said as much at the funeral, when someone mentioned how devastated you were. You couldn’t even go to the funeral.”

She remembered that. She remembered, too, that Mack had come looking for her in her aunt’s home the night Carl had died. Her aunt was out of town shopping over the weekend, and she’d been all alone. Mack found her in a very sexy pink satin gown and robe, crying her eyes out. He’d picked her up, carried her to the old easy chair by the bed, and he’d held her in his lap until she couldn’t cry anymore. After a close call that still made her knees weak, even in memory, he’d stayed with her that whole long, anguished night, sitting in the chair beside the bed, watching her sleep. It was a mark of the respect he commanded in the community that even Natalie’s aunt hadn’t said a word about his presence there when she found out about it on her return. Natalie inspired defense in the strangest quarters. Her tenderness made even the toughest people oddly vulnerable around her.

“You held me,” she recalled softly.

“Yes.” His face seemed to tauten as he looked at her. “I held you.”

She felt him so close that it was like being lifted and carried away. Little twinges of pleasure shot through her when she met his searching gaze. The sensation was so intense as they looked at each other, she could almost feel his bare chest against hers. Five years had passed since that night, but it seemed like yesterday. It was like stepping into space.

“And when I lost my sight,” he continued, “you held me.”

She bit her lower lip hard to stop it from trembling. “I wasn’t the only one who tried to nurse you,” she recalled.

“Vivian cried when I snapped at her, and the boys hid under their beds. You didn’t. You snapped right back. You made me want to go on living.”

She lowered her eyes to his chest. He had the build of a rodeo cowboy, broad-shouldered and lean-hipped. His checked shirt was open at the neck, and she saw the thick, curling hair that covered him from his chest to his belt. He wasn’t a hairy man, but he was devastating without a shirt. She’d seen him like that more often than she was comfortable remembering. He was beautiful under his clothing, like a sculpture she’d seen in pictures of museum exhibits. She even knew how he felt, there where the hair was thick over his breastbone….

“You were kind to me when Carl died,” she returned.

There was a new tension between them after she spoke. She sensed a steely anger in him.

“Since we’re on the subject of your poor taste in men, what do you see in that Markham man?” he asked curtly. “He’s as prissy as someone’s maiden aunt, and in a stand-up fight, he’d go out in seconds.”

She lifted her face. “Dave’s my friend,” she said shortly. “And certainly he’s no worse than that refugee from the witch trials that you go around with!”

His firm lips pursed. “Glenna’s not a witch.”

“She’s not a saint, either,” she assured him. “And if you’re going without sex, I can guarantee it’s not her fault!” she added without thinking. But once the words left her stupid mouth, and she saw the unholy light in the eye that wasn’t covered by the black eye patch, she could have bitten her tongue in two.

“Will you two keep your voices down?” young Bob Killain groaned, as he peered around the barn door to stare at them. “If Sadie Marshall hears you all the way in the kitchen, she’ll tell everybody in her Sunday school class that you two are living in sin out here!” he exclaimed, naming the Killain housekeeper.

Natalie looked at him indignantly, both hands on her slender hips. “It’s Glenna you’d better worry about, if he gets involved with her!” she assured Mack’s youngest brother, a redhead. “Her name is written in so many phone booths, she could qualify as a tourist attraction!”

Mack tried not to laugh, but he couldn’t help himself. He pulled his hat across his eyes at a slant and turned into the barn. “Oh, hell, I’m going to work. Haven’t you got something to do?” he asked his brother.

Bob cleared his throat and tried desperately not to laugh, either. “I’m just going over to Mary Burns’s house to help her with her trigonometry.”

“Carry protection,” Mack’s droll voice came back to him.

Bob turned as red as his hair. “Well, we don’t all stand around talking about sex all day!” he muttered.

“No,” Natalie agreed facetiously. She looked at Mack deliberately. “Some of us go looking for names in phone booths and call them up for dates!”

“Can it, Nat,” Mack said as he opened a stall and led a horse out. He proceeded to saddle it, ignoring Natalie and Bob.

“I’ll be back by midnight!” Bob called, seeing an opportunity to escape.

“You heard what I said,” Mack called after him.

Bob made an indignant sound and stomped out of the barn.

“He’s just sixteen, Mack,” she said, regaining her composure enough to join him as he fastened the cinch tight.

He glanced at her. “You were just seventeen when you were dating the football hero,” he reminded her.

She stared at him curiously. “Yes, but except for a few very chaste kisses, there wasn’t much going on.”

He gave her an amused glance before he went back to his chore. He tested the cinch, found it properly tight and adjusted the stirrups.

“What does that look mean?” Natalie asked curiously.

“I had a long talk with him when I found out you’d accepted a date for the Christmas dance from him.”

Her lips fell open. “You what?”

He slid a booted foot into the stirrup and vaulted into the saddle with easy grace. He leaned over the pommel and looked at Natalie. “I told him that if he seduced you, he’d have me to contend with. I told his parents the same thing.”

She was horrified. She could hardly breathe. “Of all the interfering, presumptuous—”

“You were raised in an orphanage by spinster women, and then you lived with your aunt, who couldn’t even talk about kissing without going into a swoon,” he said, and he didn’t smile. “You knew nothing about men or sex or hormones. Someone had to protect you, and there wasn’t anybody else to do it.”

“You had no right!”

His dark eye slid over her with something like possession. “I had more right than I’ll ever tell you,” he said quietly. “And that’s all I’ll say on the subject.”

He turned the horse, deaf to her fury.

“Mack!” she raged.

He paused and looked at her. “Tell Viv she can have her friend over for supper Saturday night, on the condition that you come, too.”

“I don’t want to come!”

He hesitated for a minute, then turned the horse and came back to her. “You and I will always disagree on some things,” he said. “But we’re closer than you realize. I know you,” he added in a tone that made her knees wobble. “And you know me.”

She couldn’t fight the emotions that made her more confused, more stirred, than she’d ever been before. She looked at him with eyes that betrayed her longing for him.

He drew in a long, slow breath, and his face seemed to lose its rigor. “I won’t apologize for looking out for you.”

“I’m not part of your family, Mack,” she said huskily. “You can tell Viv and Bob and Charles what to do, but you can’t tell me!”

He studied her angry face and smiled gently, in a way that he rarely smiled at anyone. “Oh, I’m not telling, baby,” he replied softly.

“And don’t call me baby, either!”

“All that fire and fury,” he mused, watching her. “What a waste.”

She was so confused that she could hardly think. “I don’t understand you at all today!”

“No,” he agreed, the smile fading. He looked straight into her eyes, unblinking. “You work hard at it, too.”

He turned the horse, and this time he kept riding.

She wanted to throw things. She couldn’t believe that he’d said such things to her, that he’d come so close in the barn that for an instant she’d thought that he meant to kiss her. And not a chaste brush on the cheek, like at Christmas parties under the mistletoe, either. But a kiss like ones she’d seen in movies, where the hero crushed the heroine against the length of his body and put his mouth so hard against hers that she couldn’t breathe at all.

She tried to picture Mack’s hard, beautiful mouth on her lips, and she shivered. It was bad enough remembering how it had been that rainy night that Carl had died, when one thin strap on her nightgown had slid down her arm and…

Oh, no, she told herself firmly. Oh, no, none of that! She wasn’t going to start daydreaming about Mack again. She’d gone down that road once already, and the consequences had been horrible.

She went back into the house to tell Viv the bad news.

“But that’s wonderful!” her friend exclaimed, all smiles instead of tears. “You’ll come, won’t you?”

“He’s trying to manipulate me,” Natalie said irritably. “I won’t let him do that!”

“But if you don’t come, Whit can’t come,” came the miserable reply. “You just have to, Nat, if I’m your friend at all.”

Natalie grumbled, but in the end, she gave in.

Vivian hugged her tight. “I knew you would,” she said happily. “I can hardly wait until Saturday! You’ll like him, and so will Mack. He’s such a sweet guy.”

Natalie hesitated, but if she didn’t tell her friend, Mack certainly would, and less kindly. “Viv, did you know that he got a girl in trouble?”

“Well, yes,” she said. “But it was her fault,” she pointed out. “She chased him and then when they did it, she wouldn’t let him use anything. He told me.”

Natalie blushed for the second time that day, terribly uncomfortable around people who seemed content to speak about the most embarrassing things openly.

“Sorry,” Viv said with a kind smile. “You’re very unworldly, you know.”

“That’s just what your brother said,” Natalie muttered.

Vivian studied her curiously for a long time. “He may not like the idea of Whit, but he likes the idea of your friend Dave Markham even less,” she confided.

“He’s one to criticize my social life, while he runs around with the likes of Glenna the Bimbo. Stop laughing, it isn’t funny!”

Vivian cleared her throat. “Sorry. But she’s really very nice,” she told her friend. “She just likes men.”

“One after the other,” Natalie agreed, “and even simultaneously, from what people say. Your brother is going to catch some god-awful disease and it will be his own fault. Why are you still laughing?”

“You’re jealous,” Vivian said.

“That’ll be the day!” Natalie said harshly. “I’m going home.”

“He’s only gone out with her twice,” her best friend continued, unabashed, “and he didn’t even have lipstick on his shirt when he came home. They just went to a movie together.”

“I’m sure your brother didn’t get to his present age without learning how to get around lipstick stains,” she said belligerently.

“The ladies seem to like him,” Vivian said.

“Until he speaks and ruins his image,” Natalie added. “His idea of diplomacy is a gun and a smile. If Glenna likes him, it’s only because she’s taped his mouth shut!”

Vivian laughed helplessly. “I guess that could be true,” she confessed. “But he is a refreshing change from all the politically correct people who are afraid to open their mouths at all.”

“I suppose so.”

Vivian stood up. “Natalie?”

“What?”

She stared at her friend quietly. “You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?”

Natalie turned quickly toward the door. She wasn’t going to answer. “I really have got to go. I have exams next week, and I’d better hit the books hard. It wouldn’t do to flub my exams and not graduate,” she added.

Vivian wanted to tell Natalie that she had a pretty good idea of what had happened between her and Mack so long ago, but it would embarrass Natalie if she came right out with it. Her friend was so repressed.

“I don’t know what happened,” she lied, “but you have to remember, you were just seventeen. He was twenty-three.”

Natalie turned, her face pale and shocked. “He…told you?”

“He didn’t tell me anything,” Vivian said softly and honestly. She hadn’t needed to be told. Her brother and her best friend had given it away themselves without a word. She smiled. “But you walked around in a constant state of misery and wouldn’t come near the place when he was home. He wouldn’t be at home if he knew you were coming over to see me. I figured he’d probably said something really harsh and you’d had a terrible fight.”

Natalie’s face closed up. “The past is best left buried,” she said curtly.

“I’m not prying. I’m just making an observation.”

“I’ll come Saturday night, but only because he won’t let Whit come if I don’t,” Natalie said a little stiffly.

“I’ll never mention it again,” Vivian said, and Natalie knew what she meant. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to dredge up something painful.”

“No harm done. I’d long since forgotten.” The lie slid glibly from her tongue, and she smiled one last time at Vivian before she went out the door. Pretending it didn’t matter was the hardest thing she’d done in years.

Chapter Two

Natalie sat in the elementary-school classroom the next morning, bleary-eyed from having been up so late the night before studying for her final exams. It was imperative that she read over her notes in all her classes every night so that when the exam schedule was posted, she’d be ready. She’d barely had time to think, and she didn’t want to. She never wanted to remember again how it had been that night when she was seventeen and Mack had held her in the darkness.

Mrs. Ringgold’s gentle voice, reminding her that it was time to start handwriting practice, brought her to the present. She apologized and organized the class into small groups around the two large class tables. Mrs. Ringgold took one and she the other as they guided the children through the cursive alphabet, taking time to study each effort and offer praise and corrections where they were necessary.

It was during lunch that she met Dave Markham in the line.

“You look smug today,” he said with a smile. He was tall and slender, but not in the same way that Mack was. Dave was an intellectual who liked classical music and literature. He couldn’t ride or rope and he knew next to nothing about agriculture. But he was sweet, and at least he was someone Natalie could date without having to worry about fighting him off after dessert.

“Mrs. Ringgold says I’m doing great in the classroom,” she advised. “Professor Bailey comes to observe me tomorrow. Then, next week, finals.” She made a mock shiver.

“You’ll pass,” he said, smiling. “Everybody’s terrified of exams, but if you read your notes once a day, you won’t have any trouble with them.”

“I wish I could read my notes,” she confided in a low tone. “If Professor Bailey could flunk me on handwriting, I’d already be out on my ear.”

“And you’re teaching children how to write?” Dave asked in mock horror.

She glared at him. “Listen, I can tell people how to do things I can’t do. It’s all a matter of using authority in your voice.”

“You do that pretty well,” he had to admit. “I hear you had a good tutor.”

“What?”

“McKinzey Killain,” he offered.

“Mack,” she corrected. “Nobody calls him McKinzey.”

“Everybody calls him Mr. Killain, except you,” he corrected. “And from what I hear, most people around here try not to call him at all.”

“He’s not so bad,” she said. “He just has a little problem with diplomacy.”

“Yes. He doesn’t know what it is.”

“In his tax bracket, you don’t have to.” She chuckled. “Are you really going to eat liver and onions?” she asked, glancing at his plate and making a face.

“Organ meats are healthy. Lots healthier than that,” he returned, making a face at her taco. “Your stomach will dissolve from jalapeño peppers.”

“My stomach is made of cast iron, thanks.”

“How about a movie Saturday night?” he asked. “That new science fiction movie is on at the Grand.”

“I’d love to…oh, I’m sorry, I can’t,” she corrected, grimacing. “I promised Vivian I’d come to supper that night.”

“Is that a regular thing?” he wanted to know.

“Only when Vivian wants to bring a special man home,” she said with a rueful smile. “Mack says if I don’t come, her boyfriend can’t come.”

He gave her an odd look. “Why?”

She hesitated with her tray, looking for a place to sit. “Why? I don’t know. He just made it a condition. Maybe he thought I wouldn’t show up and he could put Viv off. He doesn’t like the boy at all.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Where did all these people come from?” she asked, curious because there were hardly any seats vacant at the teachers’ table.

“Visiting committee from the board of education. They’re here to study the space problem,” he added amusedly.

“They should be able to see that there isn’t any space, especially now.”

“We’re hoping they may agree to budget an addition for us, so that we can get rid of the trailers we’re presently using for classrooms.”

“I wonder if we’ll get it.”

He shrugged. “Anybody’s guess. Every time they talk about adding to the millage rate, there’s a groundswell of protest from property owners who don’t have children.”

“I remember.”

He found them two seats at the very end of the teachers’ table and they sat down to the meal. She smiled at the visiting committee and spent the rest of her lunch hour discussing the new playground equipment the board of education had already promised them. She was grateful to have something to think about other than Mack Killain.

Natalie’s little house was just on the outskirts of the Killain ranch, and she often complained that her yard was an afterthought. There was so little grass that she could use a Weed Eater for her yard work. One thing she did have was a fenced-in back yard with climbing roses everywhere. She loved to sit on the tiny patio and watch birds come and go at the small bird feeders hanging from every limb of her one tree—a tall cottonwood. Beyond her boundary, she could catch occasional glimpses of the red-coated Red Angus purebred cattle the Killains raised. The view outside was wonderful.

The view inside was another story. The kitchen had a stove and a refrigerator and a sink, not much else. The living-room-dining-room combination had a sofa and an easy chair—both second-hand—and a used Persian rug with holes. The bedroom had a single bed and a dresser, an old armchair and a straight chair. The porches were small and needed general repair. As homes went, it was hardly the American dream. But to Natalie, whose life had been spent in an orphanage, it was luxury to have her own space. Until her junior year, when she moved into her aunt’s house to become a companion/nurse/housekeeper for the two years until her aunt died suddenly, she’d never been by herself much.

She had one framed portrait of her parents and another of Vivian and Mack and Bob and Charles—a group shot of the four Killains that she’d taken herself at a barbecue Vivian had invited her to on the ranch. She picked up the picture frame and stared hard at the tallest man in the group. He was glaring at the camera, and she recalled amusedly that he’d been so busy giving her instructions on how to take the picture that she’d caught him with his mouth open.

He was like that everywhere. He knew how to do a lot of things very well, and he wasn’t shy with his advice. He’d walked right into the kitchen of a restaurant one memorable day and taught the haughty French chef how to make a proper barbecue sauce. Fortunately, the two of them had gone into the back alley before anything got broken.

She put the picture down and went to make herself a sandwich. Mack said she didn’t eat right, and she had to agree. She could cook, but it seemed such a waste of time to go to all that trouble just for herself. Besides, she was usually so tired when she got home from her student teaching that she didn’t have the energy to prepare a meal.

Ham, lettuce, cheese and mayonnaise on bread. All the essentials, she thought. She approved her latest effort before she ate it. Not bad for a single woman.

She turned on the small color television the Killains had given her last Christmas—a luxury she’d protested, for all the good it did her. The news was on, and as usual, it was all bad. She turned on an afternoon cartoon show instead. Marvin the Martian was much better company than anything going on in Washington, D.C.

When she finished her sandwich, she kicked off her shoes and curled up on the sofa with a cup of black coffee. There was nothing like having a real home, she thought, smiling as her eyes danced around the room. And today was Friday. She’d traded days with another checkout girl, so she had Friday and Saturday off from the grocery store she worked at part-time. The market was open on Sunday, but with a skeleton crew, and Natalie wasn’t scheduled for that day, either. It would be a dream of a weekend if she didn’t have to dress up and go over to the Killains’ for supper the following night. She hoped Vivian wasn’t serious about the young man she’d invited over. When Mack didn’t approve of people, they didn’t usually come back.

Natalie only had one good dress, a black crepe one with spaghetti straps, that fell in a straight line to her ankles. There was a lacy shawl she’d bought to go with it, and a plain little pair of sling-back pumps for her small feet. She used more makeup than usual and grimaced at her reflection. She still didn’t look her age. She could have passed for eighteen.

She got into her small used car and drove to the Killain ranch, approving the new paint job Mack’s men had given the fences around the sprawling Victorian home with its exquisite gingerbread woodwork and latticed porches. It could have slept ten visitors comfortably even before Mack added another wing to accommodate his young brothers’ desire for privacy. There was a matching garage out back where Mack kept his Lincoln and the big double-cabbed Dodge Ram truck he used on the ranch. There was a modern barn where the tractors and combine and other ranch equipment were kept, and an even bigger stable where Mack lodged his prize bulls. A separate stable housed the saddle horses. There was a tennis court, which was rarely used, and an Olympic-size indoor swimming pool and conservatory. The conservatory was Natalie’s favorite place when she visited. Mack grew many species of orchids there, and Natalie loved them as much as he did.

She expected Vivian to meet her at the foot of the steps, but Mack came himself. He was wearing a dark suit and he looked elegant and perturbed with his hands deep in his pockets as he waited for her to mount the staircase.

“Don’t you have another dress?” he asked irritably. “Every time you come over here, you wear that one.”

She lifted her chin haughtily. “I work six days a week to put myself through college, pay for gas and utilities and groceries. What’s left over wouldn’t buy a new piece of material for a mouse suit.”

“Excuses, excuses,” he murmured. His eyes narrowed on the low cleavage. “And I still don’t like that neckline,” he said shortly. “It shows too much of your breasts.”

She threw up both hands, almost flinging her small evening bag against the ceiling. “Listen, what’s this hang-up you have about my breasts lately?” she demanded.

He was frowning as he stared at her bodice. “You’re flaunting them.”

“I am not!”

“It’s all right to do it around me,” he continued flatly, “but I don’t want Vivian’s sex maniac boyfriend to start drooling over you at my supper table.”

“I don’t attract that sort of attention,” she muttered.

“With a body like that, you’d attract attention from a dead man,” he said shortly. “Just looking at you makes me ache.”

She didn’t have a comeback. He’d taken the sense right out of her head with that typically blunt remark.

“No sassy reply?” he taunted.

Her eyes ran over him in the becoming suit. “You don’t look like a man with an ache.”

“How would you know?” he asked. “You don’t even understand what an ache is.”

She frowned. “You’re very difficult to understand.”

“It wouldn’t take an experienced woman five seconds to know what I meant,” he told her. “You’re not only repressed, you’re blind.”

Both eyebrows lifted. “I beg your pardon?”

He let out an angry breath. “Oh, hell, forget it.” He turned on his heel. “Are you coming in or not?”

“You’re testy as all get out tonight,” she murmured dryly, following him. “What’s wrong with you? Can’t Glenna get rid of that…ache?”

He stopped and she cannoned into his back, almost tripping in the process. He spun around and caught her by the waist, jerking her right against him. He held her there, and one lean hand went to the small of her back and ground her hips deliberately into his.

He held her gaze while his body tautened and swelled blatantly against her stomach. “Glenna can’t get rid of it because she doesn’t cause it,” he said with undeniable mockery.

“McKinzey Donald Killain!” she gasped, outraged.

“Are you shocked?” he asked quietly.

She tried to move back, but his hand contracted and he groaned sharply, so she stood very still in the sensual embrace.

“Does it hurt you?” she whispered huskily.

His breathing was ragged. “When you move,” he agreed, a ripple running through his powerful frame.

She stared at him curiously, her body relaxing into the hard curve of him as both his hands went to her hips and held her there very gently.

He returned her quiet stare with his good eye narrowed, intent, searching her face. “I’ve never let you feel that before,” he said huskily.

She was fascinated, not only with the intimacy of their position, but also with the strange sense of belonging it gave her to know that she could arouse him so easily. It didn’t embarrass her, really. She felt possessive about him. She always had.

“Do you have this effect on Markham?” he asked, and he didn’t smile.

“Dave is my friend,” she replied. “It would never occur to him to hold me…like this.”

“Would you let him, if he wanted to?”

She thought about that for a few seconds and she frowned again, worried. “Well, no,” she confessed reluctantly.

“Why not?”

Her eyes searched his good one. “It would be…repulsive with him.”

She felt his heartbeat skip. “Would it?” he asked. “Why?”

“It just would.”

His lean hands spread blatantly over her hips and drew her completely against him. He shivered a little at the pleasure it sent careening through his body. His teeth ground together, and he closed his eyes as he bent to rest his forehead against hers.

Natalie felt her breasts go hard at the tips. Her arms were under his now, her hands flat against the rough fabric of his jacket. Her small evening bag lay somewhere on the wooden floor of the porch, completely forgotten. She felt, saw, heard nothing except Mack. Her whole body pulsated with delight at the feel of him so close to her. She could feel his minty breath on her lips while the sounds of the night dimmed to insignificance in her ears.

“Natalie,” he whispered huskily, and his hands began to move her hips in a slow, sweet rotation against him. He groaned harshly.

She shivered with the pleasure. Her body rippled with delicious, dangerous sensations.

“Mack?” she whispered, lifting involuntarily toward him in a sensuous little rhythm.

His hands slid to her hips, her waist and blatantly over the thin fabric that covered her breasts in the lacy little long-line bra she wore under the dress. As she met his searching gaze, his hands went inside the deep V neckline and down over the silky skin of her breasts. She caught her breath at the bold caress.

“This,” he said softly, “is a very bad idea.”

“Of course it is,” she agreed unsteadily. Her body was showing a will of its own, lifting and shifting to tease his lean hands closer to the hard tips that wanted so desperately to be caressed.

“Don’t,” he murmured quietly.

“Mack?”

His forehead moved softly against hers as he tried to catch his breath. “If I touch you the way you want me to, I won’t be able to stop. There are four people right inside the house, and three of them would pass out if they saw us like this.”

“Do you really think they would?” she asked in a breathless tone.

His thumbs edged down toward the tiny hardnesses inside the long-line and she whimpered.

“Do you want me to touch them?” he whispered at her lips.

“Yes!” she choked.

“It won’t be enough,” he murmured.

“It will. It will!”

“Not nearly enough,” he continued. His mouth touched her eyelids and closed them while his thumbs worked their way lazily inside the lacy cups. “You have the prettiest little breasts, Natalie,” he whispered as he traced the soft skin tenderly. “I’d give almost anything right now to put my mouth over them and suckle you.”

She cried out, shocked at the delicious images the words produced in her mind.

“I ache,” he breathed into her lips, even as his thumbs finally, finally, found her and pressed hard against the little peaks.

She sobbed, pushing her face against him as she shivered in the throes of unbelievable sensation.

He made a rough sound and maneuvered her closer to the dark end of the porch, away from the door and windows. His hands cupped her, caressed her insistently while his hot mouth pressed hungrily against her throat just where her pulse throbbed.

“Yes,” she choked, lifting even closer into his hands. “Yes, Mack, yes, please, oh, please!”

“You crazy little fool!” he moaned.

Seconds later, he’d unzipped the dress and his mouth was where his hands had been, hot and feverish in its urgency as it sought the soft skin of her breast and finally forced its way into the lacy cup to fasten hungrily on the hard peak.

Her nails bit into the nape of his neck like tiny blades, pulling his mouth even closer as she fed on the exquisite demands it made on her innocence. She lifted against him rhythmically while he suckled her in the warm darkness, his arms contracted to bring her as close as he could get her.

The suddenness with which he pushed her away left her staggering, so weak that she could hardly stand. He’d moved away from her to lean against the wall, where one big hand pressed hard to support him. He was breathing as if he’d been running a race, and she could see the shudders that ran through his tall body. She didn’t know what to say or what to do. She was overwhelmed. She couldn’t even move to pull up her dress.

After a few seconds he took a harsh, deep breath and turned to look at her. She hadn’t moved a step since he’d dragged himself away from her. He smiled ruefully. She was, he thought, painfully innocent.

“Here,” he said in a husky tone, moving to pull up her dress and fasten it. “You can’t go inside like that.”

She looked at him like a curious little cat while he dressed her, as if it was a matter of course to do it.

“Natalie,” he laughed harshly, “you have to stop looking like an accident victim.”

“Do you do that with her?” she asked, and her pale green eyes flashed.

He mumbled a curse as he fastened the hook at the top of the dress. “Glenna is none of your business.”

“Oh, I see. You can ask me about my social life, and I can’t ask you about yours, is that how it works?”

He frowned as he held her by both shoulders and looked at her. “Glenna isn’t a fuzzy little peach ripening on a tree limb,” he muttered. “She’s a grown, sophisticated woman who doesn’t equate a good time with a wedding ring.”

“Mack!” Natalie exclaimed furiously.

“I don’t even have to look at you to know you’re blushing,” he said heavily. “Twenty-two, and you haven’t really aged a day since I held you in your bedroom the night of Carl’s wreck.”

“You looked at me,” she whispered.

His hands tightened. “Lucky you, that looking was all I did.”

Her eyes searched his face in the dim light. “You wanted me,” she said with sudden realization.

“Yes, I did,” he confessed. “But you were seventeen.”

“And now I’m twenty-two.”

He sighed and smiled. “There isn’t much difference,” he murmured. “And there still isn’t any future in it.”

“Not for a man who just wants to have a little fun occasionally,” she said sarcastically.

“You certainly don’t fall into that category,” he agreed. “I’ve got two brothers and a sister to take care of here. There isn’t room for a wife.”

“Okay. Just forget that I proposed.”

His fingers trailed gently across her soft, swollen mouth. “Besides the responsibilities, I’m not ready to settle down. Not for years yet.”

“I’m sure they’ll take back the engagement ring if I ask them nicely.”

He blinked. “Are we having the same conversation?”

“I only bought you a cheap engagement ring, anyway,” she continued outrageously. “It probably wouldn’t have fit, so don’t worry about it.”

He started laughing. He couldn’t help it. She really was a pain in the neck. “Damn it, Natalie!” He hugged her close and hard, an affectionate hug with bare overtones of unsatisfied lust.

She hugged him back with a long sigh, and her eyes closed. “I think it’s like baby ducks,” she murmured absently.

“What is?”

“Imprinting. They follow the first moving thing they see when they hatch, assuming it’s their mother. Maybe it’s like that with men and women. You were the first man I was ever barely intimate with, so I’ve imprinted on you.”

His heart jumped wildly and his arms tightened around her. “The world is full of men who want to get married and have kids.”

“And I’ll find one someday,” she finished for him. “Have it your own way. But if you really want me to find someone else to fixate on, I have to tell you that dragging me into dark corners and pulling my dress half off isn’t the way to go about it.”

He was really laughing now, so hard that he had to let her go. “I give up,” he said helplessly.

“It’s too late now,” she returned, going to fetch her purse from the floor. “You’ve said you don’t want the ring.”

“Let’s go inside while there’s still time,” he replied as he moved toward the door.

“Not yet,” she said quickly. She moved into a patch of light and looked into her compact mirror, taking time to replace her lipstick and fix her hair.

He watched her calmly, his gaze narrow and intense.

She put the compact in her evening bag and moved toward him. “You’d better do some quick repairs of your own,” she murmured after she examined his face. “That shade of lipstick definitely doesn’t suit you.”

He gave her a glare, but he pulled out his handkerchief and let her remove the stains from his cheek and neck. Fortunately, the lipstick had missed his white collar or there wouldn’t be any disguising it.

“Next time, don’t put on six layers of it before you come over here,” he advised coolly.

“Next time, keep your hands in your pockets.”

He chuckled dryly. “Fat chance, with your dress showing off your breasts like that.”

She unfastened her lacy shawl and draped it across her bodice and over her shoulder. She gave him a haughty glance and waited for him to open the front door.

“The next dress I buy will have a mandarin neckline, you can bet on that,” she told him under her breath.

“Make sure it doesn’t have buttons, then,” he whispered outrageously as he stood aside to let her pass.

“Lecher,” she whispered.

“Temptress,” he whispered back.

She walked past him and into the living room before he could think up any more smart remarks to throw at her. She looked calm, but inside, she was rippling with tiny fears and remnants of pleasure from his touch. It occurred to her that, over the years, she’d been more intimate with him than any other man she’d ever known, but he’d never kissed her.

Thinking about that didn’t help her situation, so she smiled warmly at Bob and Charles as they rose to their feet, and then at Vivian and the tall, blond man who stood up from his seat on the sofa beside her.

“Natalie, this is Whit,” Vivian introduced them. Her blue eyes looked at the blond man with total possession. Whit, in turn, looked at Natalie as if he’d just discovered oil.

Oh, boy, Natalie thought miserably as she registered the gleam in Whit’s blue eyes when they shook hands. He held hers for just a few seconds too long, and she grimaced. Here was a complication she hadn’t counted on.

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