Mercenary's Woman Read Online Free PDF

boot."
    "You wouldn't think so at midnight
when you're still trying to get him to
sleep."
    He smiled as he studied her. "You
love kids, don't you?"
    "Oh, yes," she said fervently. "I love teaching."
    "Don't you want
some of your own?" he asked with a quizzical smile.
    She flushed and wouldn't look at him. "Sure. One day."
    "Why not now?"
    "Because I've already got more responsibilities than I can manage. Pregnancy would be a
complication I couldn't handle, especially now."
    "You sound as if you're planning to do it all alone."
    She shrugged.
"There is such a thing as artificial insem ination."
    He turned her toward him, looking very solemn and

36                               MERCENARY'S WOMAN
    adult. "How would it feel, carrying the child of a man you didn't even know,
having it grow inside your body?"
    She bit her lower
lip. She hadn't considered the intimacy of what he was suggesting. She felt,
and looked, confused.
    "A baby should be made out of love,
the natural way, not in a test tube,"
he said very softly, searching her shocked
eyes. "Well, not unless it's the only way two people can have a child," he added. "But
that's an entirely different
circumstance."
    Her lips parted on
the surge of emotion that made her heart race. "I don't know...that I want
to get that close to anyone,
ever."
    He seemed even more
remote. "Sally, you can't let the past lock you into solitude forever. I
frightened you be cause I
wanted to keep you at bay. If I didn't discourage you somehow I was afraid that the temptation might prove too much for me. You were such a baby." He
scowled bitterly. "What happened wouldn't have been so devas tating if you'd had even a little experience with
men. For God's sake, didn't they ever
let you date anyone?"
    She shook her head,
her teeth clenched tightly together. "My mother was certain that I'd get
pregnant or catch some horrible disease. She talked about it all the time. She made boys who came to
the house so uncomfortable that they never came back."
    "I didn't know that," he said tautly.
    "Would it have
made any difference?" she asked mis erably.
    He touched her face
with cool, firm fingers. "Yes. I wouldn't have gone nearly as far as I did, if
I'd known."
    "You wanted to get rid of me..."
    He put his thumb over
her soft mouth. "I wanted you," he whispered huskily. "But a
seventeen-year-old isn't ma ture enough for a love affair. And that would have been
     
    37
    DIANA
PALMER
    impossible in Jacobsville, even if I'd been
crazy enough to go all the way with you that day. You were almost thirteen years my
junior."
    She was beginning to
see things from his point of view. She hadn't tried before. There had been so
much resent ment, so much bitterness, so much hurt. She looked at him and saw, for the
first time, the pain of the memory in his f ace.
    "I was
desperate," she said, speaking softly. "They told me out of the blue that they were
divorcing each other. They were selling the
house and moving out of town. Dad was
going to marry Beverly, this girl he'd met at the col lege where he taught. Mom couldn't live in the
same town with everybody knowing that Dad had thrown her over for someone younger. She married a man she hardly
knew shortly afterward, just to save
her pride." She stared at his mouth
with more hunger than she realized. "I knew that I'd never see you again. I only wanted you to kiss
me." She swallowed, averting her eyes. "I must have been crazy."
    "We both
were." He cupped her face in his hands and lifted it to his quiet eyes. "For
what it's worth, I never meant
it to go further than a kiss. A very chaste kiss, at that." His eyes drifted down involuntarily to the soft thrust of her breasts almost touching his shirt. He
raised an eye brow at the obvious
points. "That's why it wasn't chaste."
    She didn't
understand. "What is?"
    He looked absolutely
exasperated. "How can you be that old and know nothing?" he asked. He
glanced over her shoulder at Stevie, who was facing