Once and Always (Women of Character) Read Online Free PDF

him, and it frightened her
that she still felt an attraction for a man who'd had no problem walking away
from her. "It makes me angry when I look at you. I want my feelings for
you to be colder than stone."
    "I'm not the same person
either," Tyler said evenly. "I've been hurt too, but all that matters
is that we establish a business relationship. Once we sign the lease," he
added, "I'll be busy with more mundane matters. The hay has to be cut and
baled, the lawn needs mowing on a regular basis. I plan to bring in some of my
own horses and besides the painting and staining there's a dozen other things
that are going to crop up. It'd help if I could count on you through his whole
process."
    That tingle of excitement hit Anna
again, but she cautioned herself to proceed slowly, think clearly and weigh her
options. She hated change, the uncertainty it sometimes brought. "I have
no choice, I have to act on this. I'll let you lease the property." She
put up her hand. "Before we go further, you need to know that in addition
to Danny remaining, I want a clause that says either one of us can get out of
the lease if it's not working."
    "I'm not going into a lease
with that hanging over my head. You could get cold feet two months down the
line," Tyler said impatiently.
    "So could you, but that's my
condition." She lifted her chin. "I don't plan to be unreasonable. I
need this to work as much as you do. We can start off by going over the lease
and what we both expect. If we can come to an agreement, we'll go to the
lawyers and finalize everything. Maybe we can put a six month trial period in
there."
    He studied her intently. "Can
I trust you to hold to this?"
    Anna stifled her resentment, and a
small dig of hurt. "There was a time when you wouldn't have questioned my
word. If we're in this together, we have to trust each other. So what will it
be?"
    "Let's do it."
    Ω
    Tyler drove down the narrow
darkened streets of Marsh Plains, tired and wanting only to get to his hotel
room. He felt curiously unsettled after his meeting with Annie, especially
after the snide comment he'd made in parting. He'd never known her to lie or
given him any reason to think she couldn't be trusted and he was angry with
himself for acting like that. The problem was, she hadn't chosen him six years
ago, and if he was honest, that thorn had stuck in him all these years. She'd
chosen a mean old man over him and left him swinging in the breeze. He'd been
striking back like he was a kid. God almighty, when would he learn from his
past mistakes?
    The streetlight turned red and he
stopped, recalling in high school how they used to joke that if you sneezed
while driving down Main Street, you'd miss the town. All his life he'd been a
kid in and out of trouble, until his father brought him to live at the Double B
and that had kept him out of jail. He'd discovered a love of horses and found
his niche. When Martin brought Annie to the ranch, everything in his world had
changed. They'd had so much in common, yet not much at all. He'd never wanted
to slide back to the old ways. She'd tagged after him in those early days of
her arrival because she'd been scared and had been impressed with his knowledge
of horses, but he hadn't minded that she followed him around. Her beauty had
always seemed slightly unreal to him, and although in the beginning she'd
consciously or unconsciously used her looks to get favors from others, she
never tried that with him. Annie had always been upfront with him, until that
last night.
    Gripping the steering wheel, Tyler
stared at the buildings on either side of him. Some of the places he
recognized, others were either gone or replaced with new buildings. Since he'd
hit the city limits his chest had been tight, as if he had unfinished business.
In reality, he did have unfinished business. He realized that part of him had
been left behind six years ago. The optimistic young man. He just wasn't
certain how to recover that part of himself.
    The light