Rawhide and Lace by Diana Palmer Page B

offering me charity. I don't want your body in return for a roof over your head."
     
    "I didn't mean it like that!"
     
    "I don't want you that way," he said shortly. "Not as some damned sacrifice."
     
    She shook her head. "You are the most maddening man," she said. "Just when I think I'm beginning to understand you...Okay, have it your own way. I'll sleep in the barn with the rats."
     
    "I don't have rats in the barn," he said absently.
     
    "Why not?"
     
    "My king snake lives in there. He eats them."
     
    She swallowed. "I take back my offer to sleep in the barn."
     
    "It's just an old king snake. He wouldn't hurt you."
     
    "Fear of snakes runs in my family," she told him. "I think my great-grandfather was eaten by one. He was a war correspondent. He disappeared in the jungles of South America, and his skeleton was found years later, they said, lying inside the skeleton of a monstrous python."
     
    "A grisly end, all right," he agreed. "But king snakes don't eat people."
     
    "That's what you say." She grimaced as she moved. "Damn these exercises! They get worse every day."
     
    "You'll work the kinks out in a week or so. It will get easier, believe me."
     
    "Why do I have to keep this up?" she groaned. "I'll never be able to model again, especially if I'm married."
     
    He stared at her. "Won't you? Why not?"
     
    "You'd let me work?" she asked, surprised.
     
    "You're a human being, not my unpaid slave," he replied. "I don't believe in shackling a woman to the stove and keeping her pregnant. You're free to do whatever you want, except sleep with other men."
     
    "I wouldn't want to do that," she said.
     
    He laughed shortly. "No, I guess not. It must have been a pretty big disappointment." He turned back toward the door, lighting another cigarette as he went.
     
    She gaped at him until she realized what he'd meant. Without giving herself time to think, she reached behind the easy chair, picked up one of his boots, and hurled it after him. It hit the wall instead of him, but it got his attention.
     
    He stared at it as if he'd just found a dead fish on the carpet. He picked it up, looked at it, and turned to face Erin.
     
    "Did you throw a boot at me?"
     
    "Of course I did."
     
    "Did you mean to hit the wall?"
     
    "No," she said calmly. "I was aiming for your head."
     
    "You could use a little practice," he observed.
     
    "Not really. As big as your feet are, I could aim at a wall and still hit you if I tried hard enough."
     
    He glared at her. "I do not have big feet."
     
    "Neither do ducks."
     
    He came back toward her, holding the boot, and the look in his eyes wasn't all that friendly.
     
    She scrambled to her feet, grimacing and hobbling as she tried to get behind a barrier, any barrier. "No, go away!" she cried. "I'm crippled!"
     
    "Not yet," he muttered, "but it's a distinct possibility."
     
    "Ty! You wouldn't hit me!"
     
    "Wouldn't I?" He grabbed her roughly around the waist, lifting her. "Now how brave do you feel?" he asked.
     
    She shifted in his tight hold. "Put me down and I'll tell you."
     
    "Stop squirming or you'll get put down the hard way." He looked into her eyes from an unnerving proximity. "Were your eyes always that shade of green?"
     
    "I guess so."
     
    "They look like leaves in early spring," he murmured, "just after the dew glazes them."
     
    "Yours are like silver when you get mad," she told him. "And your eyelashes are almost as long as mine."
     
    His eyes left hers, traveling slowly down to her mouth and lingering there. "Even thin as a rail and half dead, you're beautiful."
     
    "I'm not, but thank you for saying so." She felt his breath, and her body reacted violently to his nearness. "I like the way your mouth feels when you kiss me," she said, half under her breath. "It's very hard and a little rough, and..." She moaned under the warm crush of his lips, stiffening, arching up against his hard chest, her arms clasping his neck violently.
     
    If he was rough, so was