Heartless. Diana Palmer

seemed to drag while she clutched her purse in her lap and tried not to slide into the passenger window of the little car, sitting at an odd angle in the ditch. It had been an impulsive decision to drive out here. She should have waited.

      Gracie looked out the windshield at the rushing water that came up to the hood of her little car and hoped that Jason would hurry. Then she felt guilty that he was going to have to come out and rescue her again. She was such a klutz, she moaned silently. Nothing she did ever ended well. She was disaster on two legs. If only she wasn’t such a scatterbrain. If only…

      She heard the roar of a pickup truck and looked ahead to see one of the big, double-cabbed black ranch trucks speeding toward her. He always drove too fast. The dirt road was muddy and flooded, too, and she had visions of disaster if he braked too hard. She could feel his temper in the way he swung the truck to the side of the road and stopped it. He didn’t slide. He was always so much in control of himself, even when he was raging mad.

      She drew in a shaky sigh. She would be all right. Jason was always there to save her from herself. Even if he didn’t like having to do it.

      Another truck, a wrecker, pulled up behind his truck. He slammed out of the driver’s seat and spoke to the driver of the wrecker. Then he came toward Gracie with long, angry strides, his wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes, his yellow slicker raincoat flapping over his boots.

      The car was lying at an angle. Gracie was sitting at a forty-five-degree angle, sideways. Jason jerked the door open and glared down at her with compressed lips.

      “Come on,” he said gruffly, holding out both hands.

      She hesitated. He couldn’t possibly know why she resisted being lifted in a man’s arms, even if he was used to her idiosyncracies.

      “Come on,” he said again, gentler this time. “Gracie, I know you don’t like being carried, but there’s no other way unless you want us to pull the car out of the ditch with you in it. The damned thing could roll.”

      She bit her lower lip. That was even more terrifying. “O…okay.”

      She lifted both her arms, clenching her jaw. Jason caught them and pulled her up, effortlessly, until he could pick her up. He swung her free of the car. She wasn’t wearing a raincoat—another stupid oversight—and she was quickly soaked as he carried her toward his truck.

      He stuck her in the passenger seat, after sludging through an inch or more of thick red mud. “Fasten your seat belt,” he said curtly and slammed her door.

      He spoke to the wrecker man and pointed down the road, toward the highway, not the ranch. Obviously he was showing the man that he wanted her car taken to the house in San Antonio. He didn’t want Gracie at the ranch. That hurt.

      He got back in beside her, still wet, still mad, still uncommunicative. He fastened his own seat belt, made sure she’d done the same, started the engine and gunned the truck as he pulled back onto the highway and started toward San Antonio.

      “The ranch is that way,” she said in a small voice, pointing behind them.

      “I’m taking you home to San Antonio,” he said shortly. “You’re not staying down here overnight.”

      She didn’t dare ask why. She averted her eyes to the road and wished things were the way they had been, before he’d said things neither of them would ever forget.

      “What the hell were you doing on the ranch road in the rain?” he asked shortly.

      She moved her purse in her hands. “Hoping we could make up.”

      “Oh.”

      She glanced at his taut profile. He wasn’t giving away anything with that expression. He was simply unresponsive. “Okay, I know,” she said with a long, wistful sigh. “I screwed up again. I should have waited for a sunny day. Maybe there’s a market for women who can’t do one single thing right. I might go into theater.”

      He made a rough, amused sound deep in his throat. “I remember your one time on the stage.”

      She grimaced. Yes. In tenth grade. She was in a play, with a minor role. She’d tripped walking to her mark, bounded into another actor and they’d ended up in a tangle on the stage floor. The audience had roared. Sadly the play had been a tragedy, and she had a monologue—left unspoken—about death. She’d left the stage in tears, without speaking her lines, and had been kicked out of the play the same night by a furious director. Jason had gone to see the man, who put Gracie right back in the play and even apologized. She never had the nerve to ask why.

      She looked down at her lap. “Maybe I could get work as a mannequin,” she suggested. “You know—stand upright in a boutique and wear different things every day.”

      He glanced at her. “Maybe you could take karate lessons.”

      “Karate? Me?”

      “They teach self-confidence.” He smiled faintly. “You could use a little.”

      “I’d aim a karate chop at somebody, hit a vital spot and end up in federal prison for murder.” She sighed.

      He glanced at her, but without answering. He turned on the radio. “I want to listen to the market report. Do you mind?”

      “Of course not.” She did, but she couldn’t force him to talk if he didn’t want to. So they listened to stock prices until he turned into the driveway of the mansion in San Antonio and pulled up at the steps. He cut off the engine, went around the truck and opened her door. The rain had followed them. It was pouring down, and the driveway was almost underwater.

      “I can walk,” she said quickly.

      He raised an eyebrow and glanced pointedly at the several inches of water pooled on the driveway.

      She was wet, but she didn’t want to ruin her new shoes. She bit her lip hard.

      He gave her a quizzical look. “Some women are aroused by being carried,” he said in a worldly way. “You act as if I’m carting you off to a guillotine every time I have to do it.”

      She swallowed uncomfortably. “It’s just…it reminds me of something bad. Most especially when it storms.”

      “What?”

      Her face tightened. “Just…something. A long time ago.”

      He studied her, while rain bounced off his hat and raincoat, and he realized that he knew absolutely nothing about Gracie’s life before her mother married his father. He remembered having to lure Gracie out of her room with chocolates, because she’d been so frightened of him at the age of fourteen. It had taken him months to win her trust. He scowled. His father had never discussed her with Jason, except to tell the young man that Gracie would always need someone to look out for her, to protect her. That hadn’t really made much sense at the time.

      “You keep secrets, Graciela,” he said deeply, using her full name, as he rarely did.

      The sound of her name on his lips was sexy. Sweet. It made her hum with sensations she didn’t want to feel. She had nothing to give, and he didn’t know it. She could never let anything…romantic…develop between them. Never. Even if she wanted to. And she did. Desperately. Especially since he’d whispered those exciting, sensually charged remarks to her at the party.

      She managed a smile. “Don’t you keep secrets, too?”

      He shrugged. “Only about my breeding program,” he said drily, mentioning the genetic witchery and technological skills he practiced to produce better and leaner purebred herd bulls.

      About women, too, she was about to say, but she didn’t dare trespass into his private life.

      “Some secrets are better kept,” she said.

      “Suit yourself.” His eyes twinkled. “You work for the CIA, do you?”

      It was the first olive branch he’d extended. She laughed with pure delight. “Sure.