A Hasty Wedding. Cara Colter

      “Not inside, where I might see it.”

      She was beginning to feel really angry. This was what his interest in her was about? The first strong emotion he had ever shown to her was annoyance? Anger? She realized she had not totally forgiven him yet for that teasing but still slightly stinging remark he had made earlier.

      I didn’t know you were a girl.

      And now the brief interest that had lit in his eyes was about this? Even his remark about her neck had been accompanied by that cynical tone of voice.

      “I had no interest in hiding the knife from you,” she said stiffly. “I put it in the outside garbage so I didn’t have to see it every time I disposed of a piece of paper.”

      “Meaning the episode did leave some impression on you.”

      “Some,” she agreed reluctantly.

      He leaned very close to her. “In the future, if you are attacked by someone with a knife, do you think it would be asking too much to let me know?”

      “I explained to you, it was already over. And it was nothing. I never really felt threatened. I never even really felt frightened.”

      “And you didn’t want to get him in trouble,” he guessed softly.

      “Now that you mention it, I didn’t want to get him into trouble.”

      “Your first loyalty belongs to me, Miss Lamb.”

      Now she was really angry. “No, it does not, Mr. Fallon. It belongs to me. You seem quite satisfied with my heart telling me what to do with these kids so far. Tomas wasn’t a dangerous boy, he was a frightened one.”

      “And if you had a few years experience with these kids, instead of a few months, you would know that was the most dangerous kind of all.”

      She could see he was angry, too. Really angry for the first time since she had been employed by him. She had never even seen him get irritated with the children, but now his voice had a dangerous edge to it, and his eyes were snapping with sparks that had not the slightest thing to do with passion.

      She sighed inwardly, but not out loud. Wasn’t that just her luck? Discover the humiliating secret that you were madly in love with a man who was never even going to give you a second look, and then end up in his doghouse on the very same day!

      “If that’s all, Mr. Fallon,” she said, looking at her watch, “I really should have gone home half an hour ago.”

      Her voice was perfect. Reprimand accepted. Except then she went and spoiled it all. Her lip trembled just a little bit. She ducked her head, but not quickly enough.

      The silence filled the room. She refused to look at him.

      His hand found her chin and lifted it, and she was forced to look at him. She saw the immediate remorse flash through the gray depths of his eyes.

      “I’ve hurt your feelings.”

      “Not at all,” she said. Her voice was trembling now, too. It would have been so much better if he didn’t touch her, if his hand was not resting on her chin, his fingertips leathery and tough. Yet his touch was not tough at all. It was everything she had known it would be.

      Electric. Strong. Tender.

      “Here you are, working extra time, as always, and I come in and blast you.”

      His cold, hard anger was much, much easier to handle.

      “You were absolutely right, I should have told you about the knife. I just didn’t even think. It won’t—”

      “Holly, I think what I should have said was that it scared me. When Tomas told me what had happened, I could imagine you at the end of that knife and it scared the living daylights right out of me.”

      She stared at him. He was not a man who looked like anything would scare him. She had seen him face tough, angry kids, big kids, without even a flicker of fear. So what did that mean, that he had been scared for her?

      “I’m sorry it happened to you,” he said in a low voice.

      Don’t read too much into it, she warned herself. He would have been sorry it happened to anybody. He ran a tight ship. An incident had occurred out of the far reaches of his control. His fear for her had not been personal.

      “I guess what I wanted to say was that I don’t want you siding with the kids against me,” he continued. “I need to know what’s going on, and I need to know you trust me.”

      “Oh.”

      Now that he was being nice, she felt more like crying than ever.

      “Maybe,” she whispered, “I need to know you trust me, too.”

      “Oh.”

      He let go of her chin, thankfully, though her skin felt like it burned where he had touched it. He leaned back and ran his hand through his hair. The rooster tail sprang right back up the instant his hand passed over it.

      “You know what?” he said.

      She shook her head mutely. Too much to hope that he was going to say, I just realized I’m madly in love with you.

      “We’ve been working too hard,” he said instead. “The whole water thing has put an incredible amount of stress on the ranch, and you and I have been carrying the majority of the load. I know you’ve been putting in more time in the front lines than anyone could have asked of you.”

      This was looking hopeful. You and I, as in a partnership.

      “Joe Colton was right. He told me he thinks it’s time to move on.”

      “That would be a whole lot easier if the culprit had been caught.”

      “That’s what I said. When I spoke to Kade Lummus today, he said they have a firm suspect. That’s very confidential.”

      She knew it was his way of telling her he did trust her. “But he didn’t tell you who?”

      “No. I took Rory out for lunch after, but I’m afraid I couldn’t even use our old college friendship to get that out of him. Not even for the secret fraternity handshake.”

      His quick sense of humor was coming through again. It was almost as if nothing happened. They slipped so naturally back into the easy give-and-take that had become a hallmark of their relationship.

      After they had discussed the water a little further, she told him she had pulled Lucille’s file and put it on his desk, as she thought he might need it to figure out what to do about the sudden and probably totally unauthorized arrival of her brother, Tomas.

      “He’s going to stay with Joe and Meredith for now,” Blake told her. “I’ll have to do some checking and see what kind of trouble he’s in, but really I think—knife aside—he just wants to be with his sister. I’ll see what I can do for him.”

      “You don’t believe he’s dangerous, either.”

      “Let’s not go there again.”

      She grinned, relieved that the old tone seemed to be back between them, realizing how much she looked forward to her communication with this man, how much a part of her life he had become.

      In fact, the Hopechest Ranch now seemed to be her whole life, much to her father’s disgust.

      “Your brains and your skills and you’re working as a secretary? For a pittance?” Todd Lamb never passed up an opportunity to belittle her efforts.

      Well, maybe she was kidding herself, but somehow she felt like more than a secretary. She felt like she mattered, and that these kids needed her. For the first time in her life, someone needed her.

      Her relief at the old tone being back between her and Blake was pitifully short-lived.

      “Joe told me he and Meredith are going to host a barn dance