Conquering King's Heart / Montana Mistress: Conquering King's Heart. Maureen Child

are pretty darn sad when even your best friend isn’t on your side,” Bella muttered, strolling down the length of the counter again. Her gaze flicked past the gemstones, the twisted gold and the heavier sterling silver.

      Kevin’s shop sold jewelry made by local artisans. Here you could find everything from exquisite, highpriced jewels to skull rings and pentagrams. Eclectic, she thought. Like the town used to be. She ran her finger over the cool glass. “Jade. Emeralds. Diamonds.”

      “Which do you prefer?”

      Bella felt her jaw drop. “What are you doing here?”

      Jesse grinned at her, and carefully closed her mouth with the tip of one finger under her chin. “Came back to see if Kevin got in the matching earrings to a necklace I picked up here a couple of weeks ago.”

      “Ah, yes, the emeralds.” Did she sound wistful? She didn’t want to sound wistful.

      “You have something against them?”

      “Not a thing,” Bella said, forcing a smile. “I just hope the woman you’re buying them for appreciates the gesture. Hmm,” she added, tipping her head to one side as she looked up at him, “I wonder. Do you remember her name?”

      His eyes flashed and a muscle in his jaw ticked, but that was the only sign her barb had hit home.

      “I do,” he said. “But now I’m wondering why you care. Jealous?”

      “Please.” She glanced across the room at Kevin, who wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention to them, focused as he was on his customer. Great. No reprieves headed her way.

      She wasn’t jealous. She was pissy. Bella stared up into Jesse’s beautiful eyes and told herself to remember that she was nothing to him. A blurry memory of one night that he hadn’t even been able to recall the morning after.

      Okay, that thought helped her weakened knees to strengthen a bit. He was charm personified. He knew just how to break down a woman’s defenses. And Bella, despite knowing all that, was just as susceptible as the next woman. Dammit. But how was she supposed to react when she slept with him and was forgotten and some other nameless woman did the same thing and received emeralds?

      “Who you buy jewelry for is none of my business,” she said. “I just hope the poor woman knows what she’s letting herself in for.”

      “Oh, I think she knows,” he said, smiling now.

      “Amazing to me how many women are sucked into your orbit,” she said.

      “As I recall, you liked my orbit just fine.”

      She scowled at him. “I thought you said you didn’t recall much at all.”

      “Oh, the memories are hazy, but they’re there.” He leaned in toward her and lowered his voice even further until it was no more than a sexy rumble that rolled along her spine. “Lightly tanned skin in the moonlight. The buzz of something electrical when we touched. The sigh of your breath.”

      He paused and Bella shivered.

      “Care to refresh my memory further?”

      Indignation rose up hot and hideous inside her. He was the most appalling male on the face of the planet. Yes, sexy. Yes, gorgeous. But absolutely zero moral center.

      “Oh, yeah,” she hissed at him with a fierce shake of her head, “that’s gonna happen. You’re actually standing here, buying emeralds for one conquest, while trying to line up another. I feel so sorry for whoever this woman is, if I knew her name, I’d find her and warn her about you.”

      He leaned back against the glass case, looking completely at ease while Bella’s insides were twisting themselves into hard, tight knots.

      “Trust me when I say she doesn’t need warning,” Jesse told her.

      “Why, I’ll bet she’s sitting at home thinking you’re something special and has zero idea that you’re trying to snuggle up to me and—”

      “Snuggle?” he interrupted with a wink. “Nothing wrong with a good snuggle.”

      She stopped and gaped at him. “God, you really are a pig, aren’t you?”

      “I don’t think pigs snuggle. Of course, to a pig, it might seem like snuggling…”

      “You’re making a joke out of this.” Bella cut him off. “And it isn’t funny.”

      He sighed. “Come on, Bella. It was a little funny. Now, why don’t you and I go have lunch so we can talk about this?”

      “Not a chance,” Bella said, taking a step back just for good measure. Despite the fact that she knew Jesse King was bad news, her body continued to respond to him. And what did that say about her, she wondered. He was the only man who had affected her like this.

      “There is absolutely nothing that would convince me to repeat a mistake I’ve spent three years trying to block out of my memory.” All right, a little lie. But she couldn’t very well admit to him what that night had meant to her. Besides, now that she was getting to know him a little better, she was beginning to rethink those blurry memories of pleasure.

      His smile slipped a little and a quick flash of irritation sparked in his eyes. “If you’d really been trying to block that night out of your mind, you wouldn’t be so mad right now about me buying jewelry for another woman.”

      She hissed in a breath and when she spoke again, her voice was low and sizzled with fury. “Are you serious? Is your ego really that big?”

      “Bella, if you’d just shut up for a second…”

      “Shut up?” Her eyes went wide and her head jerked back as if he’d slapped her. She shot another quick look at Kevin and his customer as if to reassure herself that they were absorbed in their own discussion. “Shut up? I can’t believe you just said that to me.”

      “Bella, if you’ll let me talk,” he said, irritation beginning to color his voice.

      “Oh, you’ve said plenty,” she told him, riding the wave of anger that was cresting inside, threatening to choke her. “You’re standing here trying to charm me, all the while you’re buying expensive jewelry for some poor, misguided woman who probably thinks you love her.”

      “I do.”

      She actually gasped. Stung. Hurt. Furious. Amazing that all those emotions could crowd inside her at once, each clamoring for recognition. Pain jangled through her with sharp, jagged edges and she wondered why. Bella hadn’t thought she’d really cared one way or another about Jesse King, but hearing him admit to her that he loved another woman was just…awful.

      She shouldn’t care. It shouldn’t matter. Bella hadn’t seen him in three years. She didn’t want him in her life. But oh God, knowing that it would never happen hit her on a level she hadn’t really expected. And that made her even more furious with him.

      “You bastard.”

      “Hey,” he said, smiling now, “of course I love her. She’s a great woman. Funny, smart…”

      “Mazel tov,” she snapped and tried to walk past him. “Don’t bother sending me an invitation to the wedding.”

      “Wedding’s over.”

      “What?” That stopped her dead in her tracks. Had she really been fantasizing about a married man all this time? “You’re married?”

      Jesse laughed and finally Kevin and his customer turned to look at them curiously. After a moment or two, they went back to business, though Kevin still managed to keep one eye on them while he worked and Bella tried to get herself under control.

      This was even worse than she’d thought.

      “You’re married?” she repeated it, because she just couldn’t believe this.

      “No,