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“Mm-hmm. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Don’t get me wrong, it was awful. But I survived.”
He leaned over her lap to flick a beetle stealthily headed her way. At the movement and unexpected nearness of his face to hers, she inhaled sharply and froze. Then, with almost studied slowness, he moved his head to the side and brought his lips inches from hers. Her mouth throbbed with wanting.
“You like this,” he murmured. “You react anytime I’m close to you. Your scent changes, and your body heat goes up. Did you know that?”
Inches. He was just mere inches from her. She shook her head, trembling from her core outward.
“Do you realize how dangerous it is to be this close to me?” he whispered darkly.
“N-no.”
He leaned in and pressed his face against her throat, inhaled deeply. “And that’s why you have to remain on the outside, Eliza.”
He eased back and scooted away. When she dared a look up at his face again, his eyes had gone stern and cold.
Her agitation burned white-hot. “Would you have kept Miss Jennings on the outside?” She didn’t know why it bothered her so much that he had been betrothed to another woman, or why it decided to rear its jealous, ugly head right now, in a moment that didn’t need to be destroyed, but now it was out there and hanging in the empty space between them.
“Miss Jennings wouldn’t have been on the outside.”
Whoo, that stung like a slap. “Perfect. She’s blonde enough? Her eyes are blue enough? Her figure is desirable enough?”
“No…it’s just…”
“Just what?” she demanded.
“She knows about our lives.”
“Good for her,” she gritted out, standing. She strode for Buck. “No, it’s great for her. Lucky her, she isn’t even your wife and she could be on the inside.”
“Damnit, Eliza,” he belted out. “Why is it that every time I open my mouth you make me feel like I say the wrong thing?”
“Because you do! And you make me…you make me…” She gripped her hair and squeezed her fists. “You make me feel crazy!”
In one smooth motion, he rose and stood towering over her. “I’m saving you, woman,” he gritted out. “Can’t you see that?”
“No, Garret. I can’t see you saving me between the kissing me one moment, and telling me I’m on the outside and always will be the next!”
“What do you want from me?”
Everything! She couldn’t say that though. Not now. Not when Garret would hurt her with that admission. “Why do you kiss me at all if you don’t want to follow through?” she asked, defeated.
“You’re wanting more? You don’t want a physical relationship with a man, Eliza, much less someone like me. You aren’t ready for it.”
“And how would you know what I’m ready for? You may have known me when we were children, but you don’t know me now.”
“Christ Almighty,” he gritted out, looking away toward the cattle. He kicked at the soft ground with the toe of his boot and sighed heavily. “I read your journal.”
Those four words didn’t make any sense.
Not in that combination. Her journal was tucked nice and safe in the back drawer of the desk in her bedroom. She was careful to hide it every night after she wrote her feelings down. “Excuse me?” She tried desperately to deny what she’d heard. He wouldn’t have.
Garret hooked his hands on his hips and hung his head. To the ground, he said, “I read your journal, and don’t look at me like that. You left the damned thing sitting wide open on the desk, near begging to be read.”
Gads. Had she? Mortification crept up into her cheeks in the form of a blushing heat.
Those letters, stories, and entries about her most-private introspections were never meant to be revealed. And now her husband, her personal stranger, had stolen her innermost thoughts? Garret had taken a piece of her heart and her mind without her consent.
“The boy I used to know would’ve never done that,” she said, an angry tremble infused in her voice.
