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“I’ll be there part of the time, of course, but I’ve received invitations to at least a dozen parties.” Her social calendar always seemed to be booked solid. Ty was never sure whether he was pleased or irritated by the social whirl that took so much of her time and constantly changed her escort. There was consolation in knowing she had no steady boyfriend and frustration in not having the opportunity to change that.
“I have a term paper to finish, so you’d better not expect me.” He searched for a glimmer of disappointment, anything to give him encouragement.
“I’ll tell Daddy,” Tara replied smoothly, not giving him the satisfaction he sought.
Whoops of laughter spilled into the alcove, destroying the intimate atmosphere Ty sought. “Let’s get out of here.” His hand moved onto her knee, caressing its roundness beneath the cherry wool skirt. “Let’s go somewhere quiet so we can talk. I haven’t had five minutes with you all evening.”
She cast a dark glance in the direction of the noise, then let it slide back to Ty. “It’s a wonderful idea, but I promised Ed Bruce that I’d ride back to the sorority house with him.” She smiled apologetically. “Maybe another time.”
“That’s what you keep saying.” A grimness edged his jaw. “I’m beginning to wonder when that will be. Tell him you’ve changed your mind and you’re going with me.”
“No,” she refused and lifted his hand off her knee. “It isn’t my fault he asked me first, so don’t become churlish because I accepted. No one tells me what to do, Ty Calder, not even my daddy.”
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nbsp; In a fluid movement, so characteristically graceful, she rose to her feet. A second later, Ty was standing, finally close to her. The perfumed scent of her body stimulated his already aroused senses while her dark, natural beauty touched deeply into his soul. His hand formed to the curve of her waist to stay her from walking away. He towered before her petite frame, looking down with all the hunger of his young male needs.
Despite her words and action, she wasn’t angry with him. Tara was simply laying the ground rules. No one was going to dictate to her or control her—or limit her number of male friends. It was not conquests she wanted, but the freedom to be with whom she pleased, when she pleased.
“Dammit, I just want to see you and I never get the chance.” His voice vibrated in frustration. Before, he hadn’t been willing to join the contingent of boyfriends. He had wanted her all to himself, but at the moment Ty was desperate enough to settle for anything that would allow him the pleasure of her company.
Her softening expression nearly made him groan aloud. “No one has asked me to the first basketball game after the New Year.”
“Will you go with me?” Ty asked thickly, leaning an inch closer.
“Yes.” Her dark eyes glowed with promise, and their look broke the last vestiges of his restraint.
His grip tightened on her waist, bringing her against him, while his other hand tunneled into her hair to cup the back of her head. He didn’t mean to be rough with her, but the pressure of his mouth on her warmly pliant lips was hard and demanding.
There was a rush of triumph when he tasted the brief flare of a response. He wanted more and tried to take it, only to be met by a determined resistance. Her hands pushed at his chest as she pulled away from him.
Ty hurried to apologize. “Tara, I—” She pressed her fingertips to his lips to silence him.
“My daddy should have warned me about you,” she murmured and eyed him with an awareness she hadn’t shown before. Ty would have pressed this new advantage and gathered her again into his arms, but she slipped free of his grasp with a casualness that negated her earlier admission. “I’m not ready to be rushed into something, Ty Calder, so let’s go back to the party.”
She extended her hand to lead him back to the crowded, noisy room. It wasn’t the warmth of her small hand he wanted to feel. It was the heat of her body under his and the moistness of her lips beneath his mouth that he wanted. One kiss could not satisfy an appetite that had become ravenous. Just being with her aroused him, and no solace was offered for the hard, stony ache in his loins.
The front door to the fraternity house swung open wide, aided by a gusting, cold wind that rushed the strands of silver tinsel on the foyer Christmas tree and swayed the brightly colored ornaments. Two of his fraternity mates came puffing inside, each carrying a case of cold beer on his shoulders.
“Shut the door!” someone shouted, a protest endorsed by others.
“One of those damn blue norther’s arrived,” a beer-toting Jack Springer explained as he kicked the door shut with his foot. Jack, like Ty, was a new pledge. “Blue norther” was the term applied to cold fronts that entered the Texas plains with a rush of wind that dropped temperatures to a chilling degree.
“Yeah, and it’s all Montana’s fault,” his partner, Willie Atkins, decried with a look at Ty, who had been dubbed Montana by his mostly southern roommates. “You must have left a gate open on your way down here last fall.” His glance went past Ty and lighted on the raven-tressed girl with him. The case of beer came off his shoulder and was shoved into Ty’s middle. “Just for that, you have to forfeit your partner for the rest of the evening.”
Instinctively, Ty grabbed for the heavy case of canned beer. In doing so, he released Tara’s hand. Willie Atkins immediately whisked her away in an exaggerated waltz that made her laugh.
Ty watched them go, his jaw clamped rigidly shut. As a pledge, there was little objection he could raise against his senior frat brother. Yet he was enraged at Tare’s willingness to go with Atkins with no more regret than a careless smile and a vague shrug in his direction.
It wasn’t the first time she had treated him this way, and he liked it less and less every time. What galled him most was the knowledge that he had no rights to her. She wasn’t his girl, and she had given him no cause to believe she would be. His ego was bruised and his body was one big physical ache.
“Are you plannin’ on holdin’ that case of beer all night, Montana?” Jack Springer chided him from the arched doorway opening to the party. “We got a thirsty group in here.”
Prodded into action, Ty adjusted the case to a more comfortable carrying position and followed the slim son of a Texas hill country rancher into the crowded room. A second after he had shoved the case onto the refreshment table, someone was pushing a cold beer into his hand. He took a swallow of it, then drifted to an empty space along a side wall and leaned against it.
Although there was some pairing up as the hour grew later, there were plenty of singles of both sexes who hadn’t settled on a partner for the evening. The number of men vying for Tare’s exclusive attention was dwindling, but Ty was fully aware that she was still among the single group.
His elbow was jostled, sloshing the beer in his can. He managed to avoid spilling any of it on himself as it splashed harmlessly onto the already stained carpet.
