Diana Palmer Collected 1-6: Soldier of Fortune / Tender Stranger / Enamored / Mystery Man / Rawhide and Lace / Unlikely Lover

His breath caught audibly. He seemed to stop breathing as he looked down on what he’d uncovered. “My God,” he whispered.

She was blushing again, feeling like a nervous adolescent.

“Why?” he asked, meeting her eyes.

She shifted restlessly. “Well, I’m…I feel…men stare,” she finished miserably.

“My God, of course they stare! You’re exquisite!”

She’d never heard it put that way. She searched his eyes, looking for ridicule, but there was none. He was staring again, and she found that a part of her she didn’t recognize liked the way he was looking at her.

“Is that why you wear bulky tops all the time?” he persisted gently.

She sighed. “Men seem to think that women who are…well-endowed have loose morals. It’s embarrassing to be stared at.”

“I thought you were flat-chested,” he mused, laughing.

“Well, no, I’m not,” she managed. “I guess I did look rather odd.”

He smiled down at her. “Leave it off,” he said with a last lingering scrutiny before he stretched out on his back. “I’ll fend off unwanted admirers for you.”

She was immediately flattered. And nervous. Would he expect any privileges for that protection? She stared at his relaxed body uneasily.

“No strings,” he murmured, eyes closed. “I want rest, not a wild, hot affair.”

She sighed. “Just as well,” she said ruefully. “I wouldn’t know how to have one.”

“Are you a virgin?” he asked matter-of-factly.

“Yes.”

“Unusual these days.”

“I believe in happily-ever-after.”

“Yes, I could tell by your reading material,” he said with a lazy smile. He stretched, and powerful muscles rippled all up and down his tanned body. Her gaze was drawn to it, held by it.

He opened his eyes and watched her, oddly touched by the rapt look on her young face. He’d have bet a year’s earnings that she’d never been touched even in the most innocent way. He found himself wondering what she might be like in passion, whether those pale eyes would glow, whether her body would relax and trust his. He frowned slightly. He’d never taken time with a woman, not since that she-wolf. These days it was all quickly over and forgotten. But slow, tender wooing was something he could still remember. And suddenly he felt a need for it. To touch this silky creature next to him and teach her how to love. How to touch. The thought of her long fingers on him caused a sudden and shocking reaction in his body.

He turned over onto his stomach, half-dazed with the unexpected hunger. Was she a witch? He studied her. Did she know what had happened to him? No, he decided, if she did, it would be highly visible in those virginal cheeks. She probably didn’t even know what happened to men at all. He smiled slowly at the searching wonder in her eyes.

“Why are you smiling like that?” she asked softly.

“Do you really want to know?” he murmured dryly.

She rolled over onto her stomach as well, and propped herself up on her elbows, looking down at him, at the hard lines of his face, the faint scarring on one cheek. She felt drawn to him physically, and couldn’t understand why it seemed so natural to lie beside him and look at him.

His eyes were fixed on a sudden parting of fabric that gave a tantalizing view of her generous breasts; and when she started to move, he reached up and held her still.

“You won’t get pregnant if I look at you,” he whispered.

“You’re a horrible man,” she said haughtily.

“Yes, but I’m much safer than any one of these wily Latins,” he told her. “The lesser of two evils, you might say. I won’t seduce you.”

“As if any man would want to.” She laughed, and started to move away again. This time he let her, looming over her as she lay back, with his forearms beside her head and his eyes boring into hers at close range.

“If we weren’t on a public beach, I’d give you a crash course in arousal, doubting Thomasina,” he murmured. “Something just happened to me that shocked me to the back teeth, and it’s your fault.”

Her eyes widened as her mind tried to convince her that she hadn’t heard him make such a blatant statement.

“I see you understand me,” he said with a lazy smile. “What’s wrong, Southern belle, have you led such a sheltered life?”

She swallowed. “Yes.” She studied his hard face. “Yours hasn’t been sheltered.”

“That’s right,” he told her. “I could turn your hair white with the story of my life. Especially,” he added deliberately, unblinkingly, “the part of it that concerns women.”

Her eyes dilated as they held his. “You…aren’t a romantic.”

He shook his head slowly. “No,” he said quietly. “Occasionally I need a woman, the oblivion of sex. But that’s all it ever is. Sex, with no illusions.”

Her eyes searched his, reading embarrassing things in them. “There’s a reason,” she said softly, knowingly.

He nodded. “I was twenty-four. She was twenty-eight, wildly experienced, and as beautiful as a goddess. She seduced me on the deck of a yacht, and after that I’d have died for her. But she was expensive, and I was besotted, and eventually I sold everything I had to buy her loyalty.” His eyes darkened, went cold with memory and rage as Dani watched. “I’d helped buy my parents a small home for their retirement with money I…earned,” he added, not mentioning how he’d earned the money. “And I even mortgaged that. The bank foreclosed. My father, who’d put his life savings into his part of the house, died of a heart attack soon afterward. My mother blamed me for it, for taking away the thing he’d worked all his life for. She died six months later.”

He’d picked up a handful of sand and was letting it fall slowly onto the beach while she stared at his handsome profile and knew somehow that he’d never told this story to another living soul.

“And the woman?” she asked gently.

The sand made a small sound, and his palm flattened on it, crushing it. “She found another chump…” He glanced at Dani with a cold laugh. “One with more money.”

“I’m sorry,” she said inadequately. “I can understand that it would have made you bitter. But—”

“But all women aren’t cold-hearted cheats?” he finished for her, glaring. “Aren’t they?”

“The one boyfriend I ever had was two-timing me with another girl,” she said.

“What a blazing affair it must have been,” he said with cold sarcasm.

She searched his face, seeing beneath the anger to the pain. “I loved him,” she said with a gentle smile. “But he was more interested in physical satisfaction than undying devotion.”

“Most men are,” he said curtly.

“I suppose so.” She sighed. She rolled over onto her back and stretched. “I’ve decided that I like being alone, anyway. It’s a lot safer.”

He eased onto his side, watching her. “You disturb me,” he said after a minute.

“Why? Because I’m not experienced?” she asked.