Arizona Embrace by Leigh Greenwood Page B

annoyed. “I meant a special kind of attraction, the kind you have when you want to know more about a person. It’s a desire to be with him, to share yourself with him as much as you want him to share himself with you. It causes thoughts of him to pop into your head all the time. It keeps you wondering what he’s doing, what he’s thinking. Surely it’s happened to you before.”
    “You mean the way it happened with your husband?”
    He couldn’t have checked her intensity more if he’d thrown a bucket of water in her face. She turned away from him and looked out over the valley once more.
    “No, I don’t. I was sixteen years old, and my father was dying. Something had to be done about my future. Dad picked out a rich, handsome young man and asked me if I thought I’d like to marry him. He was twenty-one, charming, and devil-may-care. I thought he was wonderful, and I said yes. I knew I was supposed to. Only after I married Jeb did I realize the kind of hell I’d wandered into.”
    Trinity could visualize Victoria as a helpless young wife terrorized by her drunken husband, and a dangerous feeling of sympathy welled up inside him. Much too dangerous when they were standing this close.
    “I don’t think we ought to think too much on this attraction stuff,” Trinity said. He wondered if he’d be able to take his own advice.
    Victoria spun around to face him. “Why?”
    “I thought you didn’t like that word.”
    “It’s precisely the one I want. Why?”
    Trinity knew the best thing for him to do was mount up and head back to the ranch. He shouldn’t even wait to see if she followed. Leaving her to find her own way home wouldn’t get him into half the trouble answering that question would. He was a fool to have let things get this far. He was slipping. His nerve wasn’t what it used to be.
    “Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, I fell in love with you.”
    “Could you?”
    “Ma’am, any man would find it hard not to fall in love with a woman who looks like you.”
    “I didn’t say anything about my looks,” Victoria corrected. “I said me”
    Why couldn’t she ask questions like “Do you like my hair this way?” or “Isn’t this a pretty dress?” He could handle those without endangering his hide and his soul.
    Trinity concentrated on keeping his hands on the saddle.
    “I don’t really know you, ma’am, but I don’t imagine it would be too hard. Anyway, I’ve wandered away from my point. Suppose a cowpoke like myself was to come wandering in here and fall head over heels in love with you. Your uncle and Buc would put a stop to that before you could take a deep breath.”
    “Suppose I were to fall in love with the cowpoke?”
    Any cowpoke worth his salt would move heaven and earth to make her his wife. That’s what he’d do. It’s what Red would do. But he couldn’t tell her that.
    “It wouldn’t make any difference. They still wouldn’t have any part of it.”
    “Even if I told them I loved him, that I’d never love anybody else?”
    Her eyes had never looked as blue, as sincere. Trinity wondered if Jeb might not have been as thoroughly bewitched by his young wife.
    “Especially if you said that.”
    “What if I were willing to run away with him?”
    She was relentless.
    “He wouldn’t do that, not if he loved you.”
    “Why?”
    “Growing fonder of that word all the time, aren’t you?”
    “Don’t stall.”
    She came closer, but Trinity had managed to keep his horse between them. She looked at him across the saddle.
    “Because a cowpoke wouldn’t have anything to offer a woman like you.”
    “All I would want would be the cowpoke.”
    “He would want to give you the world. It would kill him not to. It would be worse than turning his back on you.”
    “How stupid.” Her exasperation was unmistakable. “Only a man would think of leaving a woman just because he couldn’t give her things she might not even want.”
    “Not a woman, Victoria. You.”
    “It