Silk on the Skin: A Loveswept Classic Romance by Linda Cajio

she’d have an alarm installed first thing in the morning, she snatched the pillow and sheets off the sofa and headed for the bedroom.
    Dallas lay just as still as before, and, not wishing to disturb him, she walked softly to the other side of the bed and made a place for herself on the shag carpeting. Crawling into her makeshift bed, she firmly told herself that sleeping on a hard surface was good for one’s back. Her body already relaxing, she sighed quietly. The room was peacefully silent. She closed her eyes.
    “What are you doing?”
    Dallas’s voice jolted her to a sitting position. “Dallas!” She peered at his shadowy form in the darkened room. “You scared ten years off my life.”
    “What are you doing?”
    She cleared her throat. “I can’t hear you in the living room, so I thought I’d better bunk near you, just in case you needed something. Go back to sleep, Dallas.”
    “You thought of your burglar, and you didn’t want to be alone, right, Cass?” he guessed accurately. He pulled back the sheet on the empty side of the bed. “Get in. Trust me—you’d be less safe with a three-year-old.”
    “Dallas, I’m fine right here,” she protested. “Really. Besides, I occasionally sleep on the floor. Good for your back and—”
    “Get in the damn bed,” he said wearily.
    “Yes, Dallas,” she said meekly.
    She lay down right on the edge of the bed, keeping her back to him. A very different type of awareness surged through her body.
    “Relax, Cass. I promise not to bite.”
    She rolled over onto her back and lay stiffly next to him, all too conscious of the bare inches separating them. The mingled scent of soap, sunburn spray, and virile male filled her nostrils. She swallowed. “This is as good as I get.”
    He sighed loudly, his exasperation evident. The bed dipped slightly, and he hissed in obvious pain. She heard water being poured. “Are you thirsty?” she asked.
    “No, just taking more pills. Ten minutes, and you could have a party in here and I’d never know it.”
    “I’m being silly,” she said, embarrassed by her juvenile actions. “I’m sorry, Dallas. It’s just …”
    “I know.” He was silent for a moment. “Damn Ned Marks!”
    “What?” Cass wasn’t sure if she’d heard him right.
    “I said, ‘Damn Ned Marks.’ If he could run M & L properly, you and I would have no problems.”
    She wondered if he was right, whether things would have been so different if they’d met under other circumstances. But they hadn’t. He wanted her to turn her back on years of loyalty for a problem he perceived at M & L.
    “Tell me about your daddy, the colonel,” she said, in an attempt to change the subject. “What was it like growing up in a military home?”
    He chuckled. “My father, the colonel, was born and bred above the Mason-Dixon line. Chillicothe, Ohio, to be exact. As for our home life, we saluted him at breakfast every morning.”
    “Really?”
    He laughed outright this time. “Actually, except for the constant moving, it was a pretty normal life. I have two brothers and a sister, all older. I don’t see them much. We’re all scattered now.”
    She envied him his family. “The moving must have been hard on your mother, especially with four young children.”
    “I think she enjoyed it. She’s gathered quite a collection of local art. Lately, she’s been hinting they’ve been too long in one place. My father’s been stationed at Andrews, in California, for the past ten years. I think she wants something new for her collection.” She felt his head turn toward her. “What about you, Cass?”
    She smiled. “Six stepmothers tend to keep one on one’s toes. And I have a young stepsister. She’s nineteen. I don’t get to see her much.”
    “I heard about the marriages,” he admitted in a soft voice. “How did you grow up so sensible?”
    She smiled. “Boggles the mind, doesn’t it? The truth is, I was a mess until I was thirteen. Stepmother number three