Page 531 of Summer Heat
The truth was, for all that he was outgoing, he was essentially private himself. A woman like Tamara protected her inner self with a hostile attitude. Lance had learned to act as if there were nothing below his friendly surface.
And Tamara somehow reached below all that. When he was with her, he was aroused, but he also felt a strange kind of tenderness, a protectiveness. When he thought of being with her, he imagined holding her naked body close to his, but he also liked to think of holding her all night, next to him.
“Okay!” she called from within the car.
For a long, terrified moment, Lance didn’t move—stunned by the clarification of his longing.
Ah, hell. He hoped he wasn’t going to end up falling in love after all this time. Not with a woman like Tamara, who needed a solid, steady man at her side, some man to be a husband and a father, someone reliable.
Not a will-o’-the-wisp man like himself. He’d seen the damage his father’s nature had wrought in the life of a woman who loved him. He’d vowed long ago not to ever do that to anyone. It was one thing to be a good-time Charlie, on your own. Quite another to drag a family down with you.
With a thickness in his chest, he got back into the car. Tamara was dressed again in the alluring blue turtleneck, her hair shining. He resisted the urge to kiss her again, afraid he really wouldn’t stop this time. “Back to normal, huh?”
She lifted her eyebrows. “More or less.”
The impishness in that expression nearly shattered his control again. With hands shaking from the effort of staying away from her, he started the car.
It would be hard, but he had to stay away from her. She needed to find a man who was real husband material. Someone like his brother Tyler, maybe.
His gut wrenched. No, not Tyler. Lance wouldn’t be able to stand it.
Chapter Eleven
Louise sat in her rocking chair, watching the two boys sleep. It took her back to her days as a young mother, when all she’d ever had time to do was wash one face, fix another meal, break up a tussle, feed the animals and keep supper warm in the oven for her husband, who worked fourteen hours a day.
She missed those days sometimes. She’d felt important, valued, loved. Her boys needed her. Her husband, at least back then, had needed her, too—to keep him fed while he worked himself into a fortune, if nothing else.
A soft knock sounded at the back door. Putting aside the book in her lap, Louise went to answer it, expecting Lance.
It was Mr. Chacon. “I am sorry to bother you so late,” he said. “But I cannot find how to turn on the heat.”
“Come in,” Louise said. Once again, she admired the thick black mustache, shiny and somehow sexy above the mouth that always seemed to be smiling. You couldn’t tell exactly, but his eyes had a twinkle that certainly suggested smiles. “It’s tricky, that furnace. You’ll have to wait for my son to get back-he’ll show you. Would you like some coffee, or maybe some hot chocolate?”
He lifted a hand. “Oh, no. I do not wish to be a problem to you.”
“No problem. I’d be glad of the company.”
“You’re sure?”
Louise nodded firmly.
“Well, then, I would like very much a cup of chocolate.”
“I like it with a little schnapps in it—how about you?”
He shook hea
d with mock seriousness. “No, I will not drink liquor in the company of such a beautiful woman. My passion might overtake me.”
She laughed, charmed by the twinkle in his eye as much as the outrageous compliment. “I’ll try not to tempt you too much.”
They sat at the broad pine table in the kitchen, and talked for more than an hour while they waited for Lance to return. Louise learned that Alonzo had come to the United States on a whim, hearing that there was work for adobe makers, and had gradually drifted farther and farther north.
“You have no family?” she asked.
“Three children, but they are all married now. My wife, she died of the—” he tapped his chest “—I don’t know the English. She could not breathe.”
“Emphysema?”
