Read Online Now and Forever by Diana Palmer - Free Book Online Page A

the cooler and yelled “beer!” at the top of his lungs as he carried it off into the shade of a lone chinaberry tree past the stopped truck.
    A number of throaty cheers followed the announcement, and machinery was left standing in the sun while the men joined the one called Jack in the shade.
    Russell laughed deep in his throat as he watched the spurt of energy that the field hands were displaying. “Kids,” he chuckled. “Most of them are married with families, but they’re just a bunch of boys.”
    â€œSomething no one would ever accuse you of being, for a fact,” she remarked idly. “Didn’t you want a beer?”
    He looked down at her, his eyes quiet and steady. “I’d rather have had a barefooted little girl with a jug of iced tea.”
    She looked down at her feet. “If I’d thought of it in time, I’d have brought you some. You look so hot, Russell.”
    â€œYou’ve been avoiding me, Tish. Why?”
    She brushed at a speck of lint on her spotless dress, trying not to look at the broad chest that her rebellious fingers were longing to touch. “I thought it was the other way around.”
    â€œMaybe it was. I’ve been damned busy.”
    â€œI know.” She looked up at him, her eyes sketching the hard, sweaty lines of his dark face. “You aren’t mad at me about inviting Frank and Belle, are you?”
    A cloud drifted over his eyes. “What brought that on?” he asked quietly.
    â€œI don’t want you to be mad. I want things to be the way they used to be between us,” she said, an appeal in her pale eyes that she wasn’t even aware of.
    â€œThey can’t be,” he said, his big handsmoothing down the wild strands of loose hair at her back. “You’re a long way past your eighth birthday, little girl.”
    â€œWhat’s that got to do with it?” She tried to smile. “I’m still your baby, aren’t I?”
    His chest rose and fell heavily, and the silence between them seemed charged with electricity. His big hand moved, catching roughly in the hair at the nape of her neck to jerk her head back so that he could rake it with his dark, glittering eyes.
    â€œWhat do you mean by that?” he shot at her.
    The punishing strength in those lean fingers frightened her almost as much as his sudden, unreasonable anger.
    Her lower lip trembled, and her eyes welled with tears as she looked up at him defiantly.
    â€œYou…you great bully!” she choked. “I can’t…can’t even kid you anymore, you take everything I say seriously! All right, I won’t talk to you at all anymore and see how you like that, Russell Currie!”
    â€œIt might be safer,” he said flatly. His eyes narrowed even more. “You damned little fool, don’t you know the difference between teasing and provocation?”
    Her eyes widened like saucers. “Provocation? So now I’m trying to seduce you?”
    The anger seemed to leave him, and a sparkle of amusement danced in his eyes. “I don’t think you’d know how,” he said softly.
    Her teeth clenched at his arrogance. “Frank might not agree with you,” she snapped.
    â€œCareful, baby,” he warned in a voice that became calm with controlled anger.
    â€œCareful, my eye! Just because you think I’m still eight years old doesn’t mean other men do, Russell! I’m grown up. I don’t make mud pies or throw rocks…I wish I’d never…oh, you horrible, cold-blooded…!” She choked on the words, a sob tearing out of her throat as the tears rolled down her cheeks.
    â€œYou damned little fool,” Russell said in a strange, tight voice. His callused hands cupped her face and he bent to put his mouth against her wet eyes, sipping the tears from her closed eyelids in a slow, smoldering intimacy that took her breath away.
    â€œR…Russ?” she