Darling Enemy Read Free

staring down at her as if he doubted the evidence of his own ears. “You?”
    “Please let me go...” she asked curtly, giving up the unequal struggle.
    His fingers abruptly entwined with hers, the simple action knocking every small protest, even speech, out of her mind as he drew her along the cobblestoned path beside him. She wondered at her own uncharacteristic meekness as the unfamiliar contact made music in her blood.
    “You’ll come home with us,” he said quietly. “The last thing you need is to be alone in that damned apartment, while your dizzy aunt bed-hops across Europe, with no one about to look after you.”
    She knew he disliked her aunt Dilly, he’d made no secret of the fact. She’d often thought that his dislike for her aunt had extended automatically to herself, even though she was nothing like her father’s sister.
    “You don’t have to pretend that you care what happens to me,” she said coldly. “You’ve already made it quite clear that you don’t.”
    His fingers tightened. “You weren’t meant to hear that,” he said. He glanced down at her. “I say a hell of a lot of things to Jenna to keep the issue clouded.”
    She blinked up at him. “I don’t understand,” she murmured.
    He returned her searching look with a smoldering fire deep in his gray eyes that made her feel trembly. His jaw tautened. “You never have,” he ground out. “You’re too damned afraid of me to try.”
    “I’m not afraid of you!” she said, eyes flashing.
    “You are,” he corrected. “Because I’d want it all, or nothing, and you know that, don’t you?”
    She felt her knees going weak as she stared up at him, the words only half making sense in her whirling mind. One of Teddi’s friends walked past, grinning at the big, handsome man holding Teddi’s hand, and King grinned back. Women loved him, their eyes openly interested, covetous. But the looks they were attracting embarrassed Teddi, and she tried to pull loose.
    “Don’t,” King murmured, tightening his warm fingers with a wicked smile. “Don’t read anything into it, it’s simple self-preservation. If I hold your little hand, you can’t slap me with it,” he added with a chuckle.
    It was one of the few times she’d ever heard him laugh when they were together, and she studied his lofty face, fascinated. She was of above average height, but King towered over her. He wasn’t only tall, he was broad—like a football player.
    “Like what you see?” he challenged.
    “I was just thinking how big they grow them in Australia,” she hedged.
    “I’m Australian born,” he agreed. “And you’re from Georgia, aren’t you? I love that accent...early plantation?”
    She pouted. “I have a very nice accent. Nothing like that long, twanging drawl of yours,” she countered.
    “A souvenir from Queensland,” he agreed without rancor.
    She searched his eyes. “You spent a lot of your life there,” she recalled.
    He nodded. “Mother was a Canadian. When she inherited the Calgary farm, we left Australia and moved to Canada. That was before Jenna was born. Dad and I spent a lot of time traveling between the two properties, so Mother and I were little more than strangers when I was younger.”
    “You don’t let anyone get close, do you?”
    He stopped at the door of the dining hall and looked down at her. “How close do you want to get, honey—within grabbing distance of my wallet?” he asked with a cold smile.
    She glared up at him. “I’m not money crazy,” she said proudly. She jerked her hand out of his grasp, and this time he let it go. “I have everything I need.”
    “Do you really?” he retorted. “Then why do you live with your aunt—why does she have to keep you?”
    She wanted to tell him that she made quite enough modeling to pay her school fees and to support herself. But she hadn’t seen the sense in trying to maintain an apartment of her own when she was in school nine months out of the year. Besides, she