Fit for a King by Diana Palmer

all right. You can watch me out the door," she said quickly—too quickly.
    "I can't help it, you
know," he said softly, accu rately
reading the apprehension in her lovely face and smiling in spite of himself when she colored. "A man's body will give him away every time. But I
trust you not to take advantage of
it," he added with dry humor.
    She
stared at him, then gasped with helpless laugh ter, "You
horrible man!"
    "Well,
I'm vulnerable," he commented as he opened the front door
and stood aside to let her pass. "A man has to look out for his honor,
after all. I might marry someday. She'll want to be the first."
    "I'm
sure she'd be at least the fifteenth," she chided, laughing at
her own boldness. Now that the heart-shattering truth of just moments before had passed, it was once again easy to talk to him,
even about the intimate things.
    "Not quite
that many," he mumbled as they walked, the breeze, warm and salty
smelling, ruffling the
fronds of the palm trees.
    "Well,
you didn't learn what you did back there by reading a
book," she observed.
    He cocked an eyebrow and laughed faintly. "No,
    I didn't." He
stopped, tilting her chin up. "God, it was sweet."
    Her lips
parted, and her breath caught in her throat. Then he laughed
softly, angrily, as he took her arm, almost roughly, and propelled her along
the moonlit beach.
"I must be drunk," he muttered. "You'll have to overlook a few things about tonight, I guess. I haven't been myself."
    Which was absolutely
true. Even speaking was hard for him right now. He needed a cold
shower— badly. And
for some reason, he didn't want Elissa to know
what he was feeling, to know the extent of this bizarre aberration in his thought processes. It shocked him, the sudden hunger he felt to strip her out
of that jump suit, throw her down on
the beach and make her his. He
remembered how she'd looked in that sexy
nightgown, and he almost groaned out loud. He had to be drunk all right, he
told himself. How could he even
imagine a union between them? She with her hang-ups and he with his impossibly confused feel ings for Bess. Was this what people meant by love on the rebound? Or had he always wanted Elissa
and refused to acknowledge it in the face of her physical reticence?
    "You're
very quiet," she said when they reached her door.
    "I'm
shocked at my own behavior," he said curtly.
    "It's
been difficult for you," she returned, unable to meet his eyes.
"It was just the alcohol."

68
    Diana
Palmer
    Fit for a
King
    69

"Yes.
It must have been. We'll forget it hap pened."
    "That
might be best," she said lightly, forcing her self not to show the
disquiet she felt.
    "You
don't need to make it sound so damned easy," he said, unreasonably irritated and finding himself on the verge of spewing out exactly what
he'd wanted to keep silent about, yet
unable to stop him self. His
self-control was shot. "Do you know how much I want to lay you down
in the sand and have you? Do you?" he
demanded harshly. "And because of that, you'd better stay away from me
until I get myself together."
Hurting, and lashing out because of it,
he straightened to deal the killing blow. "Because anything I did right now would be because of
Bess— wanting Bess—and you'd better
remember it."
    It was a
lie—he was too confused to know his own mind right now—but he reasoned that
enough people stood to get hurt by Bess's recent interest in him, and
he didn't want Elissa to become a casualty, too. Anything—anything at all—that
would keep her at arm's length would ultimately be for her own good. She didn't need to compromise her innocence because of
his confused longings. So he'd have to be cruel to be kind, even though she
wouldn't realize it right now. Someday,
however, she'd thank him for what must seem
like callous behavior.
    She
clenched her teeth. He hadn't exactly shocked her with the
admission—she'd suspected she'd been
    a stand-in for
Bess—but had he needed to be so blunt? "Then I'll say good night."
    "Say
it, and go