The Playboy Meets His Match

“Well, city girl, the dogs are here. I’ll show you tomorrow. Right now, I’ll show you around the house. Here’s the dining room.”

She looked at a large room with a Texas-size carved, mahogany table that held ten chairs on each side and two arm chairs at each end. A sparkling crystal chandelier caught the light and silver gleamed on the buffet. Another brick fireplace was at one end of the room.

“Do you actually eat in here?”

“Sure. The table is over one hundred years old and my great-great-grandfather had ten kids. The Windover descendants are all over Texas. We have big family get-togethers, and each of my brothers has four kids, so that’s at least twelve people when they come home. There’s a guest cottage in back for the overflow.”

“What about your parents?”

Again she caught the briefest shuttered look before he turned his head away and switched off the dining-room light. They moved down the hall. “My parents were divorced. I haven’t seen my mother since childhood, and my dad died last year.”

“I’m sorry you lost your father. My dad died when I was eleven.”

“I miss my dad,” he said gruffly. “Eleven must have been a rough age to lose your father.”

“It was, but my parents were always very involved with each other and not as much with us kids. Particularly my mom. My mother was just not meant to be a mother. I was always mother to my sisters and that was all right with me and good for Mom. Dad helped with the girls.”

“So you were mother to your sisters. Was your brother Hank the second dad?”

“Hardly,” she answered dryly. “Hank’s wild. When Dad died, Hank got more wild. He’s in trouble half the time and he’s out of touch with the family. I haven’t seen him in over a year.”

“I sort of remember that he’d been in some scrapes,” Jason said politely, and she could imagine that if he knew her brother, he knew some of the predicaments Hank had been in.

“If you know Hank, you must ride in rodeos.”

“I used to, but I haven’t had time in the past few years. I was a saddle bronc rider. I did a few months of bull-riding, broke my arm and quit.”

“I don’t know how many bones Hank has broken.”

“Here’s the living room,” Jason said, switching lights on in a formal room that was exquisitely furnished and looked as if no one ever used it, much less a houseful of men. It was the one room that did not appear to hold any antique furniture, and it struck a slightly strange note with the rest of the house.

“This is a nice room,” she said, noticing that the blue satin drapes were faded, but still looked elegant.

“Yeah, well, we don’t spend time in here,” he said, switching off the lights. His voice was harsh, and she realized there were undercurrents in his family that he didn’t talk about. She suspected he didn’t talk about a lot of the facets of his life. She was beginning to decide the real Jason Windover might be hidden from the world.

“Here are the bedrooms,” he said, switching on lights and moving down the hall as she looked into rooms that were spacious, masculine and comfortably furnished. “My bedroom is the master bedroom at the end of the hall and I’m going to put you in here tonight, right next to me, so I can hear you.”

He switched on a light and crossed to the closet. She looked at an elaborate Louis XVI bed of dark, hand-carved mahogany. A tall chiffonier matched the bed. The room had pale-green and off-white colors, and, as she looked around, she wondered how many other women had stayed in it.

He tossed out a cotton robe. “Here’s a robe. I’ll give you some of my T-shirts so you can get into something cooler. There’s the bathroom and towels are in the cabinet. Change and we’ll get something to eat.”

She nodded and he motioned to her. “First, come see my bedroom, and I’ll give you the T-shirts.”

She followed him to a spacious bedroom with a brick fireplace, shelves of books, another large television, a tall, rosewood armoire with an ornate cheval glass beside it. A second keypad for the alarm system was in his room, so he could switch it on or off from either end of the house. A king-size four-poster bed dominated one end of the room and a stack of books stood on a table beside the bed. She strolled over to see what he read and looked at titles about the Second World War.

“You like history.”

“Yes,” he answered while he rummaged in a drawer and handed her a stack of folded T-shirts. “My grandfather was in the landing at Normandy in the Second World War. He kept a diary of sorts and because of that, I got particularly interested in that war.”

Jason thrust the pile of shirts into her hands.

“Thanks. I’ll need only one.”

“Take them all. After we say good-night, don’t try to leave the house. I have the alarm turned on. If you open a door or a window, it will trigger the alarm. When we go to bed, I’ll change the setting and the alarm will go off if you step into the hall. You’re in a cell here. It’s just much nicer than the one in Royal.”

She nodded again, left his room and went to hers, closing the door behind her. She showered and washed her hair. She found a dryer and dried her hair. It had a natural curl and was unruly, but tonight she didn’t care. She pulled on a navy T-shirt and slipped back into her sweatpants and then left to find him, returning to an empty family room and then going to the kitchen where he was making sandwiches.

He glanced over his shoulder and then turned to look more carefully at her, and she wished she were back in the lumpy sweatshirt. The T-shirt clung, and the look he was giving her was making her tingle all over.

“My goodness, Meredith, you clean up good.”

“My friends call me Merry,” she said breathlessly, knowing she needed to re-engage her brain. The man was definitely not one of her friends. Nor would he ever be one.

He crossed the room to her, stopping only inches away, and she hoped he couldn’t hear her drumming heartbeat.

“So we’re going to be friends,” he drawled in that deep, sexy voice. He reached out to touch her hair, letting locks slide through his fingers, and she was aware of the faint contact. “That’s interesting.”

“I spoke before I thought,” she admitted.

“You don’t want to be friends?”

“I don’t think it’s possible.”

He focused on her face, moved closer and tilted up her chin. She was too aware of his finger holding her chin, too aware of all of him. “I am sorry about your scraped cheek and hands. You shouldn’t ever have something like that happen. I hate that I caused your scrapes and bruises. I’m sorry.”

“You should be,” she said, wishing he would move away, but unable to move herself. Another one of his riveting looks nailed her and she gazed back, too aware of the silence stretching between them. “You’re standing too close,” she said, aware she was hemmed in by him and the kitchen cabinets behind her.

“I am? I disturb you?”

“You’re not adding me to your list of broken hearts, Jason, so just move back and give me room.”

“All those challenges,” he said quietly without moving an inch, placing his hands on the cabinets on both sides of her and moving even closer. “Now do you really expect me to ignore them?” he asked softly. “You’re the one who brought them up.”

“I didn’t mean any of them as challenges to you. I’m not impressed. I’m not interested. I don’t want to go to dinner or anything else with you.”

“You might hurt my feelings.”

“There’s no way I can do that,” she said, finding every word more difficult to get out. He stood entirely too close and he was entirely too handsome. And she was being far less than truthful when she told him she wasn’t impressed. Oh, my. She’d bet the house that his kisses would melt any recipient into a bubbling blob.

“I have a heart that can be broken just like anyone else’s.”

“I think your heart is locked away behind impervious armor and no woman will ever get to touch it.”

He ran his finger along her throat, a faint touch that sizzled. “I’m not invincible.”

“I don’t care to find out. I think you said we were going to drink something,” she reminded him, trying to look away and glancing first at his mouth, fleetingly wondering what it would be like to kiss him. Why would she wonder something like that about a man like Jason Windover? Had her brain gone completely to mush?

“Oh, sure,” he answered as if that were the last thing on his mind. “What would you like?”

“Just some pop.”

He moved away, and she could breathe again. Watching him as he walked around the kitchen, she was thankful his attention had shifted from her. He brought her pop poured over ice in a tall glass, and he carried another beer and she hoped it would knock him out for the night, yet he had a way of slowly sipping them that made them last.

Finally they were settled back on the sofa in the family room. Jason sat too close with one arm stretched on the back of the sofa and one leg bent, his knee on the sofa only inches from her thigh. He offered her a sandwich which she declined. He helped himself.

“I think you should forget about Dorian and go home,” he said, taking a bite of his cheese sandwich.

“Maybe so.”

“You don’t mean that. You’re just patronizing me until I’m out of your sight. You can’t change him. You can’t accomplish anything. You’re just a fly buzzing around his head annoying him.”

“Maybe that’s all, but he deserves to be annoyed.”

“Merry, I said it before and I’ll say it again. Women have jilted men and broken their hearts. Men have jilted women and broken their hearts. When it isn’t a deep commitment, you just pick up and get over it.”

“I’m sure that’s the philosophy of your life,” she said, becoming aggravated with him again. “My sister is losing weight. She’s broken-hearted. Her work is getting neglected. Her life is suffering.”

“She’s got to get over him. Introduce her to new guys,” he said, finishing his sandwich and taking a sip of beer.

“She doesn’t want to meet any guy right now.”

“I’ll repeat, when there hasn’t been too deep and too lasting a commitment, then broken hearts mend.”

“Thanks, Abby, for that bulletin.”

“It’s the truth. They weren’t married. They hadn’t known each other for years.”

“That’s so easy for you to say! She’s heartbroken and I want him to know he can’t walk all over someone and then turn his back and walk away. I want to cause him some grief. He’s hurt her and taken her money—”

Jason turned to look at her. “Dorian took money?”

“Yes. Holly didn’t have a lot, but she’s very thrifty. She has a good job and she’s saved quite a bit for having just been out of a college a few years.”

“Are you certain he took her money?”

“Now you’re interested,” Merry said, once again annoyed with him. “Money’s important to you, but Holly’s broken heart isn’t.”

“There’s a difference. If he took money, he may have broken the law,” Jason said quietly, and she realized she had his undivided attention now.

“Tell me exactly what Dorian did,” Jason said.

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