gently, and the fierce look left his face. “Just Blair,” he corrected. “It’s nice to see you again, Niki,” he added. “Well, I would have preferred different circumstances,” he amended as he looked at her.
She managed a breathy laugh. “Me, too. I’m just glad you were here when I got home.” She was still clutching her dress.
“Did he hurt you?” he asked gently.
“I don’t...think so.”
“Let’s see.” He drew her down on the couch and his big hands moved gently to the torn fabric. “None of that,” he chided when she flushed, mistaking her reaction for shyness when it was actually excitement at the touch of his fingers instead. “I’m way too old to make a pass at a girl your age. Besides, I’m engaged.”
“Oh.” Story of my life, she told herself, that the only man I’m even interested in thinks of me as a child. And he was getting married. She felt her heart break right in two. But she didn’t let it show. She relaxed her death grip on the fabric. “Sorry. I’ve had a bad night.”
“I noticed.” He drew the fabric away from her lacy little bra. But it wasn’t the undergarment he was looking at. It was the bruises on what he could see of her pretty little firm breasts just above the cup of the bra. She had beautiful little breasts. He clamped down hard on feelings he shouldn’t even entertain, especially now. There were more bruises on her thin shoulders. He winced.
“I wish I’d hit him harder,” he said in a cold, biting tone.
“He was so shocked when you showed up,” she recalled with a laugh like tiny bells. “He’s a football star, you know.” She grimaced. “Goodness, I must be an idiot. I didn’t even realize that he felt entitled to anything he wanted in life.”
“Sadly, some men think that way. Turn around, honey.” He moved her so that he could draw the dress down and look at her back. There were more bruises there.
“Is it bad?” she asked.
He drew in a breath and turned her back to him. His black eyes were glittery. “I think we need to take you to the emergency room, and then talk to the sheriff. These bruises are an outrage.”
“It would be my word against his,” she said quietly, searching this big man’s eyes.
“I saw most of it,” he reminded her.
“Yes, but you weren’t with us in the car. He could say I promised him whatever he wanted and then got cold feet.”
He cursed under his breath. “I don’t like letting him get away with this.”
“He’ll be much too busy explaining his bruises,” she said with a flare of humor. “And when I go back to school, I’ll swear to everyone I know that I gave them to him!” she said with a little laugh.
He chuckled. “He’ll be a legend in his own time.”
“Yes, he will,” she promised. She cocked her head and looked at him curiously. “You don’t look like a man who gets into many fights,” she said.
He shrugged and smiled at her. “My...father—” odd how he hesitated on the word, Niki thought “—founded an oil company. He built it into a multinational corporation and groomed me to run it. But his idea of management was to teach me the job from the bottom up. I started out as a roughneck, working on oil rigs.” He pursed his lips. “The boss’s son wasn’t the most popular guy around. Plenty of other men thought I’d be a pushover.”
“I imagine it didn’t take them long to learn the lesson,” she said, smiling up at him.
“Not long, no,” he agreed. “You’ll have bruises, Niki. I’m really sorry.”
“It would have been much worse if you hadn’t been here,” she said. It began to catch up with her and she shivered. “I’ve been on blind dates before, in high school, but nobody ever tried to...” A sob broke from her throat. “Sorry,” she faltered.
He bent and scooped her up in his big arms. He sat down in an armchair and cuddled her in his lap. “Get it out of your system, Niki. I’m not afraid of tears,” he said softly, brushing his mouth over her hair.
She bawled. It was a rare thing, comfort. Her father had never been a physical sort of man. He loved her, but he never kissed bruises or offered much comfort. Like Blair, he was an oilman, and he’d worked on oil rigs in his youth, too. Her mother had died when she was in grammar school, so it had just been her and Daddy, most of her life, here on the enormous cattle ranch he’d inherited from his father. She was nineteen, almost twenty, and this was the first time she’d ever had anybody offer her a shoulder to cry on. Well, except for Edna Hanes, the housekeeper.
She pressed close to Blair’s broad chest and mourned the loss of him. He was going to get married. She’d had this stupid idea that one day she’d grow up enough for him to finally notice her. That was a pipe dream, and it had gone up in ashes tonight. At least, she thought, he’d saved her from that overly muscled brute.
“Poor little thing,” he murmured against her forehead. “I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t know men could be like that,” she said brokenly. “I don’t date much. I like to live in the past. I’d have been right at home in the Victorian age. I don’t...fit in in the modern world.”
“Neither do I,” he confessed. He lifted his head and searched her wet eyes. “Still a virgin?”
She nodded. Oddly, it wasn’t at all embarrassing to talk to him like this. She felt as if she’d always known him. Well, she had, for several years, if distantly. “Daddy took me to church every Sunday until I went off to college,” she confessed. “Some of the other girls at school say I’m stupid to think any man would want to marry an innocent woman. They say I need experience, so I’ll appeal to a man.” She looked at him like a curious little bird. “Is that right?”
He smoothed the damp hair away from her cheeks. She was almost otherworldly. He ached in inconvenient places and chided himself for that reaction to her. She was a child, compared to him, even if she was in college. “I think innocence is a rare and beautiful thing,” he said after a minute. “And that your husband will be a very lucky man.”
She smiled shyly. “Thanks.” She pursed her lips.
“A question?” he teased. “Ask away.”
“Will your wife be a very lucky woman?” she asked outrageously.
He burst out laughing. “No. Emphatically, no.” He searched her shimmering eyes. “You really are a pain, aren’t you?”
She linked her arms around his strong neck. “I truly am.” She smiled at him. “What’s she like, your fiancée?”
“Black hair, blue eyes, beautiful, sophisticated, very artistic,” he summed her up.
“And you love her very much.”
He smiled back. “She’s the first woman I ever asked to marry me. I’ve been too busy making money to think about a private life. Well, about a permanent one, at least.”
“Is
