Page 21 of An Unexpected Love

As she recognized this truth, a heaviness settled over her. She didn’twantto fall in love with him. She was so afraid her life would mirror her mother’s. Elaine Morrison had grown embittered. She’d been a young woman when her husband died, but she’d never remarried; instead she’d closed herself off, not wanting to risk the kind of pain that loving Jill’s father had brought her.

Sitting up, Jill shoved her now-dry hair away from her face. She wrapped her arms around her bent legs and pressed her forehead to her knees, gulping in breath after breath.

“Jill?” His voice was soft. Husky.

“You shouldn’t have left your pager behind, after all,” she told him, her voice tight. “Or your phone.” Without them, he was a handsome, compelling man who appealed to all her senses. Without them, she was defenseless against his charm.

“Why not?”

“Because I like you too much.”

“That’s a problem?”

“Yes!” she cried. “Don’t you understand?”

“Obviously not,” he said with such tenderness she wanted to jump to her feet and yell at him to stop. “Maybe you’d better explain it to me,” he added.

“I can’t,” she whispered, keeping her head lowered. “You’d never believe me. I don’t blame you—I wouldn’t believe me, either.”

Jordan frowned. “Does this have something to do with your reaction the first time I kissed you?”

“The only time!”

“That’s about to change.”

Her head shot up at the casual way in which he said it, as though kissing her was a foregone conclusion.

He was right.

His kiss was gentle. Jill resisted, unwilling to give him her heart, knowing what became of women who loved men like this. Men like Jordan Wilcox.

Their kiss now was much more potent than that first night. His touch somehow transcended the sensual. Jill could think of no other words to describe it. His fingers brushed her temple. His lips moved across her face, grazing her chin, her cheek, her eyes. She moaned, not from pleasure, but from fear, from a pain that reached deep inside her.

“Oh, no…”

“It’s happening again, isn’t it?” he whispered.

She nodded. “Can you feel it?”

“Yes. I did the other time, too.”

Her eyes drifted slowly open. “I can’t love you.”

“So you’ve told me. More than once.”

“It isn’t personal.” She tried to break free without being obvious about it, but Jordan held her firmly in his embrace.

“Tell me what’s upsetting you so much.”

“I can’t.” Looking into the distance, she focused on the smoky-blue outline of a mountain. Anything to avoid gazing at Jordan.

“You’re involved with someone else, aren’t you?”

It would be so easy to lie to him. To tell him about Ralph as though the friendship they shared was one of blazing passion, but she found she couldn’t do it.

“No,” she wailed, “but I wish I was.”

“Why?” he demanded gruffly.

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