Read Sweet Enemy for Free Online Page A

little late now."
    "Come home with me when I leave," he said quietly.
    She stared at him, trying to read his thin face.
    "No, it isn't like that," he laughed. "Maggie," he added, solemn
now, "I know how you feel. There's a woman back home…I'd give
everything I own, and more; she doesn't feel that way about me.
And, like you, I know that nobody else could take her place. Don't
let yourself be drawn and quartered like this. We'll console
each other."
    "A shoulder to cry on, Brent?" she asked softly.
    "That's all I can offer you," he replied, more serious than
she'd ever seen him. He grinned suddenly. "Did you think I was offering you a grand
passion?"
    She laughed feverishly. "Let me think about it. Right now, I'm
doing a job, and I gave my word."
    "It's up to you what you do," he replied. "I never try to
actively interfere in anyone else's life. But I'm offering you a
refuge if ever you need it. And he'll never find you."
    She nodded. "Thanks for the option."
    He winked at her. "You're more my cousin than he is. We always
were a pair of rascals."
    "We still are." She leaned toward him conspiratorially. "Let's
swipe the rotor out of his jeep."
    "You're on!"
    Clint eyed both of his innocent-looking guests over the supper
table.
    "A strange thing happened to me today," he remarked
casually. "I tried to start my jeep and the rotor was missing."
    "The rotor?" Emma exclaimed, pausing in the act of lifting
a forkful of mashed potatoes to her mouth. "The rotor was
gone?"
    Maggie raised both eyebrows and met Clint's searching gaze
levelly. "How strange," she said impassively.
    Brent strangled on his coffee and had to excuse himself from the
table.
    "Never fear!" Maggie called after him, rising. "First aid is on
the way!"
    For the next few days, she and Brent fortunately were able to
keep out of Clint's way-just. But his temper was shorter than ever,
and getting things ready for the mammoth sale wasn't helping
it.
    "Hey, Maggie," Billy Jones, the foreman called, "Clint
wants to see you!"
    She looked up from the porch where she was getting a checklist
ready for the midday barbecue at the sale. "Well, here I am!"
she called cheerfully. "Tell him to look to his heart's
content!"
    Billy went away shaking his head, and
    Maggie was instantly sorry. Brent had just been called away on
business that morning and she was afraid to push Clint too far
without Brent's protection. But the tension was beginning to get to
her…
    "So there you are, you damned little witch," Clint muttered,
coming up the steps, his hat cocked over his brow, fury in every
line of his hard face.
    She felt herself cringing, but she kept her eyes raised.
"Yes?"
    He stopped just in front of her and swept off his hat, slinging
it onto the nearby table. He leaned down, one hard-muscled arm on
either side of her where she sat in the big, high-backed rocking
chair, trapping her.
    "If I were you," he said in a dangerously soft voice, "I
wouldn't push too hard. I've had about all I can take from you and
Cousin Brent!"
    She felt the raw power in that lean body at the proximity, and
it was disturbing. "Just because we hid your rotor…"
    "
…And
tied pink ribbons on the tails of two of my milk
cows,
and
put bubble bath in the swimming pool, and…" he
growled hotly.
    She flushed. It had really been funny at the time. "Your trouble
is that you don't have a sense of humor," she grumbled.
    "You've got enough for both of us!" he shot back. His eyes were
like a panther's-green-gold in that swarthy face, narrow and
threatening.
    "Even when Brent and I were kids, you managed to make us feel
like criminals every time we played a prank," she told the open
front of his blue-checked shirt, where dark, curling hair peeked
out, damp with sweat.
    "You damned near turned my hair white a few times," he recalled,
and some of the anger drained out of him. He smiled.
    "So I see," she murmured, and involuntarily her fingers
reached up to touch the silver at his temples. "You're
absolutely
    sure
it