Tex looked horrified. “Oh, ma’am, no!” He knelt before her, taking her unresisting hands in his own big ones.
“Don’t call me ma’am,” Laura sniffed.
“Jenny…”
“I’m not Jenny.?
? The words were out before she could stop them.
Tex blinked at her, but kept looking at her with those painfully trusting eyes. “I thought…?”
“Laura. I’m Jenny’s twin sister, Laura. Laurelangelina Lily.”
“You’re… not… Jenny.”
Were they back to ‘he’s an idiot?’
It was just a shame he was such a gorgeous idiot.
“Why would you do that for me?” she asked before she thought about it. “Save me, I mean.”
“I love you,” Tex replied.
Laura’s breath caught in her throat. “What?!” It was absurd. Mating wasn’t love. It wasn’t love that was making her nethers heat up. It wasn’t love that made her think about the way Tex’s hands would feel on her skin.
But somehow, hearing him say the words was a knife-twist to the gut in a new and agonizing way.
It felt like hope.
Flustered, Tex twisted the apron in his big hands, which made it cover even less of him. Laura caught a tantalizing glimpse of his half-hard member before he shifted uncomfortably.
“I don’t mean I love you, exactly. I hardly know you. And apparently I know you less than I thought, since the you I knew wasn’t you. But I… I couldn’t let you get poisoned. Not that I’d let anyone get poisoned, but you… you’re everything.”
It sounded like a line. In his ridiculous cowboy accent, it sounded like it had been written for the most awful movie in the world.
And Laura believed every syllable of it.
She believed that she was everything to him, that, however deluded he might be, he believed she hung the stars. No matter what happened, how stupid she was, he would come galloping for her over any obstacle. He was her knight in a cowboy hat. He was her… everything.
Without meaning to, Laura reached out to touch his face.
He was looking up at her adoringly, and when her fingertips brushed his jaw, he caught her hand in his own and kissed it.
Was there no end to his dramatic gallantry? His mouth on her knuckles was more potent than the liquor he’d served her, and Laura was grateful she was sitting; her knees were suddenly very shaky, and she was uncomfortably aware of all her intimate parts.
When she didn’t make any motion to withdraw her hand, he turned it over and kissed the inside of her wrist, a place that Laura would never have guessed was so sensitive. Every nerve in her body was on fire, desperate for more of this man’s gentle touches.
He wasn’t half-hard any longer. The apron was a tent across his lap, and Laura was mesmerized by the promise of it.
She swallowed hard. “I’m not in a good place right now,” she said, her voice husky. “There’s a reason I was pretending to be my own sister.”
Tex looked up at her trustingly, not relinquishing her hand. “I’m sure it’s a great reason,” he said, and there was a catch to his breath that told Laura he was as affected by her presence as she was by his.
“Don’t you care what it is?” Laura wondered if she should feel insulted by his lack of concern. But she’d had plenty of experience with jerks who only wanted sex, and this didn’t feel anything like that.
Tex kissed the inside of her forearm, the stubble of his jaw tickling her skin. Then he looked up at her and said sincerely, “I will protect you from anything. Whoever you fear, I will fight. Whenever you flee, I will find you. Whatever you choose to tell me, that will be enough.”
Laura had no defense equal to those words, and fell forward to press her mouth to his.