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knew that he had orchestrated this entire mess. But he'd fouled it up. In the screenplay, Thorn had been a willing hero. |
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He had, of course, come through in the end. But only after she'd tried to help herselfand had offered to pay him. |
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Matilda had intended to come to Thorn's inn to work. Mariah had no choice, not if she wanted to pay her Thorn for saving her. |
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Her Thorn? Hardly! Sure, he was as gorgeous a specimen of manhood as she had ever seen, with those flashing brown eyes, that physique that strained his clothes, screaming of the muscles that must be hidden beneath. |
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And now and then he'd even acted human. Sympathetic. Kind. |
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But mostly he turned his back on her whenever she needed help. Teased her in her neediness. |
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Refused to let her even think about relying on him. |
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No, he wasn't her anything. The only kind of man she could ever be attracted to would be one she could count onif there were such a male creature. |
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Which she doubted. She'd tried once to forgive the male species for including her father among them. She'd gone so far as to get engaged to a man she'd thought broke the mold, and look where that had led: more hurt, more distrust, more certainty that men were undependable. |
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Well, just in case there were a reliable man somewhere, sometime, he certainly wasn't this Thorn. |
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What next? she wondered. So far, her life here had paralleled the screenplay, though it hadn't followed exactly. In the screenplay, there'd been Indians and settlers and |
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That was it! She had to get organized. If she'd been in her time, she'd have grabbed her laptop computer and begun a new file. Now she needed a piece of paper and a pencil. |
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Had pencils even been invented yet? A pen, then; she'd seen pictures of colonials wielding quills. |
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She rose, lit the candle again, doused the betty lamp and hurried from her room. |
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