When she thought no one was watching, she rolled her sleeves as far as her smooth, soft biceps, and unfastened another button at the front of her shirt. She rewound the red elastic around her ponytail, pulling it higher so that the thick, glossy hair swung free of her sweat-misted neck.
She had sunglasses on, but she mostly kept them pushed up on her head, as if she could see the detail of her beloved ranch more clearly without them. Lucas would have liked to borrow them, and wished he’d worn some of his own, to shield his city eyes against the bright light.
After they left Pete and Lon, she showed him the Upper Creek Field and they walked two hundred yards or more, along the bank of the fishing stream, with Lucas dropping behind her, letting her lead the way.
I’m not doing this so I can watch her walk, am I? he thought, a little disturbed at the idea when he realized he was. That purposeful, rolling stride, that tight, shapely denim butt.
Too distracting.
Too enticing.
Not on the agenda.
He kicked along faster and caught up to her in four strides, in time to hear her telling him, “A little farther on, we’ll be able to glimpse the gaming cabin.”
Then she spotted an untidy shape in the grass and they both realized it was a cow, long dead, that had somehow escaped the vigilance of the ranch hands. She frowned at the sight, gave a hiss of breath and narrowed her incredible eyes, with their dark fringed lashes.
Lucas reached out and touched her shoulder, expecting that she’d turn into his arms for a moment’s support, wanting her to do it. He felt soft flannel over warm bone, and let his hand slide down to her bare arm, which was even warmer and softer.
A rush of intense desire powered through his body and snatched the air from his lungs. He could have sworn she felt it, too. He heard the awareness as a new rhythm in her breathing, and felt the midday heat of their bodies mingle.
After just a moment, however, she flicked off the contact like a horse flicking a fly, then hugged her arms around herself and pivoted away. “Too late to do anything about it, now.”
“I’m afraid so,” he answered.
“I’ll tell Lon about it when we get back.” She let a beat of silence hang in the air, then said, “Look, can you see the movement in the stream?”
Lucas knew something about trout, Reba soon realized, so she didn’t need to point out which were browns or cutthroats or rainbows. The plentiful fish gleamed beneath the water like painted foil. The current braided transparent patterns on the streambed and babbled nonsense songs in the clear air.
The walk took twenty minutes, because they did it slowly. Neither of them talked very much at all. The sun shone. The wind riffled the trees. Reba liked the silence, and she liked that Lucas Halliday knew how to be silent. Some people didn’t.
“Here’s the place where we can see the cabin,” she told him, stopping beside a still, shaded pool.
She’d been aiming for this spot. From here, they should turn back.
“Yeah? Can you show me?”
He seemed interested, but she still didn’t know what he was thinking, or what mental notes he’d made for the report he’d present to his father. No point in wondering about it, she told herself again. His intention would become apparent with time.
“Well,” she said, “there’s a ridge line coming down to the water about two hundred yards upstream, can you see it?”
Standing beside her, only a little behind, Lucas followed the arrow of Reba’s arm. “With a seam of rock showing below the trees?”
“That’s it,” she said. “Follow it up. There’s a downed tree, a ponderosa pine, making a kind of notch about two thirds of the way to the top.”
“This time, I’m not seeing it.” He leaned closer, cursing hours of computer screens two feet from his face, trying to use her arm like a rifle sight.
He caught the waft of her scent and it hit him like heat haze rising from a tarred road. Sunscreen predominated, with afternotes of hot, clean hair and sun-dried cotton. Why should things like that smell so good? He was more accustomed to designer perfume, but his body told him that this was better.
Way better.
“Look for a slash of paler color. A lightning bolt opened up the trunk like matchwood this summer.”
“Okay, got it,” he answered. His shoulder brushed against her back, and he felt a flicker of movement from her. Vibration, rather than movement. She didn’t ease away, and her voice rose in pitch, dropped in volume and filled with breath.
No doubt. She felt it, too.
“Directly behind it, you can see the roof of the cabin, in the fold of the next slope,” she said.
“Yes. Dark shingles, and the line of a window frame?” He could feel the swell and fall of her breathing, and he could still smell her hot, cottony, beachy fragrance.
“That’s it,” she told him. “It’s beautiful up there, but we hardly use the place anymore. My grandfather used to bring hunting parties up there all the time.”
“Show me tomorrow?”
“Do you ride?”
“Some. When I can.”
“Then we’ll ride up. After the trip to Steamboat Springs in the morning.”
“Sounds great.” He turned his face ninety degrees in her direction and grinned at her.
He was just inches away from her, now, and was sorely tempted to move even closer, to see what she’d do, to test this powerful pull. Her eyes were like mist over ocean, or rain on a summer pond. His shoulder slid across her spine with slow, deliberate pressure, and he stepped back, before she could fight him.
No, before she could lean into him. Yes, that’s what she would have done, he realized. She would have leaned against him. She knew it, and though a part of her wasn’t happy about that, the rest of her didn’t care.
He didn’t push the moment, or push her reaction. He didn’t particularly want to get slapped in the face right now, and a slap in the face was a definite possibility. Nor did he want to add any more of an emotional element to a potential business transaction that had already become too personal for his taste.
He wasn’t used to this.
“I think I’ve seen enough for today,” he told her, and he meant Reba herself as much as he meant her ranch.
Chapter Three
“T ell me what you regret about last November,” Lucas said to Reba. “What should I have done differently? What would you have done differently? Tell me what you resent in how I handled everything from the very beginning, September included.”
His eyes flicked to Reba’s pregnant stomach and he frowned. They hadn’t gotten to the nitty gritty, yet. They were both still caught up in memories about their first meeting that were still achingly vivid, even after almost six months.
Reba searched for the right answer to his question, while the nagging, belt-tightening ache in her back and stomach notched a little higher on the pain scale, slower to let go, this time. She didn’t like it. It made her uneasy. She reached for the inadequate chair at the manager’s desk and eased herself into it, making it squeak, just as the door opened, hard on the sound of a token knock.
“Gordie’s here, looking for you,” one of the waitresses said.
Churned up and uneasy, she couldn’t school the impatience out of her voice. “Oh, now?”
“What shall I tell him?”
“Tell him I’m— Tell him—”
“Tell