she’d spent with her nose in a book, in classrooms and in libraries. Pursuing knowledge while other girls pursued boys.
He had no idea that a good-looking cowboy with a few sweet words could sweep her off her feet in one night. Make love to her and make her believe he’d marry her. Or maybe he did know. There was something all-seeing in those shrewd blue eyes of Zach’s. Something that made her tear her gaze away before he saw the insecurities locked deep inside her.
She couldn’t let anyone see the fear that she’d never be desired, never be sought after or fought over the way her sister, Mimi, was. Flirtatious Mimi, the pretty one, who had boys fighting over her from day one and who was now happily married to Mallory’s one and only boyfriend. Once he’d seen Mimi that was it, he was gone. It was a long time ago, but still the memory lingered, the old feelings...
Zach stared at her with disbelief. This woman was even more gullible than he thought. He figured she could be as young as twenty with that innocent, classic face and deepset brown eyes, but with those bones she’d look just as pure and pretty at forty. Not that he was looking at her bones. It was the subtle curves he couldn’t take his eyes off.
“Well, don’t take it personally,” he said making an unaccustomed effort to be kind. “If it’s any consolation, the guy isn’t the marrying type.”
Mallory looked at him, her eyes suddenly glazed with unshed tears. His words hadn’t helped. She was not consoled.
“You’re young. You’ll find somebody else,” he said heartily. Why on earth would he care if she got married or not? He didn’t know her. She would leave in a few minutes and he’d never see her again. Still, he had this irrational urge to try to make her feel better. It must have been those eyes, those sad, dark eyes that threatened to spill over.
“I’m not young,” she said. “I’m twenty-eight.” She squared her shoulders and blinked back her tears. “I can’t believe he didn’t even... Maybe he left a note for me.”
“Maybe he did,” Zach said, tearing his eyes from her soft brown gaze, ignoring the plaintive note in her voice. Anyone dumb enough to fall for Joe didn’t deserve pity. They needed professional help. He glanced out the window to see if any of his stray heifers had shown up. No. Today just wasn’t his day. It wasn’t as disastrous as yesterday; today it was just plain terrible.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” he said. “But if you feel like it, you could walk down to his place and have a look around.”
She stood up quickly, then rocked back on her heels.
He grabbed her by the elbow, forcibly steadying her with his hand. “I’ll walk with you,” he said. “All I need is for you to get lost between here and there, to pass out again and not be found for days, which would cause me even more headaches than I have already.” He was sick of Joe’s profligate ways, sick of dealing with an ineffective employment agency, of losing employees and replacing them with others.
“I’m sorry,” she said trying to pull her arm free from his grasp, but he was not about to let her go. He was afraid she’d faint again. She was, too. Though she’d never fainted before in her life, lately she was doing all kinds of things she’d never done before. Drinking too much. Flirting with a stranger, the first randy cowboy to cross her path. Then going to bed with him. And next quitting her job, making wedding plans and changing her life. It all started on her birthday when her colleagues at the university had taken her out to the tavern to celebrate. That’s when she’d met Joe. It was a brief fling. Her first. And her last.
“Not as sorry as I am,” he muttered as they walked down the path together. When they reached the cabin, Zach threw the door open and held it while she looked around.
“Nice place,” he commented. “No wonder everyone on the ranch is bugging me about it. Before the sheets are cold they all want to move in. Diane had some system for deciding who had first claim, but I’ll be damned if I know what it was.”
Mallory wasn’t listening to him. She wandered from the small cozy living room with a potbellied woodstove and a braid rug to the kitchen with rustic tiles and a view of the surrounding hills. Then to the wood-paneled bedroom with a king-size bed, the striped sheets left in a tangle. This was the cabin she’d been going to live in. The bed she’d been going to sleep in. With him. Her face flamed. From shame. From humiliation. Before she left the room she took a deep breath and held her head high. She would not let that man with the all-knowing look in his cool blue eyes and the foul temper see her weak side again. Or try to make her feel better with empty words and clichés.
When she returned to the living room he was holding a white envelope in his hand. “You were right,” he admitted. “He left you a note. That is, if you’re Mallory Phillips.”
She snatched it out of his hand and read it standing up. Joe said he was sorry, but marriage, even to someone as wonderful as her, was not in the cards for him now or ever. He wished her good luck in her career. Her heart plummeted. He was talking about the career she’d just put on hold to join him here, to marry him and have a—
“Good news? Bad news?” Zach asked with a curious look in his eyes.
She stared at the letter for a long moment, while the tears welled up and threatened to spill down her cheeks. She would not cry in front of Zachary Calhoun. She could feel his eyes on her, watching, waiting, expecting the worst from her. Well this time he wasn’t going to get it. When she looked up she’d arranged her mouth into a stiff smile and held her tears firmly in check.
“Neither,” she said briskly, tucking the letter in her breast pocket. “Just an explanation.” She brushed past him on her way out the door, aware of his rock-hard chest muscles, of his washboard-flat stomach and the earthy scent of leather and tobacco.
Her hands trembled. Heat shimmied up her spine. It had nothing to do with Zach and his blatant masculinity. It had everything to do with her and her heightened awareness of all things sensual—sights and sounds and tastes and smells and feelings, too. Like the way his head had felt pressed against her breast. Hormones, that’s all it was. Hormonal overload.
Out in the sunshine she took a deep breath. “I’m fine now,” she assured him when he joined her. “I won’t trouble you anymore.” She turned and started up the path.
He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around to face him. “Where are you going?” he asked.
“Home,” she said, forgetting she had no home to go to.
“Where’s that? I thought you had everything you own in your car.”
She sighed. “I do.”
“Ever been a housekeeper?”
“No.”
“Ever wanted to be?”
“Absolutely not.”
“What are you?”
“I’m an astronomer.”
He dropped his hands from her shoulders. He raised his eyebrows, radiating skepticism from every pore. Either he didn’t believe her or she’d surprised him. She guessed he was a man who wasn’t that easily surprised. But she’d done it. That gave her some satisfaction on a day that hadn’t offered much else.
“You think you know a lot about women, don’t you?”
