gave him a look. “I need you to teach me what I need to know, not agree to do everything you tell me to do.”
“Where the Hopping H is concerned,” he pointed out the rest of his statement with a shrug. “Someone’s gotta be the boss.”
“And I suppose where you’re concerned that’ll never be a woman.” She managed not to roll her eyes.
“It won’t be a woman who doesn’t know the front end of a horse from the back.”
Then she did roll her eyes. “And women are accused of exaggeration. Believe me, Mr. Chilton, I know which end is which, and currently, you’re acting like the hind end.”
He shrugged again, obviously unfazed. “You can do all the bossing you want when it comes to your guest enterprise.” His lips twisted at that, telling her yet again what he thought of that particular endeavor. “But when it comes to ranch operations, I call the shots. Or there’s no deal. You can go find yourself some other sucker.”
“I’m not looking for any kind of sucker. Just someone who’ll give me a fair deal and exercise some discretion at the same time.”
“And you think that you’ll get that from me.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Won’t I?”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
She unfolded her arms and closed her hands over the back of the mink-draped chair. It seemed to help the way the room tended to spin around her head. She really shouldn’t have had that last martini. “We don’t have to like one another to acknowledge certain facts. And one is that you’re scupu…scrupulously fair. Everyone in town says so.”
He made a soft grunt. “Too damn fair. What’s your family got to do with all of this?” He shoved his hand through his hair, leaving it even more rumpled.
Probably what he looked like when he woke in the morning.
She swallowed, trying to banish the thought. “Hmm?”
“You said only your family had to believe we were married. Why?”
Her fingers sank farther into the fur. “They need to believe I’m competent in all areas of the guest ranch. Being married is a side note to them. Why would you trust getting your share out of a marriage—an uncostumated…consummated marriage—more than you’d trust a contract?”
His gaze seemed to drop to her lips. “Does it matter?”
Touché. She leaned over the table and slid the pen from between his fingers. Before she could talk herself out of it, she signed her name with a flourish, right beneath his.
Then she tossed the pen on the table and straightened. The bravado had a price, though, and it was called head rush. She gripped the back of the chair again, waiting until her vision cleared and the room stopped swaying. “I’ll make arrangements, then, for this legal marriage.”
“No. I’ll do it.”
“What’s wrong? Don’t you trust me?”
He unfolded himself from the chair and smiled humorlessly as he very deliberately picked up the napkin, folded it in half and tucked it in his back pocket. “I shouldn’t have trusted the last woman I married. Why would you be any different?”
Leaving Melanie blinking at that, he headed through the cozy living area and into the darkened bedroom beyond. A moment later, a soft light came on and she saw the foot of an enormous lodgepole bed.
One bed.
Naturally.
Russ was out of her line of sight, but a familiar-looking ivory sweater was tossed onto the foot of that bed.
She chewed her lip and looked sideways at the leather couch.
“If you were any sort of gentleman, you’d offer to take the couch,” she said loudly enough for him to hear.
“Being fair doesn’t mean being a gentleman.” He appeared in the doorway and Melanie nearly wilted with relief that beneath his sweater he’d worn a white T-shirt.
A white T-shirt that clung faithfully to every line of his impossibly wide chest.
She barely had time to brace herself for the bed pillow that he tossed across the room to her.
“They keep extra blankets in that hassock thing,” he told her. “Lid lifts up and they’re inside. Get some sleep. We’ve got a busy day ahead of us.”
Then he turned his back on her and closed the door between them.
Melanie squeezed the downy pillow between her hands.
She wasn’t sure if she were envisioning his neck or not.
She turned to the couch and tossed the pillow on it. The ottoman did, indeed, contain storage beneath the heavy leather-topped lid and she pulled out two blankets, which she spread out on the couch.
Eyeing the closed bedroom door, she nibbled her lip as she stepped out of her high heels. She needed the restroom. And not just to clean her face and her teeth. But she’d rather go out into the cold night and hide behind some bush rather than knock on that door.
The door that suddenly opened, as if the man behind it had, once again, been reading her mind. “Bathroom’s free,” he said abruptly.
The T-shirt was gone.
She dragged her eyes away from the dusty brown hair swirling across his chest and arrowing down a ridged abdomen that should have been winter pale, but wasn’t.
The last man she’d occasionally dated in Atlanta had been exactly six-one, worked out two hours a day, ran marathons and religiously waxed his chest. He’d been more beautiful than most women, utterly sophisticated and, amazingly enough, he’d been straight.
But for some ungodly reason, the appeal of Russ’s masculinity soared to a universe far beyond Michael’s. She’d never once contemplated becoming intimate with Michael, any more than she’d considered it with any of the other men who’d escorted her over the years.
That was, until she’d met this irritating man.
Now, she seemed to struggle with those unfamiliar thoughts every time she turned around and she knew if he knew that she’d managed to attain the age of thirty without sleeping with a man, he’d have a field day with the knowledge.
She was five-seven, but she still wished she hadn’t been so quick to remove her shoes as she sailed past Russ and all his appallingly glorious muscle and flesh into the spacious bathroom beyond the king-size bed, because he seemed larger than ever.
She closed the door and leaned back against it, stupidly feeling as if she needed to catch her breath. As if she’d just run some sort of gauntlet.
It was so ridiculous. Melanie didn’t get breathless over men, much less men who figured she wasn’t worth the time of day.
A
