of her in the impossibly chaste nightgown, he strolled past her and settled confidently on the edge of her four-poster bed. He flashed her with a challenging half smile. “Okay, I’m all ears,” he prodded dryly.
Lexie swallowed, trying hard not to notice how at home he looked in her bedroom. “I heard you and your brother Brad have a ranch now—with horses.”
Lewis nodded, interest clearly piqued. “The Lazy M.”
Lexie raked her teeth across her lower lip. Her heart pounded at the implacable note in his low voice. “I want to go riding tonight.” The brisk October weather was perfect for an evening ride.
Lewis shrugged, unconcerned. “Put your jeans and boots on. I’ll take you.”
She edged close enough to inhale the brisk masculine scent of his cologne. “It’s not that simple,” she said, keeping her voice low enough so they wouldn’t be overheard.
Some emotion Lexie couldn’t quite identify flickered in Lewis’s eyes. “Of course it isn’t,” he replied knowingly.
Lexie felt the heat in her chest spread upward to her face. She told herself it was tension—and not his proximity—causing her heart to pound. “I can’t just walk out of here.”
Lewis cocked his head. “I don’t see why not,” he told her frankly. “You are a grown woman.”
Yes. She was. Unfortunately, not everyone around her accepted that. “My parents want me home tonight.” And every other day and night for the next two weeks.
“I gathered that.” Lewis rubbed the flat of his palm across the underside of his closely shaven jaw. Still keeping his eyes focused firmly on hers, he added playfully, “The question is why are they locking you in your little tower up here?”
“I’m not locked in! Well, not literally anyway,” Lexie amended hurriedly, as his gaze trailed lazily over her hair, face and lips before returning to her eyes. “And the reason Jenna and my father are working so hard to keep me home and undisturbed is that they have gotten it into their heads that I need to catch up on my rest.”
Lewis couldn’t mask the concern in his eyes. “You want my opinion?” he asked. “You are looking a little…peaked.”
Lexie knew her skin didn’t have the sun-kissed glow of his. She rolled her eyes. “Give me a break. I’ve been in London, where it’s done nothing lately but rain.”
He narrowed his assessing gaze even more. “A few cloudy days don’t cause skin to be that pale.”
How was it that Lewis saw what those who were supposed to be close to her had failed to notice? “Then it’s the nightgown,” Lexie argued back, refusing to admit to the real reason behind her pale skin and tense, agitated state. “The white color washes out my skin.”
He grinned, all mischief again. “I was wondering about that,” he teased, getting slowly and deliberately to his feet. “You used to be such a tomboy.” He sauntered closer, inundating her with his size.
Her pulse racing, Lexie leaned her head back, to better see into his face. “Still am, at heart,” she drawled right back, knowing that much was only too true. As a child, she’d played outdoors constantly and rarely wore a dress—and then only under protest.
Lewis fingered the stand-up lace collar. “Then why the frilly getup?” he teased.
She drew a breath and stepped back before his hand brushed the delicate skin of her throat, or the equally sensitive underside of her chin. “All the clothes I brought with me from England are in the wash. So I had to pick something that was still in my closet here to wear when I got out of the shower.”
A muscle worked in his jaw. “You really wore something like this?” he asked, doing a double take.
Lexie huffed in irritation. “I had a romantic phase, years ago.” It had been a time when she had wanted to be swept off her feet. Fortunately, she was no longer the foolish young girl she had been when she had left Laramie on the arm of Constantine Romeo. “Don’t worry. It passed. Never to return.”
Lewis stepped back to regard her. “That’s too bad. I kind of like it. It’s…sexy…in an innocent sort of way.”
Lexie’s body tingled. She wished she’d at least had the foresight to put on a bra or a bathrobe before inviting him up to her lair. “Listen, if we’re going to work together, you can’t say things like that,” she chided, backing away from him again.
He matched her, step for step, until the backs of her knees hit the side of her bed. Clearly trying to push her buttons, he asked, “What if we’re just fooling around together? Can I say it then?”
To her dismay, Lexie could imagine playing around with Lewis McCabe way too easily. Resolved to keep her guard up, Lexie feigned immunity to his teasing. “I’m serious, Lewis.”
“So am I.” Desire, pure and simple, was in his eyes. “If we’re going to be spending time together, for whatever reason, why can’t I tell you what’s on my mind?”
Determined not to put herself in an emotionally vulnerable position with him, she said, “Because it makes us aware of each other in a way we shouldn’t be…and that does not make for a good work environment.”
He flashed her a contemplative grin. “Voice of experience talking?”
Hanging on to her composure by a thread, she revealed, “I got romantically involved with a man who also ended up being my client.”
Lewis grimaced. “Constantine Romeo.”
Years later, people were still talking about the way she had simply picked up and run off with the handsome actor, much to the chagrin of her parents and stepmother. Lexie pinned Lewis with a glare. “That’s not a mistake I intend to repeat.”
“Hmm. Well, if you’re worried about that,” he said, his low, sexy voice doing strange things to her insides, “then maybe you and I shouldn’t work together.”
“We have to!” Lexie countered emotionally, before she could stop herself.
He paused and eyed her thoughtfully. “Why?”
Aware she was revealing far too much of herself to a man she barely knew, Lexie gave him a flippant look. “Besides the fact that you desperately need my help?”
“Yes.”
“Because unless I do a favor for you, then I can’t ask you to do a favor for me,” she explained before turning away.
Lewis clamped a hand on her shoulder and turned her back to face him. “Why not?”
His strong, capable fingers radiated warmth. “Because then we won’t be even.”
He angled his head. “Why does it have to be even?”
Frustrated, Lexie threw up her hands. “Because that’s the way the world works.”
“Maybe that’s the way Hollywood works,” he agreed, as he caught both of her hands in both of his. “It isn’t the way Laramie, Texas, works. Here, you can
