The reality was Lucas Halliday, corporate wheeler-dealer, heir to the family empire, dressed down in elastic-sided boots, jeans just old enough to fit right and a thin cotton sweater with a designer label subtly emblazoned on the left breast pocket.
He unsettled her. The way he moved, like a man accustomed to his road through life paying out as smooth as ribbon in front of him. The way he looked.
He wasn’t conventionally handsome. His top lip was fuller than the lower one, and his prominent cheekbones were slightly uneven. His nose had a bend in it, just below the bridge. His skin was a little rough, as if he’d had trouble with it in his teens. But he had amber brown eyes, a strong chin, hair the color of maple syrup with a handful of Atlantic sand tossed in and a body that could have sold gym equipment to any man in America.
Let him buy the ranch, if he wanted it. She hoped he would make the decision quickly, and get out of her life, out of her space.
He seemed to fill it too forcefully.
After taking a gulp of her coffee, she went through to the cramped room beyond the kitchen that Dad used as an office. She grabbed the pile of papers he had prepared. There were surveyors’ maps of the property, marked with various details, sheets of figures on fodder yields and winter feed requirements and the inventory of farm machinery included in the sale.
Piling all of it in front of Lucas at the kitchen table where he sat, she said, “Here. Maybe you’d like to take a look at some of this while you drink your coffee. So we don’t waste time.”
She stressed the word “we” just a little. She could have been out with the hands today, refencing the stackyards or putting out salt. Instead, she had to spend her time with a man who planned to bulldoze her home and didn’t mind telling her so.
Except that when she’d tried to attack back, she almost thought she’d seen a spark of something softer in him. Understanding. Or even a wistful kind of envy. It sparked an unwilling curiosity inside her, which smoldered slowly, the way a carelessly thrown cigarette butt smoldered in dry summer heat before setting a whole forest on fire.
He took a mouthful of coffee, which left a film of the thin black liquid glistening on his lower lip. Then he sat back in his chair and twisted a little, to take in the view. He hadn’t looked at the papers she’d given him.
“This is great,” he said. His big shoulder pushed to within a few inches of her hip. From this angle she could see the way his dark lashes silhouetted against his cheeks.
“I hope you mean the coffee.” She took a step back, out of his space.
“Actually I meant the whole—” He stopped.
She glared at him, silently daring him to mention bulldozers again.
You want to praise the vista from the windows of a house you’re planning to tear down, Mr. Halliday? I don’t think so!
“Yes, I mean the coffee,” he agreed. “Great coffee.”
His mouth closed firmly over the last word.
No smile.
He lifted his mug toward his lips, met her spark spitting eyes with his, and if there was any kind of apology there, any kind of understanding, or the vulnerability she thought she’d seen before, he didn’t let it show. His gaze held hers, narrow-eyed and thoughtful. Arm and mug froze midair.
She felt herself getting hot.
Aware.
She hadn’t ever responded physically to a man this fast, and didn’t know why it was happening. She’d met impressive looking men before. Was it the adrenaline of wanting to fight this one, over the ranch?
Gee, that made sense—to link attraction and fight.
“Look,” he said, “I know you probably would have preferred for Jim to give me this tour.”
“Might have helped.” She folded her arms across her chest and hunched her shoulders, resisting the pull she didn’t want. “I’ve lived here my whole life. I’m not looking forward to this.”
“It’s the selling and leaving, surely, not the thought of the changes a buyer will make.” His eyes were steady and clear. “Any buyer is going to make changes.”
“I’d prefer not to hear about them, if I don’t have to.”
“You’re going to stay in the area, right?”
“I plan to, yes, at this stage.” In fact, she still felt very uncertain about what she wanted from her future. She loved it here so much.
He shrugged, as if nothing more needed saying.
Okay, so he had a point. Burying her head in the sand would be impractical and impossible, if she stayed in Biggins. A buyer could make worse changes than bulldozing a very ordinary home that just happened to have been hers for twenty-six years, and her family’s for a lot longer.
She set her mouth tight, detesting Lucas Halliday for being right, for being up front about it like this, for making her nerve endings sing without even knowing it and for apparently understanding that bluntness was just a little easier on her spirit than empathy would have been.
“I’m sorry this task is falling to you,” he said. Each word came out measured and matter-of-fact. “But my father will expect the kind of detail I can only get from someone who really knows the place. If it’s any consolation, he’s not going to haggle over the price if I tell him this is the ranch he wants, and he’s keen to push the purchase through quickly.”
He spread his hands in a gesture that almost looked like an apology. “Raine, my stepmother, wants a white Christmas in a log cabin this year.”
“We can do the log cabin,” she answered, just as matter-of-fact. “No guarantees on the snow. There, you’ll have to negotiate with a higher power. Got any favors you can call in?”
He laughed. It should have eased the atmosphere, but it didn’t. Drinking her coffee in clumsy gulps, Reba watched him page through the documents and papers she’d laid out. He drank absently, giving the impression that he hardly tasted the strong brew, and he thudded the mug down on the table top between mouthfuls.
He took out a pocket calculator and keyed in several sets of figures, absorbed in his assessment. Was he checking Dad’s math? He scribbled some lines in a pocket-size notebook.
Uncomfortable about watching him, Reba retreated behind the breakfast bar. She wiped down the stove top, cleaned the crumb tray beneath the toaster and watered the row of African violets on the windowsill above the sink.
She almost watered Lucas Halliday himself, while she was at it. He’d come to the sink to return his mug. She’d been filling the little tin watering can again and hadn’t heard him, his movements masked by the sound of water drumming on metal. When she turned with the filled can, intending to water the flowering cyclamens in her parents’ room, as well, they came face to face and can to chest.
“Whoa!” He grabbed the pouring end of the can and a spray of drops darkened across the arm of his sweater.
“Oops.”
“No
