reveled in the obvious approval in Ryan’s voice but said nothing, afraid she’d spoil the effect she’d worked so hard to create.
“Man, oh, man.” Marc blinked in disbelief. “If I’d known you’d turned into such a hot number, Pest, I’d never have brought this ladykiller into the house.”
“Ladykiller?” Cat experienced a moment of panic. Somehow she’d neglected to consider the possibility that Ryan already had a girlfriend. Marc had never mentioned one. Fixing her anxious gaze on Ryan, she was glad he couldn’t hear her heart pounding beneath the scooped neckline of her dress. He met her glance, but his expression remained inscrutable.
“Yeah, the women are wild about him,” Marc explained with the fraternal grin that made her tingle with happiness to have her brother home again. “Everywhere we go, women are always throwing themselves at him. Many a time I’ve had to sacrifice and place myself between him and harm’s way.”
“Sacrifice?” Ryan said with a wry laugh. “So that’s what you call it.”
Marc shrugged. “You’ve never seemed interested in any of the female attention. I was just trying to save you the aggravation.”
Ryan stared at Cat with a laser look that heated her from head to toe. “I think,” he said in a deliciously languid tone, “my interest has just been piqued.”
Inwardly savoring the possibility of victory, Cat remained outwardly cool. “I’m sure plenty of girls will be happy to hear that at the dance tonight.”
“What dance?” Marc asked.
“You’ve been away too long, brother dear,” Cat said. “How could you forget the annual Territorial Celebration at the town hall?”
Marc turned to Ryan. “The music’s kind of hokey, but the food’s always good. Want to go?”
“If you guys are too tired,” Cat said quickly, “I have a casserole I can heat for your supper before I leave.”
She held her breath, waiting for their reply. She’d dreamed for months of dancing with Ryan, wondering how his arms would feel around her, dying to talk with him alone without Marc claiming all his attention.
“I don’t know about you, cowboy,” Ryan said, “but I think you’ll be taking a chance letting Cat go alone looking like that. She’ll need the Marines to keep the locals at bay.”
“You could be right,” Marc agreed.
Ryan nodded. “We’ll have to volunteer.”
Yes!
Cat called on every ounce of self-control to keep from pumping her fist in victory. Ryan had noticed her at last, but she’d have to take care not to appear too interested. If he guessed how strongly she felt about him, he’d hit the Libby highway running and never look back. The last thing she wanted was to scare him off by seeming too eager.
“Do you have a date?” Ryan asked, catching her by surprise.
Her earlier panic returned. Would he think nobody else found her interesting?
Marc jumped to her rescue. “Nobody brings a date to the Territorial Celebration. Everyone just shows up and has a good time.”
Less than an hour later, Cat was sandwiched between Marc and Ryan on the front seat of Marc’s truck, headed for town. She and Ryan each balanced one of her homemade huckleberry pies, her contribution toward the evening’s covered dish dinner, on their laps. Occasionally, when the road curved, she slid toward Ryan, grazing his thigh with her own, relishing the warmth of the contact and making her even more aware of his clean, rugged, masculine scent and the attractiveness of his profile.
Telling stories of his and Marc’s adventures at the Defense Language Institute where they’d studied Arabic and other Middle Eastern languages in preparation for their posting to Kuwait, Ryan kept her laughing, but her thoughts constantly strayed to the dancing that would follow supper and her hopes for spending time alone with him.
When they arrived, the town hall was bustling with people. In the adjacent tree-shaded park, tables had been erected from sawhorses and planks and covered with cloths, and tiny white lights had been strung through the trees. The tables were already loaded with food.
Cat spied her father, Gabriel, among the men circling the smoking barbecue pit. He’d left the ranch with his side of beef and gallon of secret barbecue sauce long before Marc and Ryan had arrived and was helping with the cooking. The succulent odors drifting on the breeze made her mouth water, and she was surprised to discover she was hungry. She had expected to be too excited to eat, but being near Ryan seemed to activate all her senses, even her appetite.
While Marc and Ryan crossed the park to greet her father, Cat peeked inside the open doors of the town hall, decorated with red, white and blue streamers, and watched the band setting up on the stage at the far end of the room that had been cleared for dancing. When the mayor rang the bell in the hall’s squat tower, the signal for supper to begin, she returned to the park to join her family and Ryan.
Ryan sat beside her at supper, but Marc and her father monopolized the conversation with talk of the ranch and the problems created by the dry spring they’d had. Later, however, when the band in the hall began playing their first slow song, Ryan asked her to dance. Feeling as if she were walking on clouds, she accompanied him into the building and slid happily into his arms.
Even though he was dressed casually in jeans and a chambray shirt, Ryan carried himself with an unmistakable military bearing that turned the heads of every woman in the room. The charismatic confidence of a man accustomed to command blended with the fluid grace of a body trained and coordinated like a perfectly tuned machine, and he danced like a dream. Cat had to struggle to keep her mind off the delicious pressure of his hand at the small of her back. That, combined with the dangerous warmth in his eyes, made concentrating on their conversation difficult.
“Marc tells me you graduate from college next June,” Ryan said. “What will you do then?”
“Teach. I’ll be interning in the fall.”
“Will you stay in Montana?”
“I hope to get a job at the high school here in town.”
“That’s a surprise.”
“Why?” She drew back and gazed at him.
“I figured you had the wanderlust, like Marc. The only reason he joined the Marines was to travel.”
“But as soon as he’s seen the world,” Cat explained, “he’s heading back to help Dad run the ranch. For Marc, Montana will always be home.”
“And you don’t want to travel?”
“I’m a homebody. I have everything I need right here.”
Except you, she thought.
“What will you teach? Elementary school?”
She shook her head, pleased at his interest. “High school history.”
Ryan groaned. “I hated history in high school.”
“Then you
