sucked in a raw breath as her fingers moved dangerously close to his privates. He quickly closed his hand over hers.
“Keep that up and you’re liable to warm up more than just my coffee.”
She snapped her gaze to his. Her eyes grew wide and her mouth formed a perfect O as his meaning slowly registered. Quickly she snatched her hand from his and fisted it behind her back. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, dropping her gaze in embarrassment.
Damn, but she was pretty, Forrest thought as he watched her cheeks turn an engaging shade of pink. Maybe... He quickly squelched the idea. Though nothing had been said, he was sure that there was still something between Anna and his buddy Greg Hunt. After all, it was Greg who Anna had contacted for help, and it was Greg who had headed up the mission to rescue her. And Forrest Cunningham wasn’t the kind of man to trespass on another man’s territory.
He shot her a grin, hoping to put her at ease as he reached for a napkin to finish the job she’d started. “No damage done.”
She gave a cautious look around, then eased closer. “Forrest? I was wondering...have you heard anything from Blake?”
The worry in her voice was obvious and explained the trembling in her hands. He supposed he’d be worried, too, if he was in her shoes. Blake was the last leg of the Alpha mission, and the one assigned to deliver Anna’s niece and nephew to her in Royal.
A bachelor traveling halfway around the world with two babies in tow.
Forrest bit back a grin. He’d give anything to be a fly on the wall right now, so he could see Blake Hunt in the role of a nanny. Changing diapers, singing lullabies. Somehow the picture just didn’t fit. But if anybody could do it, Blake could, he reminded himself. Blake was nothing if he wasn’t resourceful.
Forrest gave Anna an encouraging smile. “Don’t you worry that pretty little head of yours about Blake. He’ll get ‘em here safely. You’ll see.”
“It isn’t that I don’t trust him,” she said uneasily. She caught her lower lip between her teeth again. “It’s just that...well, being a single man, I doubt he knows very much about caring for infants.”
Forrest shot her a wink. “That’s what you think. Before he left on the mission, Blake spent days at the library reading every book they had on the subject. He even interviewed ladies around town on how to properly care for an infant. Created quite a stir with his questions, too,” he added, chuckling.
Anna inhaled deeply, then managed a smile. “I’m sure you’re right.” She leaned to give his hand a grateful pat. “Thank you, Forrest. For everything,” she added in a whisper, before turning away.
Forrest watched her cross back to the bar, his eyes going unerringly to the seductive sway of her hips. He gave his head a shake and forced his gaze back to the window. Don’t even think it, he warned himself. Even if he didn’t suspect that Greg had a prior claim on the princess, he knew that Anna wasn’t the woman for him.
So who is? he asked himself, his frustration returning with a force stronger than the wind outside that was currently sandblasting his truck in the diner’s parking lot. He’d already ruled out every eligible woman within a three hundred mile radius of Royal. There wasn’t a single woman left with whom he’d want to share his name, much less his life.
Frowning, he glanced at his wristwatch and saw that it was almost two. He had promised to meet Becky at twothirty and inspect a mare that he was having delivered to her ranch.
He started to rise, then slowly sank back down in the booth, his eyes going wide. “Rebecca Lee Sullivan,” he whispered under his breath. Why hadn’t he thought of Becky before now?
Becky as his wife. He toyed with the idea for a moment, weighing the possibilities. She’d lived next door to him for as long as he could remember and was as good a friend as a man could ask for. She liked ranching and horses and wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty, unlike most of the women he knew. She wasn’t hard to look at, was self-reliant, and could rope and ride as well as any man, himself included.
Hell! Becky was the perfect woman for a rancher like him!
He quickly fished money from his pocket, tossed it on the table and grabbed his hat. As he strode for the door of the diner, he recalled a conversation that he and Becky had had years before, and a promise he’d made to her at the time.
If you’re not married by your thirtieth birthday, hell, I’ll marry you.
The good news was that Becky hadn’t married and, if memory served him right, her thirtieth birthday was in November, less than six weeks away.
It was all he could do to keep from kicking up his heels as he headed for his truck. If he had his way—and Forrest usually did—he and Miss Rebecca Lee Sullivan would be married by the time her birthday rolled around.
It was all just a matter of him popping the question.
Forrest parked his truck about fifty feet from the round pen where Becky was working a colt and settled back to watch. The colt was one of Forrest’s, bred and raised on the Cunningham ranch, the Golden Steer. He’d hauled the horse over to the Rusty Corral, Becky’s family’s place, just before leaving on the mission to Europe so that Becky could begin training him while he was gone. By the look of things, she’d made good use of the time. The colt was trotting smoothly along the wall of the pen, moving in and out of the obstacle course Becky had set up, while Becky turned a tight circle in the middle, her attention fixed on the young horse. Her arms were outstretched, forming a widemouthed V, one hand gripping a longe line clipped to the colt’s halter and the other dragging a whip along the ground aimed at the colt’s rear hooves.
Forrest pursed his lips thoughtfully and watched, his gaze focused not on the colt, but on the woman. He assessed her as he would a brood mare he was thinking of buying, or a registered cow he was thinking of adding to his herd—one eye narrowed, his brow furrowed in concentration, while he studied her conformation.
Though she was skinny as a rail, she was built tough; Forrest knew that for a fact. And tough was important when a man was thinking of taking on a wife who would be required to live on a ranch as big and isolated as the Golden Steer. He moved his gaze on a slow journey from her battered, sweat-stained hat, down her spine and settled it on the seat of her faded jeans. A frayed tear just below one cheek of her butt exposed a strip of olive-toned skin.
When he realized that he was staring and what he was staring at, he forced his gaze back up to her hips. They were a little narrow, he acknowledged with a frown, trying not to think about that strip of bare skin, but seemed wide enough to handle a birth without much trouble. And though her breasts were small, he didn’t figure size counted much when it came to nursing a babe...and Cunningham women always nursed their young. The natural way, Forrest’s dad had always insisted, whether discussing animals or humans, was the only way. Like his father, Forrest believed that nature knew best and lived by her rules.
She’ll do, he told himself confidently and shouldered open the door of his truck. Standing, he paused a moment to stretch out the kinks in his legs, then slammed the door and headed for the round pen. Becky glanced up at the sound.
A smile bloomed on her face when she saw him. “Hey, Woody!” she called, shoving her hat farther back on her head.
“Hey, yourself,” he returned, not even wincing at the nickname she’d assigned to him years before. He propped a custom-made boot on the corral’s lowest rail, his
