him, yet at the same time, he couldn’t deny the excitement rushing through his veins.
Scowling at him, she said, “I walked down to the horse pen because it’s a nice, cool morning and I wanted to get out of the house. This is the last place I thought you would be.”
Her lame excuse filled his snort with a mix of humor and sarcasm. “Really? This is where I work. Where did you think I’d be?”
“In bed. Where everyone else is right now!”
Her nostrils flared like a filly being circled by a stallion, and Gabe felt a hot, feral flame flicker deep inside him.
“Everyone is in bed—but you and me,” he pointed out lowly.
Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips and it was all Gabe could do to keep from closing the last bit of space between their faces. “If you think—”
“I think a whole lot of things,” he bluntly interrupted, “but I know we’re both thinking about this.”
Mercedes wasn’t sure if he tugged her forward or if she simply wilted against him, but the next thing she knew his mouth was hot and heavy on hers, his arms were wrapped around her shoulders, anchoring her upper body against his.
The intimate connection was such a shock to Mercedes’s senses that the thought of resisting didn’t have time to enter her mind. And then as his lips began to search and plunder her mouth, she realized that she didn’t want to resist. She didn’t want to do anything but stand in the circle of his arms and drink in the heady taste of him.
Somewhere outside, she heard a rooster crow, a horse snort, another squeal. Inside the room a clock was tick, tick, ticking. Or was that the sound of her heart beating in her ears? She couldn’t tell anymore. Her senses were beginning to melt into a useless puddle.
A keening moan gurgled in the back of her throat as her hands searched for some sort of support. It came in the way of his hard shoulders, and her fingers were about to latch over them when he suddenly jerked back from her.
The abrupt separation of their bodies tilted Mercedes’s footing and left her snatching a steadying hold on the edge of the desk. As she stared at him in stunned fascination, she felt her lips burning, her lungs dragging in long ragged breaths.
After several hard swallows, she finally managed to ask, “What—what was that all about?”
His jaw hardened as his gray gaze swept over her flushed face. “To let you know that I don’t play games, Mercedes. Not with you. Not with any woman. Try it again and I promise you—you’ll get burned.”
Straightening her shoulders, she lifted her chin. “Pompous ass,” she snarled at him. “Do you think every woman that gets within speaking distance of you wants to crawl into your bed?”
Without warning, his hand shot out and cuffed around her upper arm. Mercedes glanced down at his fingers biting into her flesh and then she saw them—tough welts of jagged scars on top of his wrist and disappearing beneath the cuff of his shirt.
Somewhere, somehow he’d been terribly injured. The visual evidence, even the mere thought, shocked Mercedes almost as much as his kiss had, and for long moments she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his brown skin.
“Gabe, your—”
Before she could say more, he jerked his hand away and quickly stepped back from her.
“Get out of here, Mercedes,” he gritted. “Go find some other man to amuse you.”
She couldn’t believe that only seconds before sympathy for the man had swept through her. Right now, she’d love to slap his jaw.
“In case you’ve forgotten, the Sandbur is my home. I’m not going to tiptoe around you as though you’re something special. If I want to come here to the horse barn or anywhere else on the ranch where you just happened to be, I will! And if you don’t like it, you can just—go!”
Not about to wait for any sort of reply from the man, Mercedes stomped out of the little office and marched down the alleyway of the barn. By now, sunlight was slanting through the door of the cavernous building, shedding light on the stalls lined against both walls. Several horses were sticking their heads over gates, watching her movements. Under normal circumstances, she would have stopped and greeted every animal. As it was, her lips were on fire, her eyes stinging with tears, and she couldn’t get out of the barn fast enough.
Back in the tiny office, Gabe switched off the computer and slumped into the desk chair, then immediately jumped back up and grabbed his coffee cup. As he splashed more hot liquid over the portion that had cooled, he muttered several choice curse words at himself. He didn’t know what in hell had come over him or possessed him to grab the woman, much less kiss her.
She’d done nothing more than tease him. And she’d done it gently, at that. Nothing she’d said or done had warranted his behavior. Even if she had come down to the barn purposely to see him, even if she was using him to amuse herself, that didn’t mean he should have taken the bait. He liked to think he was older and wiser than to let his head be turned by a pretty face.
But the moment she’d stood next to him, her face only inches away, her scent drifting over him, tantalizing every cell in his body, his common sense had crawled out the door. Now just the memory of her lips beneath his, the feel of her hands moving against his chest was enough to leave him hard and frustrated.
So what are you going to do now, Gabe?
Remind himself that he was nothing more than a hired hand and get to work.
Chapter Three
Later that morning, Mercedes was in her bedroom, trying to motivate herself to finish unpacking the boxes that were stacked in one corner. So far, she’d done little more than hang a few garments in the armoire.
What was she really doing here on the ranch, anyway? she asked herself for the umpteenth time. Was she really home to stay, or was she simply using the ranch as a launching pad to some other job at some other place?
Sighing wistfully, she dropped the slinky blouse back to the open box lying upon the bed and walked over to a huge arched window. Since her upstairs bedroom was on the west end of the house, the window was partially shaded by the enormous limbs of a live oak, yet through the break in the leaves she could see a part of the ranch yard and a small portion of the horse barn. Just looking at the old barn and recalling her encounter with Gabe Trevino was enough to make her blush.
Unwittingly, her fingertips lifted to her lips. She’d never been kissed like that before, as though she were a piece of meat and he a starving animal. It was embarrassing to think how much the kiss had excited her, had shaken the very core of her womanhood.
She’d thought John had been an adept lover. She’d believed that she would never meet another man whose touch would sweep her senses into such a mushy state of bliss. But Gabe had done that and more. Those few moments in his arms had left her feeling like a hungry tigress. She’d wanted to tear at his clothes and her own. She’d wanted to surrender to him completely. It was frightening to think how he’d woken her sleeping sexuality and turned it into a sizzling libido.
“Darling, you haven’t even gotten started with these boxes. Would you like for Alida
