That was clearly the wrong thing to say.
He looked like he might strangle her right there where she sat. He was breathing hard, towering over her, looking like he might grab her by her hair and throw her out right then and there.
But he didn’t.
He just glowered at her.
“No, it’s not my ranch. Believe me, your family would never let mine forget that. You probably wouldn’t understand this, but the thing is, a man works a piece of land every day, sweats over it, bleeds over it, takes care of it like it was his, he starts to get ideas he shouldn’t have—”
“That’s not what I meant,” she claimed. “I mean…I know you must…care about the place—”
“Care about it?” He laughed, still furious. “I care about what I have for dinner some nights, whether the Cowboys win a football game, whether it’s going to rain or be sunny. What I feel for this ranch is a helluva lot more than care.”
“Yes. Okay.” She got to her feet, tired of him towering over her, though in truth, he still did even when she was standing. “I’m sorry—”
“So for you to just waltz in here like your family owns the place, which I suppose you think you do, and head down into that mine, like you think you own that, too, to try to find that stupid diamond—”
“Yes. You’re right. I’m sorry—”
“To give me that I’m-just-a-grad-student routine? That it’s-the-chance-of-a-lifetime routine?” He took her chin in his hand, getting right up in her face and holding her there, glaring at her. “You lie really well, Red.”
She shoved him away hard, and then nearly tripped over the stone hearth of the fireplace as she backed away from him.
He swore, reached out to grab her to keep her from falling.
“You really didn’t know it was me?” he demanded, his grip on her nearly tight enough to hurt.
“No. Of course not. I told you. I thought you were just a ranch hand. I thought—”
“What?” he demanded.
“Nothing—” She was blushing, just thinking of what she thought. That he was a beautiful man. A beautiful, ordinary man. And of what she’d wanted from him, what she’d let him do.
Oh, Lord, what she’d let him do…
What she’d planned for them to do once they got here…
She swallowed hard, thinking for a moment of all she’d lost in this instant. Glad it hadn’t gone any further between them, and yet…
She couldn’t believe he was one of the Foleys.
Paige had been introduced to him, of course. A girl didn’t move in the upper echelon of Texas society for her whole life without being introduced to the Foleys, even if her family had been feuding with them since the Civil War.
So they’d no doubt exchanged icily polite, icily brief handshakes at various social functions over the years, charity balls, the governor’s mansion, that sort of thing.
There were three brothers, something of a mixed set, all young, wealthy, arrogant and good-looking. In her mind, she could see them standing in a row in black tuxedoes and starched white shirts, looking for all the world like they owned everything they surveyed.
She’d never really been that interested in the feud, in perpetuating it or ending it, had just grown up on tales of how terribly his family had treated hers and been happy to keep her distance from him and the entire clan.
So she’d shook his hand a time or two when forced to do so in the name of good manners and not having any interest in causing a scene.
She really hadn’t paid that much attention to the whole brood until her mother’s terrible secret had come out this summer.
That her mother had once loved his father, Rex Foley. Her curiosity had driven her to the Internet and the photos she could find. She’d skipped right over the brothers and zeroed in on the father instead.
His father had slept with her mother and fathered a child with her. Paige’s little brother, Charlie.
How could that be?
She still couldn’t quite believe it, couldn’t make sense of it, couldn’t…
And all that time she’d been glaring at pictures of Rex Foley, trying to understand, trying to see something of her little brother in him and wondering how it was that they’d managed to keep that secret all these years, how no one had known…
All that time, she should have been looking at the Foley brothers, arming herself, protecting herself against what was to come.
Then she might have known, she might have recognized him from the first. It was just that every time in the past when she’d met him he’d been in a tuxedo, all polished manners and cool, sophisticated charm, dismissive as could be of anyone in her family and disapproving, as well. And while that arrogance might work for some women, Paige had grown up with men like that.
It was old hat to her, a nice-looking man in a tuxedo who acted like he owned the world.
Men like that really didn’t do a thing for her.
They just didn’t seem real.
That man working the ranch, checking the mine, catching her there…He’d seemed interesting and very real.
So different from any version of Travis Foley she’d ever seen.
Sweaty, a little dirty, in worn jeans and well-worn boots.
A working man.
Real.
Right now he was also furious.
“What?” she asked, lost in her thoughts.
“Before, you said you thought I was a ranch hand, that I was…What? What were you going to say?”
That it would be nice to have someone who looked like you walk right into my life. That I was lonely. That I hadn’t had anyone special in my life for a long time and…And…
Oh, God. What did it matter now?
It could never be.
He was Travis Foley.
“I thought you looked like a nice guy,” she told him, laughing with as much disgust as she could muster. “How ridiculous is that?”
That seemed to satisfy him for the moment. They retreated to opposite corners of the small room, him leaving her by the fire to get warm while he brooded in the corner by the bed.
A single bed, maybe a single and a half, if there was such a thing.
Paige looked away. She had to forget what happened between
