Kitabı oku: «The Taming Of Tyler Kincaid», sayfa 3

CHAPTER THREE

THE woman had been easy to convince—but then, it was she who’d come up with the story, not he.

By the third morning of his employment at Espada, Tyler was almost ready to believe the tale himself. Once, a long time ago, a lifetime ago, he’d been an itinerant cowboy, wandering from ranch to ranch, taking a job here, another there, doing whatever needed doing so he could put a meal in his belly.

That was the man he’d been, the man Caitlin McCord thought he was. And he, lacking any better entrée to the Baron kingdom, and to whatever secrets it might hold, had accepted the scenario.

The only person who didn’t buy into it was the foreman.

Tyler knew those keen old eyes had not missed the way he and Caitlin McCord had come riding in together on the horse, and certainly not the way she’d jumped from the saddle, her face pale, her eyes cold.

“This is Tyler Kincaid,” she’d said to the old man, as Tyler strolled after her. “Give him a job, a bed and a meal.”

She turned on her heel and stalked off toward the main house, shoulders set, spine rigid. Tyler watched her go and thought how remarkable it was that a woman could look so stiffly unyielding when she felt so softly feminine in a man’s arms.

“Kincaid.”

The old man’s voice had sounded rough as gravel. Tyler looked at him.

“Ms. Caitlin ain’t an employee. She’s family.”

The warning was clear.

“And she’s offered me a job,” Tyler said, smiling politely.

“So she has.” The old man’s face was expressionless. “Name’s Jones,” he said, and spat into the dirt. “Abel Jones. I’m the foreman here.”

Tyler nodded, started to stick out his hand and thought better of it.

“Where’d you work last?”

“Here and there,” Tyler answered, with a lazy smile.

“You ain’t from these parts.”

“No,” Tyler agreed, “I’m not.”

“Southerner, ain’t you?”

“Yeah. From Georgia. But I was born in Texas.”

It was the first time Tyler had said such a thing, or even thought it. The old man stared at him for a long moment, his eyes narrowed to slits.

“Fancy duffel you got there,” he said, jerking his whiskered chin at Tyler’s bag.

Tyler didn’t blink. “Nylon. Lasts longer than canvas.”

“Uh-huh. What can you do?”

“Rope, ride, fix whatever needs fixing. And I’m good with horses.” God, he’d said those same words more times than he wanted to remember, a thousand years ago.

“Ms. Caitlin wants you hired on, so be it.” The foreman’s eyes turned flinty. “Jes do your job and we’ll get along fine.”

Tyler recognized the warning that was implicit in the simple words. But he said nothing, simply nodded and followed a kid named Manuel to the bunkhouse, where he was assigned a room.

“You want me to show you around?” the kid asked.

“No, that’s okay. I want to put my stuff away first.”

Abel was waiting for him, shovel in hand when he came out, but Tyler ignored it.

“I’m hungry,” he said shortly. “Haven’t eaten in a long time.”

Well, it wasn’t a lie. He’d had breakfast hours ago. Half a grapefruit, a croissant, black coffee. His usual morning meal, sufficient when a man faced a few hours spent riding a desk and then lunch with a client but not very substantive when you were going to ride horses or clean up after them, he thought grimly, looking at the foreman and the shovel.

The old man nodded. “You don’t look much like you’ve missed a meal.”

Tyler forced a smile. “Care to listen to my stomach growl, Pop?”

“Name’s Abel. All right, go on up to the main house, to the back door. Tell Carmen to feed you.”

The house on the rise was big and imposing, but no more so than Tyler’s own home back in Atlanta. He concentrated on the irony in that in hopes it would keep him from thinking about the banging of his own heart as he rapped on the door, then stepped inside to confront the woman who might have borne him.

Carmen was round. Round face, round body—even her shiny black hair was round, braided and twisted high on her head in a coronet.

And she was not his mother. Tyler knew it, the minute she turned from the stove and smiled at him.

“Señor?”

“Abel sent me,” he told her, while his heartbeat returned to normal. “He said it would be okay if you fixed me something to eat.”

She smiled even more broadly, sat him at a massive oak table and fed him huevos rancheros, homemade biscuits and cups of fragrant black coffee until he thought he’d burst.

“The men who work at Espada are lucky to have you to cook for them. Your children, too,” he said casually, because he needed to be certain, even though he already knew.

“Ah, my children,” Carmen said happily, and told him all about Esme, her daughter, who was twenty and in her second year at the university, and about her son, Esteban, who was a doctor in Austin.

“Dr. Esteban O’Connor,” she said, and chuckled. A blush colored her dusky cheeks, making her look younger than her years. “The child of my youth—and of a youthful indiscretion.”

Tyler smiled. “And how old is this child of your youth?” he said, even more casually, and Carmen told him that Esteban was going to celebrate his thirty-fifth birthday next month.

Tyler had nodded, tried to ignore the sudden emptiness inside. It wasn’t a surprise; he’d known, hadn’t he, that this warmhearted woman wasn’t his mother? She’d never have given him life, then abandoned him.

“That was a wonderful meal,” he’d said. “Gracias, Carmen.”

He’d dropped a kiss on her cheek and gone to find Abel, who’d set him to work.

Work was what the old man had given him, all right, Tyler thought now, grunting as he unloaded feed sacks from the back of a pickup truck. Hard work, too, as if hoisting heavy sacks and shoveling manure were tests he had to pass before he could be trusted with anything as important as risking his neck trying to break a horse.

All the time he worked, whatever the job, he kept his eyes open, alert for something, anything, that might give him some clue about his birth, about how his mother—his parents—had fit into the enormous puzzle that was Espada. He knew it was foolish, that he’d left this place when he was only a day or two old. What memories would a newborn infant have? Not a one. He understood that.

Still, he looked at everything as if the most simple thing could be the key to unlock the mystery of his past.

And then, on the third morning, Caitlin McCord came strolling toward the stable and he knew he’d been kidding himself. Part of him had been searching for clues to John Smith’s birth—but part of him had been watching, and waiting, for her.

He felt as if someone had landed a hard right to his jaw.

She was beautiful. How in the world had he ever mistaken her for a boy, even at a distance?

It was a hot day. China-blue sky, brutal yellow sun, with no breeze or a cloud to ease the sizzling temperature. He was sweating and so were the other men. Even the horses were feeling the heat, but Caitlin looked untouched by it.

He drank in the sight of her. She was wearing a sleeveless blue T-shirt and he could see the musculature of her arms, the strength of them, and he wondered why it was that he’d never before thought how sexy that could be. She was wearing jeans, as he was, but hers were a faded blue, almost white at the knees and hems. They fit her snugly, cupping her bottom, skimming the length of those incredibly long, long legs as lovingly as a caress. Her hair was pulled back from her face but a couple of auburn curls had escaped at her ears and on her forehead.

Tyler drew in his breath.

She looked, he thought, like a cool, clear drink of water—and he was a man dying of thirst.

He tossed the last sack from the truck, then straightened up. She was going to pass within a couple of feet of him and the truck but her gaze never drifted right or left. His belly clenched. She was going to walk right on by and pretend he wasn’t even there.

To hell with that, he thought, and jumped down in front of her.

“Good morning.”

Caitlin stumbled to a halt. “Good morning,” she said coolly, and started around him. Tyler moved along with her.

“Nice day,” he said.

“Very.” She took a step to the right. Tyler took a step, too.

“Mr. Kincaid—”

“Well,” he said lazily, “isn’t that something? When I was trespassin’ on your property, you called me ‘Kincaid,’ but now that I’m gainfully in your employ, I’ve graduated to ‘Mr.’”

Caitlin flashed him a look. “It isn’t my property, Mr. Kincaid, nor are you in my employ. This ranch belongs to Jonas Baron.”

“You’re his stepdaughter.”

“Exactly.”

“Beggin’ your pardon, but I don’t see the difference.”

“I am not a Baron, Mr. Kincaid. That means I hold no legal interest in Espada and never will. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“Is there a reason you’ve been avoidin’ me, Ms. McCord?”

Caitlin flushed. “I haven’t been…I don’t like being made fun of, Mr. Kincaid.”

“Forgive me, Ms. McCord. I wasn’t makin’ fun, I was makin’ an observation.”

“Here’s an observation for you, Kincaid.” Her hazel eyes flashed as she looked at him. “I find it interesting that you seem to have developed a drawl in the last couple of days. And you can ditch the ‘forgive me’s’ and the ‘beggin’ your pardon’ nonsense. Expressions like those are lies, coming from you. I don’t think you’ve ever apologized to anybody in your life.”

Tyler tried to look wounded. “I’m a Southerner, Ms. McCord. We’re all gentlemen. Would a gentleman lie to a lady?”

He saw her mouth twitch but she stopped the smile before it got started. “You didn’t talk that way when we met, Kincaid.”

He grinned. “Maybe I was trying to impress you.”

“Maybe you were trying to convince me you were something you’re not.”

Tyler’s dark brows lifted. “Meaning?”

“Meaning, Abel doesn’t think you’re who you claim to be, and I’m starting to think he’s right.”

“Because of the way I talk?”

“Because of the way you act, Kincaid. Everything about you says you’re not the drifter you pretend to be.” Her nostrils flared. “And because you’re the first hand we’ve ever hired who has a cell phone in his duffel bag.”

Tyler bit back the curse that rose to his lips. “And you’re the first employer who’s gone through my things.”

“One of the men saw you using it.” She put her hands on her hips and looked into his eyes. “Or are you going to deny the phone is yours?”

“No point denying it.”

He reached past her for his shirt, which he’d left hanging on the tailgate. The scent of him rose to her nostrils, a combination of sun and man, and his arm brushed lightly against hers. Caitlin felt her heartbeat stumble, which was ridiculous. She didn’t trust Tyler Kincaid, didn’t like him—and she surely didn’t enjoy standing this close to him when he was half-naked. Lots of the men worked shirtless on a day like this but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have had the decency to cover up before he spoke to her instead of putting his body on display.

At least now he’d put his shirt on, rolled up the sleeves, smoothed down the collar. Dammit, why didn’t he do up the buttons? She certainly had no wish to look at the dark hair on his chest, or follow it as it arrowed down toward his belly button, over those hard abdominal muscles…

“Ms. McCord?”

There was a little tilt to the corner of his mouth and she knew, she knew, he’d done it deliberately, put himself on exhibit as if she gave a damn what his body looked like, or how many women had known the pleasure of it.

“Lots of things are against the law,” he said softly. “This isn’t one of them.”

She flushed. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said, owning a portable phone isn’t illegal.”

Caitlin straightened her spine. “You’re not a drifter,” she said flatly.

Tyler answered with a shrug.

“Why did you say you were?”

“You were the one who called me that, lady. Not me.”

“You didn’t try to correct me, Kincaid.”

“Correct you?” He laughed. “‘You want to wait,’” he said, mimicking her, “‘wait, but not on Baron land.’ You were into your Lady of the Manor routine. I figured correcting you would only have landed my butt in jail for trespass.”

Her color heightened but she kept her chin up and her indignation intact. “Who are you, then? And what do you want at Espada?”

He hesitated. He could tell her the truth, tell her the reason he’d come here, but the survival instincts he’d honed years before, that had kept him in one piece at the State Home and then in covert operations in the steaming jungles of Central America, were too powerful to let him make such a mistake. There were secrets here; he was certain of it. There was something in the way Abel looked at him, in the way Caitlin spoke of her role at Espada…

“Kincaid? I asked you a question. What do you want?”

He looked at the woman standing before him. Her eyes were almost gold in the morning sun; her hair was a hundred different shades of red and mahogany and maple. Her mouth was free of lipstick, full and innocent-looking, and he wondered what she’d say, what she’d do, if he told her that what he wanted, ever since he’d laid eyes on her, was to take her in his arms, tumble her into the grass, strip off that cold and haughty look, and the boyish clothes with which she camouflaged a woman’s body, and ignite the heat he knew smoldered in her blood.

Hell, he thought, and turned away.

“I told you what I wanted,” he said roughly. Grunting, he hoisted a feed sack on his shoulder and walked into the stable. “I want to talk to Jonas Baron.”

“About what?”

Tyler dumped the sack and headed out the door. “It’s none of your business.”

“Everything about this ranch is my business.”

“You just told me otherwise. You’re not a Baron, you said, remember?”

“I run Espada, Kincaid. Maybe you’d better get that through your head.”

It took all his determination not to turn around and show her that she might damned well run this ranch but she didn’t run him. This was a woman who needed to be reminded that she was a woman, and he ached for the chance to give her that reminder, but he knew it would be a mistake. Instead he decided to take the wind out of her sails.

“That’s fine,” he said easily, “but my business with Baron has nothing to do with Espada. Now, if you’re done questioning me, Ms. McCord, I’ve got these sacks to deal with and the stalls to muck out, so if it’s all the same with you—”

“Stalls? What about the horses?”

“What about them?”

“Why aren’t you working with the stock?”

“Ask Abel. I’m sure he’s a font of information.” He brushed past her on his way out the door.

“I told him you’re good with horses,” she said as she followed him back and forth. “And he knows we have a horse that needs gentling—oof.”

“Sorry.” Tyler caught her by the elbows as she tottered backward.

“That’s—that’s all right…”

Her heart rose into her throat. His hands were still on her. His eyes glinted like jewels in the shadowed darkness of the stable. And, as she looked into their green depths, she saw something that sent her pulse racing.

“I’ll speak with him,” she said. “With Abel. About putting you to better use.”

A smile curved his mouth, one so sexy and dangerous that it made her breath stop.

“Good.” His voice was soft and slightly husky. A shudder ripped along her spine as he looked down at her mouth, then into her eyes. “I’d like to be put to better use.”

“With—with the horses.”

The smile came again, lazy and even more dangerous. “Of course.”

Caitlin knew she was blushing and hated herself for it, hated this insufferably egotistical male even more for causing her face to redden.

“Let go of me, please.”

“Ever the lady,” he said, in that same husky whisper. “Except, I don’t believe it. I think there are times you’re not quite the lady you pretend to be.”

“I am always a lady,” she said coldly.

“In that case…” His hands slid up her arms and clasped her shoulders. “Maybe it’s time somebody showed you what you’re missing, Ms. McCord.”

“Kincaid.” Was that breathless little voice really hers? Caitlin cleared her throat. “Kincaid, take your hands off me.”

“I would,” he said lazily. “But that’s not what you really want, is it?”

“Listen, you—you arrogant, egotistical—”

“Kincaid? Kincaid, where in hell are you?”

Abel’s voice, and the echo of his footsteps on the cement floor, cut through the building tension. Tyler let his hands fall from Caitlin’s shoulders. He stepped aside and she slipped past him, just as the foreman stepped into the stable.

The old man looked from her to Tyler. “Is there a problem, Ms. Caitlin?”

“Yes.” Caitlin shot Tyler an angry look. “Yes, there is. I want you to tell this man…to tell him…” She looked at Tyler, whose gaze had not left her, and her throat tightened. “Starting tomorrow, let him work with the horses. With the new mare that’s afraid of her own shadow. You hear me, Abel?”

Abel’s bushy brows shot up, but he nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll see to it.”

Caitlin stood leaning against the railing of the small corral, watching Tyler and the horse and wishing she’d followed her instincts and fired him. But she’d called Jonas in New York, and Jonas had told her to let him stay on.

“Man’s up to somethin’, Catie,” Jonas had said. “You keep him there till I get back. Just you watch yourself, you hear? Don’t turn your back.”

She’d been careful not to do that. In fact, she’d made it a point to keep an eye on Kincaid. Just now, others were doing the same thing, including Abel, leaning on the rail beside her.

“Man’s got good hands,” he said, and spat into the dust.

“Yes,” she said, with an indifferent shrug. She didn’t want to think about those hands, about how they’d felt on her. “He seems to.” She cleared her throat. “I was wondering if you had any ideas about putting Lancelot to stud.”

“Did you ask him what he’s doin’ here? Man like that ain’t no drifter.”

“He’s here to talk with Jonas.”

“And to shovel manure?” Abel snorted. “I don’t think so.”

“Look, Abel, Tyler Kincaid isn’t our problem. He wanted a job, we gave him a job, and he’s doing it, isn’t he?”

“Suppose he is. But he asks a lot of questions.”

“Questions?” Caitlin looked at the foreman. “About what?”

Abel lifted his shoulders. “This, that. Everythin’. Asked Carmen to tell him about herself, her kids. Asked a couple of the older men if they’d been workin’ here long, what they knew of the old days, how it was on Espada then.”

Caitlin smiled despite herself. “Dangerous questions, huh? I mean, a man’s definitely up to no good if he wants to talk about the old days, or if he takes the time to ask Carmen about her son and daughter.”

“Just figured I’d let you know what’s going’ on, Ms. Caitlin. Everythin’ ain’t always what it seems.”

“I appreciate that,” she said gently. She looked at Tyler, watched the mare come forward daintily to sniff at the hand he held out to her. “He’s probably just a cowboy that’s got some get-rich-quick scheme he’s dying to tell Jonas about.” She smiled. “And we both know how Jonas will deal with that.”

The foreman chuckled. “Yes, ma’am. Tyler Kincaid’ll be out of here so fast it’ll make his head spin.”

Caitlin turned back to the corral as Abel sauntered away. She stepped up on the bottom rail and watched Tyler’s performance.

That was what it was, all right. A performance, but she had to admit, it was enjoyable. Tyler had a gentle touch, strong hands and a sense of authority. The mare was responding to all of it.

Just as she had.

The thought made her uneasy, and she forced it from her head.

The sun had climbed higher; it was a blazing fist of yellow, punching through the blue sky. Tyler had left his shirt on and it was soaked through. Caitlin could see the muscles move and bunch beneath the wet fabric. Her face heated; she looked sideways at the men lining the fence but all their attention was on the man and the horse. Some of the men called out good-natured words of advice.

Tyler looked at them, smiled, even grinned—but he never once looked at her.

It annoyed her, though she knew it was silly. Why should he look at her? Still, it ticked her off. A while ago, she’d accused him of being arrogant because of the way he’d spoken to her. Now, she was thinking of him as arrogant because he refused to acknowledge her presence. She was being an idiot…except, dammit, he was being arrogant. She knew it. Did he think it was a turn-on? Caitlin thumbed her hair behind her ears. Not for her, it wasn’t. She’d grown up watching her mother succumb to a seemingly endless succession of men whose egos were bigger than their IQs. Even Jonas, who was as smart as a whip, thought he could strut through life with only his arrogance to guide him.

If Tyler Kincaid thought the same thing, he was in for a nasty surprise.

Eventually the mare was trembling with exhaustion. Tyler rubbed her ears, whispered to her, then jerked his head toward Manuel, who was watching with the others.

“She’s had enough for today,” he told the boy. “Take her inside. Give her a good rubdown and some of those special oats she’s so fond of.”

Caitlin waited for Manuel to point out that Tyler could take the mare inside himself, that he was nobody to give orders, but the boy nodded and did as he’d been told. The same thing had happened when Tyler began working with the mare. One of the older men had been standing around, smoking. Tyler had asked him to get the mare’s tack and Pete hadn’t hesitated, even though he was as independent in spirit as most cowboys.

There was an art to giving men like this orders, and some basic rules.

Rule number one was that one ranch hand didn’t give an order to another but the men seemed to have forgotten that. Tyler asked a man to do something, the man did it. It was as simple as that.

And it annoyed the hell out of her. Was she supposed to stand by and let a stranger order her men around? Jonas had told her to keep Kincaid on until he got back but that didn’t mean she had to let him march all over her.

It was time to push things and find out who Kincaid really was, and what he wanted.

The men drifted away. Kincaid strolled toward her. He had the lazy walk of a man who spent lots of time in the saddle but it was tempered with a masculine grace and innate authority she’d never seen in anyone but Jonas Baron and her stepbrothers. Strange, that she should think of Jonas’s sons just now, and yet—and yet, there was something so familiar in that walk. In the set of those shoulders…

“Show’s over,” Tyler said. “You can leave now.”

Color flooded her face. She took her arms from the top rail and stepped back. “What did you say?”

That smile she’d seen before—insolent, all-knowing, dangerously sexy—curved across his mouth. He opened the gate and stepped out of the corral.

“You heard me. I said the show was over.”

Caitlin could feel herself tremble with anger. She watched as he drew his shirt over his head and used it to mop his torso. Sun glinted on his chest, touched the powerful muscles of his biceps, the ridged abdominal wall with gold.

Her mouth thinned. “Must you flaunt yourself?”

“It’s hot. I’ve been working my tail off. If that means I’m flaunting myself, so be it.”

“You’re out of line, Kincaid.”

“I’m honest, Ms. McCord.”

“You’re insolent, and you’re so full of yourself it’s a miracle you don’t explode.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“I’ll just bet you have.” Caitlin blew a strand of hair from her forehead and bunched her fists on her hips. “Just what are you doing here, Kincaid?”

“Hell, Ms. McCord, we’ve been over this ground already.”

“Yes, and you told me it was none of my affair but I think it is. I want some answers, and I want them now.”

“I told you, I have business with Jonas Baron.” Tyler hung the shirt over his shoulder, hooked it on his thumb and started toward the bunkhouse. Caitlin fell in beside him.

“What kind of business?” Her legs were long, but his were longer. She was almost running to keep up with him, and she didn’t like it. “Dammit,” she said, dancing out in front of him, “stand still when I’m talking to you!”

Tyler’s eyes narrowed. “Do you use that tone of voice with all your hands?”

“Just answer the question, Kincaid. What are you doing at Espada?”

Tyler looked down into Caitlin’s face. It was flushed and her hazel eyes glittered with anger—and he was pretty sure he knew what that anger was all about. She’d been watching him work the mare. Hell, she’d been watching him ever since yesterday. After three days of never so much as glimpsing her, he saw her everywhere. And each time he did, he could feel her eyes on him. Not that he could ever catch her looking. The second he turned toward her, Caitlin McCord swung away like a nervous filly.

A muscle danced in his jaw.

And he knew the reason.

Something had ignited between them, hot and electric, primitive, almost pagan. What he wanted, what she wanted, was to feel him deep inside her. He knew it. She knew it—and she didn’t like it.

She was too good for him. She thought so, anyway. He’d been watching her as she went about her business and yeah, she knew her way around the ranch. She wasn’t afraid of getting her hands dirty or her boots soiled, and there was muscle tucked away beneath that soft, golden skin, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a lady.

And ladies didn’t stoop to play bedroom games with the likes of the man she thought he was, the man he would have been, if he were still John Smith.

“Dammit, Kincaid, I asked you a question!”

Tyler turned away abruptly, walked to the old-fashioned horse trough beside the bunkhouse and ducked his head into the cool water.

“And I answered it,” he said, looking at her.

He ran his fingers through his hair, spearing it back from his face, and blotted his face with his shirt. She tried not to notice the drops of water, caught like diamonds, that glittered against his tanned shoulders and clung to the dark mat of hair on his chest.

“You don’t belong here.”

His teeth showed in a quick smile. “No?”

“No. You’re no cowhand.”

He sighed, leaned back against the trough and folded his arms. “Look, lady, I didn’t storm the castle walls. You said Baron wasn’t here, you offered me a job and I took it. Why make it into anything more complicated than that?”

“Maybe,” Caitlin said stiffly, “I made a mistake.”

His eyes turned dark. “Maybe you did.” He took a step forward. “Truth is,” he said softly, “this hasn’t anything to do with you wanting to know why I came to Espada, does it?”

“Certainly it does. I’m in charge, when Jonas is away, and—”

“It’s me.” His voice was low. He moved forward again and she took a step back. “I make you uneasy.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m not afraid of you.”

Tyler smiled. “No?”

“No. Of course I’m not. I—”

“Maybe you’re afraid of yourself.”

She caught her breath as he reached out and lay his hand against her cheek. It was a simple gesture but an intimate one. She didn’t like it or the little knowing smile on his mouth—or the way her heart jumped, when she felt his roughened fingertips brush her skin.

“Don’t do that,” she said, and jerked her head away.

“I could feel your eyes on me, when I was with the mare.” He reached out again but she pulled back before he could touch her. “It made it tough to concentrate.”

“All right, that’s it. I should have done this yesterday. Kincaid, you’re fired.”

“For telling the truth?”

“Maybe you didn’t hear me, cowboy. You are out of here! Collect your time from Abel and—”

She cried out as he caught her wrist and dragged her behind the bunkhouse. She swung at him with her free hand but he caught that wrist, too, pushed her back against the limestone wall and pinned her hands to her sides. Her heart thudded into her throat. His eyes had gone from green to black. He looked hard, and dangerous—and incredibly, savagely exciting.

“I’ll scream,” she said. Her voice trembled and he laughed softly. He knew, she thought, he knew she was as excited as she was terrified, and in that moment she didn’t know which of them she hated more, Tyler Kincaid or herself.

“Does it frighten you, Caitlin?”

“Let go of me. Let go or so help me—”

“Wanting a man like me? Does it scare you, just a little?”

“Nothing scares me,” she said, forcing her eyes to stay locked to his, telling herself that he couldn’t hurt her, wouldn’t hurt her, not here. The bunkhouse blocked them from view, yes, but they weren’t alone, not really. There were men working only a few yards away. All she had to do was scream and this would all be nothing but a bad dream.

“Kincaid.” Her lips felt parched. She ran the tip of her tongue over them. His gaze followed the motion of her tongue and the realization sent a hot, lancing need shooting through her. “Kincaid, look. This is a mistake. You must realize that. You can’t get away with—with—”

His mouth twisted. “Is that what you think? That I’m going to rape you?” He laughed, though the sound of it was humorless. “Hell, lady, you think you’ve got me all figured out, don’t you?”

“Just let go of me, dammit!”

“Answer a question first.”

“You’re not in a position to bargain, Kin—”

Her breath caught as he shifted his weight, moved just enough against her so that she could feel him—and, heaven help her, feel the heat of her own response slipping through her blood.

“One question,” he said softly. He clasped both her wrists in one hand and cupped her face with the other, tilting it to him. “Did you like watching me?”

She looked at him, told her pulse to stop its crazed race. “I told you, I wasn’t—”

He bent his head, brushed his mouth against hers. “The truth,” he whispered.