Page 77 of Wyoming Heart

He scowled. “Aren’t you glad to see me? I thought we were going to talk about the future. I’m sorry I had to leave so suddenly...”

She cocked her head. “But you had a hot date in Manhattan,” she finished for him.

He blinked. “What?”

She smiled. It was a cold smile. “Gossip is that you’re marrying the starlet who’s working in that new television show about medieval times. You look really great in a dinner jacket, by the way. Very expensive.”

He could feel the blood draining out of his face. “Bart told you,” he said roughly.

“Bart didn’t tell me a thing. I saw your picture on the front page of a tabloid when I was in New York City. With Jake McGuire,” she added deliberately.

It was too much to take in at once. “What the hell were you doing in Manhattan with McGuire?” he asked belligerently.

He had no idea what she did for a living and she wasn’t sharing it. Not now. “I was having dinner at the Four Seasons,” she replied, and it was the truth. “The food is really great. Jake pampers me,” she added and sighed.

His face hardened as he looked down at her. “I should have told you. I didn’t know how.”

“A millionaire, playing at being a cowboy, and I fell for it. The tabloid was very informative,” she added, and meant it, because she’d bought a copy of it despite Jake trying to discourage her. “Apparently there are only a few movie stars you haven’t slept with.”

He cursed under his breath. “Mina...” He spread his hands, desperate for words that would take that contemptuous look off her face. “Can I come in? I need to talk to you.”

She bit her lower lip. She loved him. She was carrying his child. If she let him in the house, she was going to fall under that spell all over again and she couldn’t bear to.

He saw that look on her face. Hope rose in him. He smiled tenderly. “Don’t you think a man can change, if he wants to?”

She was weighing the smile and the words against his known relationship with Ida, Catelow’s bad woman, and that starlet on the front page of the tabloid.

He moved a step closer, so that she could feel the heat and power of his lean body. “Okay, it’s true. I’ve been a rounder. I’ve had women. You knew that already. But you didn’t know who I was, and you cared for me anyway. Cared a lot. Why can’t you believe that it works both ways?”

She was wavering.

“There hasn’t been anybody since the day I met you, when you stamped on my foot and dared me to have you arrested.” He smiled at her expression. “I never lie,” he added. “I wouldn’t try to fox you anyway. Bart says you’re pretty hard to fool.”

“Usually,” she conceded.

“You make great coffee,” he said. “We could have a cup and talk, couldn’t we? I promise to behave.”

She drew in a breath, conflicted. She winced. “Well, I guess I could make coffee.”

His heart lifted. She wasn’t sending him away. He felt young again.

She opened the door and let him in.

“YOUREALLYDOmake good coffee,” he said after they were drinking it at her small kitchen table. He made a face. “Even if it’s decaf.”

“Thanks.” She couldn’t tell him why she was drinking decaf. It might not be good for the baby to continue her strong caffeine habit. Amazing, that she felt shy with him, when they’d been intimate.

He saw that. It made him feel warm inside. The only dark cloud was her friendship with McGuire. He didn’t like her keeping company with him, but he had no way to stop it. Unless, of course, he married her.

“Where do you really live?” she asked.

“At Latigo,” he replied.

Her breath caught. Jake had mentioned that Cort owned a big ranch, but she hadn’t known it would be that one. She’d heard of the huge Santa Gertrudis stud. Most ranchers had. “That’s the biggest ranch in West Texas,” she said.

He nodded. “I owned it jointly with my brothers and my father, but I bought them all out. I’m running it myself now. Well, my father’s been helping me since his wife left him last week,” he muttered.

“Why did she leave him?”

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