Page 24 of At the Rancher's Pleasure

“Good trip?” she asked as he pulled her bag off her shoulder to carry it for her.

“Good enough,” he replied, resisting the temptation to tell her that he wished she’d come with him, that he’d missed her company. In bed and out.

“What time did you get back?” Sarabeth casually asked, but he heard the note of tension in her voice. Had the same where-is-he, what-is-he-doing thoughts tumbled through her mind? He followed her to her cottage, making a mental note to replace the warped plank on the stairs leading up to the front door.

“Eightish,” Brett answered. He lifted her bag and allowed it to drop again. “Where did you spend the night?”

Okay, that question wasn’t casual at all. It was demanding, rude and very out of order. He closed his eyes after Sarabeth sent him a withering stare, turning her back on him to open the door to the cottage. “You don’t have any right to ask me that question in that particular voice, Brett.”

She was right, he didn’t. But that didn’t stop him from dropping her bag to the floor with a thump and slapping his hands on his hips. “No, I don’t, but I’m asking it anyway.”

“And then do I have the right to interrogate you about your weekend?” Sarabeth coolly asked, placing her handbag on the hall table and her car keys in the pottery bowl.

Since he spent his nights going over balance sheets and profit and loss statements and his days either on horseback or in a pickup inspecting the land, he didn’t have anything to hide, as he told her.

“Neither do I,” Sarabeth informed him, her back straight and her eyes frosty. “I spent the night with Jaynie and Laura, if you must know.”

Relief, as hot and sweet as melted taffy, flowed through him, and he released the pent-up breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “Oh. Okay.”

“Okay? It’s not like I needed your permission, Harston.”

Stop digging, boy, you’re going to give yourself a hernia.“Of course you don’t,” Brett told her in an attempt to douse the light of battle in her eyes. “It was just a figure of speech.”

They locked eyes and in those gorgeous blue depths, beneath the simmering attraction, he noticed determination and a distance that hadn’t been there when he left.

Oh, crap.

He knew that look—he was thirty-eight years old and he’d seen it in the countless women before her. It screamed that shewantedtotalk. A phrase to freeze a man’s blood.

“I think we should talk...”

Was he a genius or what? He really should’ve just gone to work this morning instead of hanging around like a crazy, besotted fool.

“Shall we sit down?” Sarabeth gestured to the couch, sitting on the rug where they’d made love that first night they hooked up.

Images of taking her up against the wall blasted his brain and he shook his head. “I’ll stand. You obviously have something on your mind so just spit it out.”

Sarabeth placed her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and the action raised her chest. Damn, he wished she hadn’t brought attention to her perky breasts. He wanted his mouth on her coral-colored nipple, her smooth legs around his hips, her mouth and body under his...

“I think us being apart was a really good thing, and it gave me time to think. I’m sure you enjoyed having some time away from me too.”

Sarabeth looked like she was waiting for him to agree with her, but he couldn’t do that. He’d had two emotions the past seventy-two hours, horny and frustrated. And lonely. Okay, that was three emotions...

“And I think we should slow this down, take a breath,” Sarabeth said.

“Why?”

She shrugged and looked past him. He needed her eyes on him so he lifted his foot and kicked the door closed. Her now irritated eyes returned to his.

“You might be retired, but I need to get to work sometime soon,” Brett told her, wincing at the harsh note in his voice, “so can we move this conversation along?”

Her mouth fell open and her irritation morphed into anger. “Is that a crack about my age?”

What? No! He hadn’t meant it like that. And she knew her age wasn’t an issue. Didn’t she? “I’m sleeping with you because you are a sexy, fascinating woman. I don’t give a crap about your age. Or mine. So stop putting words in my mouth.”

Sarabeth tipped her head back to look at the ceiling, and when she met his eyes again, he saw her rueful expression. “Sorry.”

“Accepted. Now tell me what’s really going on.”

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