Killer Cowboy Charm

She thought of George Forester, a paunchy guy she’d met once at a cocktail party. For him this ranch was mere financial speculation, a chance to increase his considerable fortune if he timed the sale correctly. But for Clint, this was about hanging onto his heritage. She wanted Clint to win the lottery.

“You getting cold?” he asked.

“Why?”

“You shivered.”

“I guess I am a bit chilly.” But sitting here talking with Clint, she’d ignored the cold so that they could stay on the porch a little longer. Purple and blue shadows crept over the valley, and even though she wouldn’t want to spend a whole lot of time looking at them, they were kind of pretty.

“Let’s go in. José will be starting supper any minute, and I need to get the fire ready.”

“José cooks on a wood stove?” If so, she should get Jamie up here on the double, to take footage of that happening.

Clint laughed. “Nope. My grandmother used to, but we’ve had electricity for a long time. Dinner and the fire aren’t connected, except that I like to have a fire in the evenings, and if I set it up now, all I have to do is light it later.”

“Oh.” She had the insane desire to hang around and watch him build the fire, maybe because the cowboys in her dad’s beloved Westerns were forever building fires. It seemed like such a manly chore. “Then maybe I’ll go in my room and start working on my script for tomorrow.”

“What time will you do the first broadcast?”

“Early. We have time on the bird at seven-thirty.”

He laughed. “That’s not early, but what in God’s name is time on the bird?”

She pointed skyward. “Satellite. We only get so long to beam up there from the live truck, or as Jamie loves to call it, the nest. We can’t miss that time, or we’re screwed. But we’ll try not to disturb you.”

“You won’t. I’m up by five.”

“Why? I thought your foreman ran things around here.”

He looked like a little boy with his hand in the cookie jar. “Uh, I’m just an early riser.”

Yes, he was definitely playing games with her and hiding significant information. Okay, girlfriend or no girlfriend, he deserved to get zinged for that. “I like that in a man,” she said. “Someone who’d be up and ready for anything.” Then she waited for him to blush, the way he had earlier.

Instead his eyes darkened, his nostrils flared, and his voice dropped to a sexy drawl. “You might want to be more careful how you use that tongue of yours. It could get you into trouble.”

Her pulse hammered. He was flirting with her! That might mean he didn’t have a girlfriend. That would be a very exciting discovery. She decided to push the envelope a little more. “Maybe I like a little trouble now and then.”

His smile was slow and full of meaning. “Lady, nothing around here qualifies as little.”

She gulped. Maybe she’d underestimated this guy. But she was determined to have the last word. “I’m delighted to hear it. I’m a girl who likes her thrills super-sized. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to do some work before dinner.” Then she whisked through the front door and hurried down the hall.

Back in her room, she closed the door and stood there breathing hard. Good grief. She’d imagined herself in control of the situation, and then wham! Tables turned. She’d better decide for sure how she wanted this to go between them before he stole the decision right from under her…on top of her…and behind her. Damn.

3

CLINT DIDN’T FOLLOW Meg into the house right away. He didn’t trust himself not to go down that hall after her. He shouldn’t have said what he had, but she brought out that side of him and made him think along dangerous lines. What a spitfire. An exciting, arousing bundle of woman. He wondered if she’d meant any of it, or if toying with guys was what she did for amusement.

Probably the latter. He’d be well advised to keep away from someone who had Manhattan by the tail. Hell, he’d seen her picture on the front of one of those celebrity magazines at the barber shop the other day. The last thing he wanted was to get mixed up with someone who had that kind of visibility.

He shouldn’t be fooled because she’d sat on the porch with him and shared some conversation over a cup of coffee. She didn’t have anything else to do at the moment. Still, she got his blood pumping more than any woman had in a long while.

She was also starting to see right through him. He didn’t know if she’d figure everything out before she left, but she already had a pretty good idea that a business degree wasn’t the whole story with him. He hadn’t counted on her being this sharp.

Apparently he’d made the mistake of watching her for five minutes on TV and thinking he had her pegged. She was more complicated than that, more fascinating in person than she had been as an image on a television screen. But no matter how attracted he was, he’d be better off leaving well enough alone.

He had enough troubles without making matters worse. No telling how George would react if he found out Clint had been fooling around with the TV lady. And that was assuming she’d allow any fooling around. She might have no intention of following through on any of her suggestive comments.

But he wasn’t sure about that, and it drove him crazy, wondering. Ah, to hell with it. This would all be over in two days, and he’d be back to helping Tuck with Gabriel, renting horses to greenhorns and buying lottery tickets every week. With that thought firmly in mind, he went around to the side of the house, gathered an armload of firewood, and took it in through the kitchen door.

José, a guy who clearly liked his own cooking way too much, was already slicing and dicing for what looked like his famous enchiladas. Hired when Clint’s mother couldn’t handle the job anymore, José had been in charge of the Circle W kitchen for enough years that he felt the kitchen was his to command.

He glanced up from the cutting board. “Where’s the TV lady?”

“In her room working on her script for tomorrow.”

José’s dark eyes shone with excitement. “Do I get to meet her?”

“Sure, you can meet her. I thought you’d be having dinner with us, like you always do.”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to do that. I know myself. I’d dump my food in my lap while I was busy staring at her.”

“Aw, no, you wouldn’t. She’s not that scary.”

“Boss, she was in People magazine. I’ve never come face-to-face with anyone who was in People. I wouldn’t know how to act. I’d embarrass myself, for sure. I’d—”

“You’d better stop chopping that tomato. It’s mushed into a pulp already.”

José glanced at the chopping board. “See? Just thinking about her I murdered this poor tomato. No, just introduce me before you start eating, and I’ll go back in the kitchen and quiver for ten minutes.”

Clint laughed. “Okay. Your decision. But I really don’t think—”

The kitchen door opened and Tuck poked in his head. “Jed and Denny have voted to eat down at the bunkhouse tonight instead of up here. So give us a call when the food’s ready and I’ll come get it.”

José nodded. “I’ll bet I know why. They’re all nervous about the TV lady and don’t think their manners are good enough.”

“I guess so.” Tuck shook his head. “Me, I couldn’t care less one way or the other, but they made me promise to stay down there with them and act like we do this all the time. They’re scared, but they don’t want her to know it.”

Clint was having trouble comprehending it. Jed, an accomplished steer wrestler, was a bull of a guy who’d never seemed afraid of anything. Redheaded Denny always had girls hanging around and he’d been the first to sign up for the contest. “Are you saying that José, Jed and Denny are all too nervous to be in the same room with her?”

“Seems like,” Tuck said. “Now, the cameraman, he’s a different story. They’re real tight with him already. He’s eating with them tonight, too, by the way.”

“So it’s only Meg and me having our meal here in the house?” Clint pictured the two of them at a table big enough for eight. He’d imagined all the hands there, as they usually were, along with Tuck, and the cameraman. Just two of them at that big table would look silly.

José gave him a pleading glance. “You can handle it, boss. You’ve been to college and everything. The rest of us are country boys.”

“But Jed and Denny are entering the contest! Don’t they want to get to know her better? They’d have a head start over the guys who won’t show up until tomorrow morning.”

“I tried to tell them that, too,” Tuck said. “They’re sure they’ll just ruin their chances. They’d rather wait until tomorrow, when they’ll be showing off their cowboying skills. They’re afraid to have a meal with her, where table manners and such would come into play.”