The Invitation

      “Hmm, pretty nice fit on that pair of jeans,” Hailey Kingston thought idly as she glanced over the top of her sunglasses at the ranch hand walking by the pool. Then she stopped herself, appalled.

      Good grief—had she come to this? Was she really so bored that she’d sunk to checking out the attributes of the local cowboys? There had to be something else to occupy her mind. Had to be.

      Groaning, she stretched back on the chaise lounge and turned her face up to the sun, completely oblivious to the effect she was having on those very same cowboys. That was the way it always was. She just didn’t care. She could walk around in a bikini as though it were a sweat suit, completely unconscious of the picture she made. Hailey Kingston was, in many ways, as natural as a child.

      She wore her honey blond hair haphazardly, shoulder length and untamed. She seldom used makeup, and when she did, it was nothing more than a slash of pearly pink lipstick against her smooth, tanned skin. She was drop-dead gorgeous, and she couldn’t help it. It was her blessing; it was her curse.

      But it didn’t mean much out here in the middle of nowhere. There was no one to see her but the two tiresome excops who’d been sent to watch her every move, and the ranch hands and they’d been warned to stay away from her. At first, it had all seemed deliciously peaceful and serene, but after three weeks, it was just plain boring.

      She