Chapter Two

      Valerie stuck her fork into the pork chop on her plate, making another neat row of holes. When Grey Sellers hadn’t shown up for dinner, she had sat down at the table a few minutes after nine, feeling righteous. And indignant. And then nauseated.

      I rode too far in the afternoon heat, she told herself.

      You acted like a jackass, her conscience jeered, because a man had the nerve to take the saddle off a horse for you.

      Which he did for all the wrong reasons.

      Feminist bull. Since when is it a crime for a man to help a woman?

      When he does it for the wrong reasons.

      You’re a mind reader? You know for sure why he was moved to do that terrible thing to you?

      Tired of the internal conflict and especially of trying to answer that last question, Val pushed back her chair, picked up her plate and carried it over to the garbage can. She opened the can with the foot pedal and dumped the battle-scarred pork chop, the roll and green beans in. Then she set her plate in the sink and turned to look at the serving bowls on the kitchen table. It’s a shame to waste all that food, she thought.

      Especially when there’s a hungry man out in the bunkhouse who would probably be more than willing to take care of it for you. A man you invited to dinner under the guise of hospitality and then attacked because he reciprocated with what was possibly nothing more than an act of kindness of his own.

      Some act of kindness. He grabbed my shoulders hard enough to bruise, she reminded herself, determined to hold on to her anger because she hadn’t found a way to let go of it without admitting she’d been partially at fault in the situation.

      She advanced on the table and began to pick up dishes and carry them over to the counter. She didn’t open the garbage can again until she had everything transferred, but even then she couldn’t bring herself to throw the food away.

      Instead, she took another plate out of the cabinet, almost slamming it down on the counter, and piled two pork chops, three rolls and the rest of the green beans onto it. She set the plate on a tray, along with the bowl of fruit salad and a fork, a spoon and a knife. Then she took a clean napkin out of the drawer and spread it over the top.

      She stood looking down at the covered food for a few seconds before she reached across the sink and turned on the lights out in the yard. She picked up the tray before she could change her mind and carried it through the door, pushing the screen open with her hip.

      When she rounded the corner of the barn, she could see a dim light coming from the bunkhouse. The patch of ground where she was standing was still in darkness, however, out of range of the lights from either building. Safe, she thought, grateful for the concealing shadows. Safe from what? the voice of her own logic, which she was beginning to despise, taunted.

      Still reluctant to face the man she had yelled at this afternoon, she had to make herself walk over to the door and knock, balancing the tray on her hip. There was no sound from inside the bunkhouse, and no answer to her rather tentative tap. After a couple of minutes she knocked again, more forcefully this time, and then she turned the knob, pushing the door inward.

      “Mr. Sellers?” she called.

      There was still no response, so she pushed the door wider and stepped inside. The bunkhouse appeared to be empty. Maybe he was out doing another security check, she mocked mentally. She had been aware that he was making a check of all the windows and doors while she had been cooking dinner. She had already locked them as soon as she had come inside, of course, so he hadn’t had any reason to complain about her security measures.

      She set the tray down on the table in front of the potbellied stove and turned to leave. For a moment her eyes surveyed the building her father had built. Pretty primitive by any standard. There were six bunks, three on each side; the table she had put the tray on and its four chairs; the stove; and bookshelves that held a variety of puzzles, games and books.

      All of it was covered by a fine layer of silt that the desert wind had brought in. She hadn’t cleaned out here in a long time because no one had lived in the bunkhouse in years, which was exactly the way she wanted it.

      Her father had accused her of being a recluse. Maybe she was. But the confrontation with Grey Sellers this afternoon made her know she didn’t regret the life she had chosen. She didn’t need that kind of upheaval again, especially not now.

      That kind of upheaval. She repeated the phrase, wondering why she had used it in relation to Sellers. There was nothing in this situation that was anything like the other.

      Her eyes rose, sheer instinct maybe, and found him watching her from the doorway that led to the bunkhouse’s communal bathroom. His black hair was wet, glistening with blue highlights under the glare of the bare, swaying electric bulb. Obviously he had just gotten out of the shower, which was why he hadn’t answered her knock or her call.

      He was wearing the same jeans he’d worn this afternoon, but he was barefoot. And he was in the process of rebuttoning the chamois-colored shirt. As he did, those gray eyes, which had taken her breath this afternoon, rested inquiringly on her face.

      His long fingers continued to work the buttons through their holes, one after the other, not seeming to hurry over the task. The open edges of the shirt revealed a flat brown stomach, centered by an arrow of dark hair. Her eyes had time to trace down it, all the way to where it disappeared into the waistline of his low-riding jeans, before he got to that last button, pulling the shirt together and destroying her view.

      “I brought your dinner,” she said, forcing her gaze back up.

      For some reason, her mouth had gone dry, so that the words were hard to articulate. She hoped he wasn’t aware of the effect that glimpse of his body had on her normally guarded emotions.

      He glanced at the tray of food she had set down on the table, and then back at her. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said.

      “And I wanted to apologize for…flying off the handle at you this afternoon,” she said, forcing the words out and hearing their clipped coldness.

      It was a grudging apology at best, but her people skills were rusty. And this man seemed to have the ability to throw her off balance, just by looking at her. Just by that subtle movement at the corner of his mouth, which was happening again.

      As if he knew something amusing, but didn’t intend to share. As if he were laughing inside. Laughing at her? she wondered. Paranoia, she chided, pulling her eyes away from his lips.

      “I don’t like people assuming I can’t do whatever I set out to do,” she continued doggedly, determined to get this out of the way, to offer some explanation as to why she had reacted as she had this afternoon, without getting too close to the painful truth that she hated being treated as if she were handicapped.

      “I didn’t assume anything about what you can or can’t do, Ms. Beaufort,” he said, his voice without inflection. “I told you. I was raised to be a gentleman. Old-fashioned, I guess. At least nowadays. But since you were obviously offended, I apologize. For…everything,” he finished softly. “I assure you, nothing like that will ever happen again.”

      His eyes held on her face, saying more than his words. Those were probably meant to make up for the fact that he had put his hands on her. Except he hadn’t even mentioned that. There had been no apology for manhandling her.

      Of course, she acknowledged, he wasn’t the only one who was not explaining everything. Usually she just ignored people who made a point of noticing her disability. With him, she had made a big deal of it. And if she were honest, she would have to admit that she knew why.

      This was the first man she had been attracted to in years—more years than she wanted to remember. The first one to affect her with this subtle sexual tension since she had broken her engagement to Barton Carruthers.

      Nothing