Lone Star Rancher. Laurie Paige

Texas gal,” he scoffed. “After your years in the city, you should be past your country upbringing, shouldn’t you?”

      Her eyes flicked to him. There was intelligence as well as fury in those bright blue depths. “I don’t think so,” she drawled in a slow, provocative manner. “My country instincts have served me rather well in the city.”

      “Yeah? Like how?”

      “Like knowing when a man is interested because I’m a model and he thinks that means I sleep around. I don’t,” she said flatly, her eyes sweeping over him as if she could see every sizzling pulse point in his body.

      Clyde felt the heat rush to his head. Okay, he’d asked for that one. An apology was definitely in order.

      “I’m sorry,” he began.

      “Oh, don’t bother,” she snapped, frowning as she took another drink and licked those delectable lips again.

      He went into meltdown. Again. He cleared his throat. “You don’t cut a fellow much slack,” he said in a carefully amiable voice.

      She gave him a glance that could have sliced bread without leaving a crumb. “I heard your mother.”

      He tried to figure out if this was a trick. Women were good at turning the tables on a man and making him feel guilty for something he didn’t even think of doing.

      “What about my mother?” he asked cautiously.

      Again the laser glance, then a sarcastic half laugh. “She told you to be cordial to me. After all, I am a guest in your house, albeit an unwelcome one.”

      She appeared cool, poised and aloof. Yet he sensed, in some way he didn’t comprehend, that he’d hurt her, and he was truly sorry for that.

      “You’re not unwelcome,” he told her, peering straight into her eyes so she could see he meant what he said. “But you are a surprise. You left Texas shortly before I returned here to live. Sometime in those years between then and now, you changed from a cygnet into a swan, from a girl into a woman.” He managed a smile. “Be careful, or I’ll be tempted to show you how pleasant I can be to a guest.”