A Cowboy Under Her Tree. Allison Leigh

people hanging around here to serve you coffee.”

      Her eyes with those thick dark lashes narrowed. Her hair was slightly rumpled and she was bundled to her chin in the massive red blanket from the bed. It ought to have clashed with her auburn hair—he’d learned such things thanks to Nola’s clotheshorse ways—but it didn’t. If anything, Melanie looked…too damned tasty.

      Soft. Sleepy. Female.

      And everything inside him stirred annoyingly to life.

      He looked away at the snowy mountainside. Cold was definitely a good thing. “You want some, get it yourself. It’s hot in the kitchen,” he finished.

      “I don’t drink coffee.” Her voice was snooty again. “And you’re letting in all the cold air.”

      He didn’t look back at the rustle of bedding that preceded the not-so-soft slam of the door. He pulled out the napkin from his back pocket and squinted at the splotchy lines of writing they’d made on it the night before. In the cold sober morning light, his signature was even more of a scrawl than usual, and her neat penmanship showed some decided unevenness.

      No hanky-panky.

      She’d even underlined it. Twice.

      Muttering an oath not only at himself but at the universe in general, he tucked the napkin back in his pocket, then leaned his forearms on the rail of the deck and glared at the million-dollar view.

      “Happy wedding day, Russ,” he muttered under his breath. “Welcome back to hell.”

      Chapter Four

      Melanie would have liked to have locked that door between her and Russ J. Chilton, leaving him stewing out there in the frigid air.

      But a frozen stick of ice wasn’t going to be able to teach her what she needed to know to keep the Hopping H from falling apart before she could even open its first guest cabin. So she kept her itchy fingers from flipping the lock and returned to the bedroom where she did lock the door.

      Not that he’d be likely to break it down anytime soon. The man couldn’t be clearer where his distaste for her was concerned. She hoped he would manage to get that under some control, at least when they were around other people.

      She washed up, touching her lips with some gloss from her small purse and dashing her comb through her hair, then pulled on her dress from the night before, wrinkling her nose a little at the smell of cigarette smoke that clung to the fabric. Unfortunately, her bra and panties were still damp and since Russ was still out on the porch when she left the bedroom, she quickly shoved them into the deep side pocket of her mink. Then she pulled on the coat, pushed her bare feet into her shoes, and yanked open the door again.

      He was leaning over, elbows bent atop the rail, displaying those ridiculously wide, bare shoulders again, and—drat it all—a very fine denim-covered rear.

      She wished she’d worn her panties and bra after all, damp or not. Because even if he didn’t know she didn’t have a stitch on beneath her dress, she did. “Are you going to lollygag there all day, or what?”

      He sent her a slow look over his bare shoulder that had an annoying jolt curling low through her abdomen. “Anxious to find a justice of the peace, are you?”

      She flipped up the collar of her coat, holding it closely together beneath her chin. “I’d like to go home and change first. But, yes, the sooner we start, the sooner you’ll be the proud owner of more land.”

      “And we’ll be free of each other.”

      “Exactly.”

      He straightened and walked past her, leaning his head close to hers as he went. “We’re just a match made in heaven,” he murmured.

      She managed to hold her ground. “At least we both know what we want out of the deal,” she returned as he came inside.

      She was waiting by the door, purse in hand, when he came back out of the bedroom a short time later, his hair damp and slicked back from his face, and his naked chest once more hidden beneath that thick ivory wool. “I cleaned out the coffeemaker,” she told him before he went into the kitchen, presumably to take care of the matter himself.

      “Without breaking a fingernail?” He grabbed his coat but didn’t bother to pull it on. “Someone should give you an award.”

      “This will be considerably easier if you could stow your foul humor for a while.”

      “Afraid I can’t act the lovesick fool who’d toss aside all rhyme and reason to get married again?” He nudged her through the door and closed it behind him, checking that it was locked.

      “Considering how you talk about it, one might think you’re still in love with your former wife.”

      He snorted and headed down the steps to the snow-plowed sidewalk that led back toward the main lodge. “Right. Watch the path there. Looks like some ice.”

      She avoided the spot he pointed at, hurrying to keep up with his long strides. “How long ago was it?”

      “What business is it of yours?”

      “We’re supposed to be getting married,” she reminded. “Presumably these are things that we would want to know about one another. If, you know, if the situation were real.”

      “Well, it isn’t.” He continued striding ahead of her.

      She strongly considered sticking her tongue out at the back of his head, but curtailed the childish impulse. She was a thirty-year-old hotelier, not a spoiled heiress the way he seemed to want to think.

      By the time she caught up to him inside the resort, he was turning in the cabin key. She went out the front where she’d left her car parked the night before and pulled her car keys from her purse as she waited for him.

      “I’ll take those.” He went to pluck the keys from her fingertips, and she jerked them away.

      “I beg your pardon?”

      “It’s a husband’s job to drive.”

      She let out a disbelieving laugh. “Oh, please.” But when Russ held out his palm, clearly in demand, she shoved the keys in her coat pocket. “You’re not driving my car. You won’t even fit in my car. We can just meet back at the Hopping H.”

      “Don’t think so.” Before she knew it, he’d reached into her coat pocket and extracted the keys.

      Along with her panties.

      She wanted the ground to swallow her whole.

      “Well, well.” He let the panties hang from his index finger. “Unless you’re carrying a spare—”

      She snatched them off his finger and shoved them back into her pocket. “You’re making a scene.”

      “Hey, babe, I’m just trying to drive us to the chapel.”

      “Fine. You want to drive? Drive.” She ignored his goading smile.

      “That’s yours over by the tree, right?”

      She knew good and well that he recognized her sports car, because he’d made a point several months earlier of telling her that such a vehicle was useless on a ranch. “Are you going to play caveman from here on out, or act like a civilized human being?”

      “Don’t know.” He crossed the parking lot and managed to press the correct buttons on her remote to unlock the car without setting off the alarm. “If I feel a yen to throw you over my shoulder and start brandishing a big wooden club, I’ll let you know. But at least I keep my drawers on,” he added. “Seems the mark of a civilized man.”

      Humiliated, she yanked open the passenger door when it became embarrassingly apparent that he wasn’t going to open her door for her and slid inside. She knew he’d have to adjust the driver’s seat to his height, and she resolutely remained silent.