The Texas Rancher's Family. Cathy Thacker Gillen

blue eyes took on a mischievous gleam. “Okay, then. Why did you kiss me?”

      Because, Erin thought, I had been wanting to kiss you all evening, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. And because you make me feel incredibly reckless and alive whenever I’m near you. After years of feeling numb inside, I suddenly want to feel like a woman again. I want to feel desired. And that scares the heck out of me, even as it appears to energize you.

      “Did your hitting on me have anything to do with selling me on the wind farm idea?” Because if that was the case...

      Mac’s consternation quickly turned to pique. “I haven’t slept my way up the ladder, if that’s what you’re intimating.”

      “What about to a specific deal?” Erin persisted. Mac was ambitious, charming and oh, so good-looking. He oozed testosterone. Not to mention being single and in a very competitive field. Erin knew there were sales execs who would use whatever they had at their disposal to close a deal, and then move on to the next. Her ultrasuccessful ex-husband had been one of them.

      Mac scoffed. “Let me get this straight. You think I need to bed a woman to persuade her that dealing with me and the company I represent would be good business?”

      I think, given the way you kissed me, you could persuade a woman of damn near anything if you ever got her into bed.

      Erin struggled not to flush. “I’m just saying there are better ways to get what you want around here than by bolstering someone’s ego.”

      “And here I thought you were a straight-talker,” he teased.

      “I am very direct.”

      “Then maybe you can answer this for me.” He looked her square in the eye. “If I were to pursue you romantically, would it make you more inclined to listen to me? Or less?”

      “Neither.”

      “Sure about that?” Mac asked.

      She propped her hands on her hips. “Why do you keep answering a question with a question?”

      “I want to know more about you. What you’re thinking, feeling, wishing for.”

      Now she was really in trouble. How long since it had been since anyone had cared about her in that way?

      “And because your questions are all so foolish,” he added.

      They were, Erin thought indignantly, if his feelings were aboveboard and he could totally separate attraction and desire, and the process of closing a business deal. But if, as she half suspected, his emotions were as tangled as hers, they should run as far and fast from each other as they possibly could.

      Unfortunately, she couldn’t get a good reading from him, courtesy of his calm, inscrutable expression. “Look, I just want to know why you kissed me.” I want to know, she added silently to herself, if it meant anything.

      The look in his eyes became even harder to decipher. “It was dark. You’re pretty. You smelled good. And felt amazing. And,” he finished huskily, “you tasted pretty nice, too. Like that cup of peppermint tea you’d been drinking, before I came back downstairs. And like, for lack of a better way of describing it, you.”

      He had tasted good, too. And felt so warm and strong and male. She hung on to her irritation with effort. “Gavin said the two of you spoke about us.”

      “Yeah.” Mac let out a breath. “Your brother wasn’t too happy he caught us making out.”

      Though Gavin was a year younger, he had taken on the role of her male protector in the family since their folks died. Just as Erin had assumed the role of mama bear. They acted as surrogate parents to the rest of the brood, which made their sibling relationship a lot more complicated.

      Aware that the Prairie Natural Gas roughnecks were still watching her and Mac, Erin turned her back on the men. “I wasn’t happy about it, either.”

      “The kissing?” Mac studied her. “Or getting caught?”

      “Both.”

      He pursed his lips, clearly not believing her on the first, accepting the truth of the second.

      Erin knew he had a point. Had Gavin not come downstairs, she and Mac could have ended the embrace in a more leisurely, natural way. Said whatever needed to be said then, instead of putting it off until now, when everything was so much more confused and complicated. Mainly because Mac had insisted on bringing his company’s proposed wind farm and her land into the mix.