The Texan's Diamond Bride. Teresa Hill

and wondering how it was that they’d managed to keep that secret all these years, how no one had known…

      All that time, she should have been looking at the Foley brothers, arming herself, protecting herself against what was to come.

      Then she might have known, she might have recognized him from the first. It was just that every time in the past when she’d met him he’d been in a tuxedo, all polished manners and cool, sophisticated charm, dismissive as could be of anyone in her family and disapproving, as well. And while that arrogance might work for some women, Paige had grown up with men like that.

      It was old hat to her, a nice-looking man in a tuxedo who acted like he owned the world.

      Men like that really didn’t do a thing for her.

      They just didn’t seem real.

      That man working the ranch, checking the mine, catching her there…He’d seemed interesting and very real.

      So different from any version of Travis Foley she’d ever seen.

      Sweaty, a little dirty, in worn jeans and well-worn boots.

      A working man.

      Real.

      Right now he was also furious.

      “What?” she asked, lost in her thoughts.

      “Before, you said you thought I was a ranch hand, that I was…What? What were you going to say?”

       That it would be nice to have someone who looked like you walk right into my life. That I was lonely. That I hadn’t had anyone special in my life for a long time and…And…

      Oh, God. What did it matter now?

      It could never be.

      He was Travis Foley.

      “I thought you looked like a nice guy,” she told him, laughing with as much disgust as she could muster. “How ridiculous is that?”

      That seemed to satisfy him for the moment. They retreated to opposite corners of the small room, him leaving her by the fire to get warm while he brooded in the corner by the bed.

      A single bed, maybe a single and a half, if there was such a thing.

      Paige looked away. She had to forget what happened between them the night before, just completely erase it from her mind. It didn’t mean anything, and really, it was nothing. A little flirtation, a little…more than flirting.

      Cuddling, kissing, his big, warm body rocking erotically against hers, and all those promises of so much more to come.

      Her face burned at the memory.

      And then she had a terrible thought.

      She got up and glared at him. “You really didn’t know?”

      “Know what?” he said, his tone biting.

      “That it was me? That I was a McCord?”

      “No.”

      She wasn’t sure she believed him, although when she thought about it, she honestly wasn’t sure how it would have benefited him to lie about it, to pretend. To flirt with her the way he had, and to get her pants off of her and yet still not take it all the way.

      Why be a nice guy at that point? If he was looking to just…mess with her head or her body or…

      No, it didn’t make any sense.

      “Red, if I’d wanted you last night, I could have had you a half a dozen times by now, and you know it. So don’t go playing the outraged, violated woman with me. It won’t fly.”

      Okay. He could have. And they both knew it.

      “Then, I don’t understand,” she said.

      “Understand what?”

      Who he was?

      Who that man last night had been?

      He stared at her from across the room, still angry, but looking more than a little confused now, uneasy, suspicious and maybe even a little vulnerable.

      “Nothing. Forget it. I…It doesn’t matter now,” she said.

      He was a Foley. His father had been involved with her mother years ago, fathered a child with her and then walked away. What kind of man was he? What kind of man was the son?

      She’d gotten her heart and her ego bruised more than once, and then she’d developed a healthy distrust for men in general, which she’d totally ignored with this man.

      What a time to let down that sense of caution.

      From outside, the wind came up in a gust that sounded more like a roar. The cabin walls literally shook from the force of it, and the rain kept pounding down.

      They ignored each other as best they could for most of the day. He built the fire up until it was roaring. She emptied a few cans of beef stew into a heavy metal pot that hung from a hook over the fire and cooked until it smelled heavenly.

      Something about cooking over an open fire and being hungry made it even taste that good.

      He was coldly polite, thanking her for the meal, making sure she knew how to hang the pot over the fire and get it off without burning herself, and then keeping to himself on the side of the room farthest from the fire.

      Every now and then he went outside, pacing along the side of the cabin under the tiny overhang and staring at the storm.

      By nightfall, she’d cleaned the whole place, for lack of anything better to do, fixed another meal of canned ravioli and finished one of only three books she’d found in nooks and crannies in the cabin. A paperback mystery about a wealthy woman whose husband stole every dime she had and ran off, very nearly never to be found again.

      It was perfect for her mood right now, when she was thinking you really could never trust a man.

      And then she decided she might as well get ready for bed, something she’d been dreading, because there was only one.

      She hesitated, not sure what he intended.

      From behind her, she heard him say, “Go ahead. Take the bed. I’ll sleep by the fire.”

      “On the floor?”

      “We slept on the ground last night, Red, and did just fine.”

      Yes, they had. Still, she didn’t want him to be nice or gentlemanly or anything like that. “You’ll get cold,” she said.

      “Won’t be the first time, won’t be the last. And tonight we’ve got a fire.”

      She nodded, not turning around, not wanting to look at him or to think of what she’d expected this night to be. It was ridiculous, anyway. To think she’d waltz onto the ranch and find this man who did nothing but work the land, an ordinary, hardworking man who wouldn’t know about her family’s money and power and even if he did, wouldn’t care.

      Just a man who would get all tangled up in her, practically on sight.

      And it was absolutely the last thing she needed to be thinking about right now, with her family absolutely going crazy and their jewelry store empire in some serious financial difficulties, her trapped here with the enemy, caught red-handed trying to steal a priceless diamond right out from under his nose.

      Oh, her family would claim ownership if she found it, but it would be a legal fight that could last years, and she’d be painted as a thief by his family. But in the end, she thought her family would prevail, and his would say the diamond was one more thing stolen from the Foleys by the McCords.

      All that between them, plus her mother’s affair with his father, the child it had produced…

       Don’t be stupid, Paige. Forget about the man. You have to.

      Because he didn’t exist anywhere except inside