“What harm could there be?”
“Honestly?”she asked.“About five things come immediately to mind.”
“Only five?”He kept his tone light.
“At least five.”
“There’s hardly anyone out here.No one will notice.”
“I’m not your type, Mr.Donovan.”
“What type is that?”
He didn’t step back or give her any space.Instead, with uncharacteristic patience, he waited.
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I really don’t.Enlighten me.”
“Someone who…” She paused.“I’m not trying to insult you.”
“As you were saying, why stop being blunt now?”He gave a little wave, indicating she should continue.“By all means.”
The color on her cheeks darkened a little.It made her even more appealing.
“This is more about me, not you.”She drew a breath.“You’ve had a lot more experience than I have.”
He couldn’t help but grin at that.“Are you calling me a manwhore?”
She had the good grace to blush, and he was glad to see it.Her not-so-delicate assumption had pissed him off a little.
“I can assure you, I am not.Nor was I.I dated a lot in college, on the rodeo circuit, but I’ve never been a fuck ’em-and-leave ’em guy.”
“I didn’t mean to imply that,” she protested.
“I believe you did.Without knowing me.”
“You’re right.”She exhaled.“I apologize.”
“Accepted.Next objection?”
“I picture you with a socialite.”
Cade couldn’t have been any more taken aback.“Are you calling me a snob?”
“You’re a Donovan,” she said, as if that explained everything.Maybe to her, it did.
“Which means?”
“You’re the town’s elite.Someone who keeps to his own kind.”She lifted a shoulder.
“Such as?”
“Senators.Business leaders.Other landowners.The Running Wind isn’t exactly an ordinary ranch.”
That much was true.He recalled the first time he’d seen the house, when he was five.He and his mother had been living in a small one-bedroom apartment above a garage near the stables where she’d worked in Kentucky.His father, a man he hadn’t known, had shown up one day, and Cade still remembered the shouting and his mother’s sobs.
Soon afterward, they’d all been piled into his father’s gargantuan pickup truck, with its oversized tires and soft-leather interior.They’d had to stop overnight at a hotel with an air conditioner that worked, making the room so cold he had been able to snuggle under a blanket.
