LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter One

      The man on the hill sat on his horse with elegance and grace, and the young woman found herself staring at him. He was obviously overseeing the roundup, which the man at her side had brought her to view. This ranch was small by Texas standards, but around Jacobsville, it was big enough to put its owner in the top ten in size.

      “Dusty, isn’t it?” Ed Caldwell asked with a chuckle, oblivious to the distant mounted rider, who was behind him and out of his line of sight. “I’m glad I work for the corporation and not here. I like my air cool and unpolluted.”

      Leslie Murry smiled. She wasn’t pretty. She had a plain, rather ordinary sort of face with blond hair that had a natural wave, and gray eyes. Her one good feature besides her slender figure was a pretty bow mouth. She had a quiet, almost reclusive demeanor these days. But she hadn’t always been like that. In her early teens, Leslie had been flamboyant and outgoing, a live wire of a girl whose friends had laughed at her exploits. Now, at twenty-three, she was as sedate as a matron. The change in her was shocking to people who’d once known her. She knew Ed Caldwell from college in Houston. He’d graduated in her sophomore year, and she’d quit the following semester to go to work as a paralegal for his father’s law firm in Houston. Things had gotten too complicated there, and Ed had come to the rescue once again. In fact, Ed was the reason she’d just been hired as an executive assistant by the mammoth Caldwell firm. His cousin owned it.

      She’d never met Mather Gilbert Caldwell, or Matt as he was known locally. People said he was a nice, easygoing man who loved an underdog. In fact, Ed said it frequently himself. They were down here for roundup so that Ed could introduce Leslie to the head of the corporation. But so far, all they’d seen was dust and cattle and hardworking cowboys.

      “Wait here,” Ed said. “I’m going to ride over and find Matt. Be right back.” He urged his horse into a trot and held on for dear life. Leslie had to bite her lip to conceal a smile at the way he rode. It was painfully obvious that he was much more at home behind the wheel of a car. But she wouldn’t have been so rude as to have mentioned it, because Ed was the only friend she had these days. He was, in fact, the only person around who knew about her past.

      While she was watching him, the man on horseback on the hill behind them was watching her. She sat on a horse with style, and she had a figure that would have attracted a connoisseur of women—which the man on horseback was. Impulsively he spurred his horse into a gallop and came down the rise behind her. She didn’t hear him until he reined in and the harsh sound of the horse snorting had her whirling in the saddle.

      The man was wearing working clothes, like the other cowboys, but all comparisons ended there. He wasn’t ragged or missing a tooth or unshaven. He was oddly intimidating, even in the way he sat the horse, with one hand on the reins and the other on his powerful denim-clad thigh.

      Matt Caldwell met her gray eyes with his dark ones and noted that she wasn’t the beauty he’d expected, despite her elegance of carriage and that perfect figure. “Ed brought you, I gather,” he said curtly.

      She’d almost guessed from his appearance that his voice would be deep and gravelly, but not that it would cut like a knife. Her hands tightened on the reins. “I…yes, he…he brought me.”

      The stammer was unexpected. Ed’s usual sort of girl was brash and brassy, much more sophisticated than this shrinking violet here. He liked to show off Matt’s ranch and impress the girls. Usually it didn’t bother Matt, but he’d had a frustrating day and he was out of humor. He scowled. “Interested in cattle ranching, are you?” he drawled with ice dripping from every syllable. “We could always get you a rope and let you try your hand, if you’d like.”

      She felt as if every muscle in her body had gone taut. “I…came to meet Ed’s cousin,” she managed. “He’s rich.” The man’s dark eyes flashed and she flushed. She couldn’t believe she’d made such a remark to a stranger. “I mean,” she corrected, “he owns the company where Ed works. Where I work,” she added. She could have bitten her tongue for her artless mangling of a straightforward subject, but the man rattled her.

      Something kindled in the man’s dark eyes under the jutting brow; something not very nice at all. He leaned forward and his eyes narrowed. “Why are you really out here with Ed?” he asked.

      She swallowed. He had her hypnotized, like a cobra with a rabbit. Those eyes…those very dark, unyielding eyes…!

      “It’s not your business, is it?” she asked finally, furious at her lack of cohesive thought and this man’s assumption that he had the right to interrogate her.

      He didn’t say a word. Instead, he just looked at her.

      “Please,” she bit off, hunching her shoulders uncomfortably. “You’re making me nervous!”

      “You came to meet the boss, didn’t you?” he asked in a velvety smooth tone. “Didn’t anyone tell you that he’s no marshmallow?”

      She swallowed. “They say he’s a very nice, pleasant man,” she returned a little belligerently. “Something I’ll bet nobody in his right mind would dream of saying about you!” she added with her first burst of spirit in years.

      His eyebrows lifted. “How do you know I’m not nice and pleasant?” he asked, chuckling suddenly.

      “You’re like a cobra,” she said uneasily.

      He studied her for a few seconds before he nudged his horse in the side with a huge dusty boot and eased so close to her that she actually shivered. He hadn’t been impressed with the young woman who stammered and stuttered with nerves, but a spirited woman was a totally new proposition. He liked a woman who wasn’t intimidated by his bad mood.

      His hand went across her hip to catch the back of her saddle and he looked into her eyes from an unnervingly close distance. “If I’m a cobra, then what does that make you, cupcake?” he drawled with deliberate sensuality, so close that she caught the faint smoky scent of his breath, the hint of spicy cologne that clung to his lean, tanned face. “A soft, furry little bunny?”

      She was so shaken by the proximity of him that she tried desperately to get away, pulling so hard on the reins that her mount unexpectedly reared and she went down on the ground, hard, hitting her injured left hip and her shoulder as she fell into the thick grass.

      A shocked sound came from the man, who vaulted out of the saddle and was beside her as she tried to sit up. He reached for her a little roughly, shaken by her panic. Women didn’t usually try to back away from him; especially ordinary ones like this. She fell far short of his usual companions.

      She fought his hands, her eyes huge and overly bright, panic in the very air around her. “No…!” she cried out helplessly.

      He froze in place, withdrawing his lean hand from her arm, and stared at her with scowling curiosity.

      “Leslie!” came a shout from a few yards away. Ed bounced up as quickly as he could manage it without being unseated. He fumbled his way off the horse and knelt beside her, holding out his arm so that she could catch it and pull herself up.

      “I’m sorry,” she said, refusing to look at the man who was responsible for her tumble. “I jerked the reins. I didn’t mean to.”

      “Are you all right?” Ed asked, concerned.

      She nodded. “Sure.” But she was shaking, and both men could see it.

      Ed glanced over her head at the taller, darker, leaner man who stood with his horse’s reins in his hand, staring at the girl.

      “Uh, have you two introduced yourselves?” he asked awkwardly.

      Matt was torn by conflicting emotions, the strongest of which was bridled fury at the woman’s panicky attitude. She acted as if he had plans to assault her, when he’d only

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