LITMIR.BIZ

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she felt. Men barely noticed her, and it stung a little to have him call attention to it, even in a backhanded way.

      She smiled as if it didn’t matter, blew out a half-embarrassed, half-exasperated breath, then reached back to catch her braid and bring it over her shoulder to strip the leather tie from the end. Braided, her dark hair went to just below her shoulder blades. Unbound, her hair fell nearly to her waist.

      “Maybe I ought to send you to the barn for a shovel before it gets too deep in here,” she told him as she set the glass of water aside to start unraveling her braid.

      And immediately wished she hadn’t when she caught sight of the solemn expression that dropped over Shane’s tanned face as he watched her fingers work. That odd, fluttery feeling came winging back and she immediately tried to suppress it.

      “I don’t mean to be rude and bossy,” she said then, “but would you mind picking another place to sit so I can pry off these boots? The seam on my sock hasn’t set right all day.”

      Shane dealt her another small surprise when instead of obliging, he grinned and reached down for her right boot to lift her foot. The gesture was completely new between them, and she was too caught off guard to do anything but stare as he pulled off her boot and set it down.

      “I interrupted a stampede to the shower didn’t I?” One side of his handsome mouth quirked up.

      Corrie was still a little too surprised to realize until after he’d leaned down to reach for her other foot that his arm had effectively trapped her ankle on top of his hard thigh.

      “You never minded getting dirty,” he remarked, “but once you got to the house you were always in a girlish rush to get cleaned up.”

      Then he had her other foot up and was stripping off the boot before he settled that foot next to the other on his thigh. The idea of having both her feet in his lap seemed incredibly intimate, which finally goaded her out of her silence.

      “Is there a reason you’re so friendly with my feet?” she asked as she pulled them back, relieved when he allowed it.

      “No good reason,” he admitted. “Just wondered how long you’d let me do it. You ever had a foot massage?”

      “Nope. Don’t want one either.” Corrie felt a little prudish suddenly for taking this so seriously, but something had changed between them. Shane had always treated her as a pal, one of the guys. He was gentler with her of course, but there’d never been even a hint of real man/woman things, or even much acknowledgment that she was female.

      Yes, there’d been that time when she’d turned her head at the wrong time as he’d been leaning over to whisper something silly to her. His lips had brushed hers, but they’d both jumped back as if they’d been burned. Then they’d laughed like hyenas over it. This wasn’t at all like that one time.

      Now Shane’s smile leveled a little, but the intent look—that new look—in his eyes sent heat into her face. “You’re still an innocent, aren’t you, Corrie?” His voice dropped lower. “I can’t tell you how rare and special that is out there in that big, wide world.”

      Corrie gave him a wary look, unsure what to say to that. Or to any of this. That seemed to tickle him. His face brightened and he chuckled as he leaned forward to tug on a lock of her hair before he abruptly stood.

      “You go get that shower, darlin’. I need to get on down the road, but I’ll call you later. ’Kay?”

      Darlin’? Corrie’s gaze was all but glued to his and she’d been unable to break contact with it as he’d risen. Her soft and belated, “’Kay,” was part squeak, part whisper, as if she’d somehow lost her voice.

      She didn’t get up as she watched him turn and stride to the hall then to the front door. Once he was out of sight, her gaze fell and fixed on the footstool.

      Confusion swamped her, and for the first time in her life, Corrie felt the magnitude of her inexperience. She could talk work or business or politics with just about any man, but she was ignorant about male/female things. She knew about courting and the mechanics of sex, but she had only hazy theories about how those things actually got started in real life.

      Or, more specifically, in her life. The boys she’d grown up around hadn’t minded working alongside her on roundup or doing ranch work or on projects at school. She was a hard worker and they’d liked that she’d pulled her own weight and that she wasn’t squeamish or timid with the stock. And she’d been a favorite in classroom situations where the teacher wanted boys and girls to work together. Probably because she’d gotten good grades in everything, and the boys hadn’t needed to worry that Corrie Davis would get lovestruck and moon over one of them.

      But when it had come to school dances and other dating opportunities, they’d passed her up like a mailbox along a highway. Town girls and girls who’d learned how to bat their eyelashes and flirt had gotten the dates. Girls who’d worn makeup and panty hose and short little blouses and skirts that bared midriffs and thighs. Girls who’d seemed to have been born knowing how to use their female powers to wrap boyfriends around their little fingers. Not girls like her, who could rope and ride, arm-wrestle them on a dare, bait a fishhook, and go hunting.

      It had been the town girls’ example that she’d tried to follow when she’d fallen for Nick Merrick. Some of those girls had been plain, but they’d made over their plainness with eye shadow and other little beauty tricks from magazines. Her mistake had been in thinking Corrie Davis could do the same, with the same happy results.

      Thinking of all that again reminded her that she’d been feeling more than a little weary of the sameness of her life lately, the solitude. She’d been in town from time to time the past few weeks, and seen a handful of old schoolmates with their husbands and kids. She’d told herself that being twenty-four wasn’t anywhere near old maid status, not at all. But she’d felt a little low for a while.

      Now Shane Merrick was home and he was…flirting with her? The fact that she’d never had a man flirt with her made her uncertain, though the rare, so rare thrill of the notion excited her.

      Corrie propped an elbow on the chair arm, not realizing for several moments that she’d pressed her fingers against her mouth.

      Had Shane been flirting?

      The numbing sameness of her life had lifted the past few minutes. It’d probably be back again tomorrow, but today…

      Today the pattern—the rut—had been broken. That low feeling was gone, though she wasn’t sure she trusted the reason. She wasn’t even sure the reason was real, and yet suddenly she had the feeling that for the first time in her plain-Jane, tomboy life, she might actually have a chance for a little romance.

      To maybe fall in love a little with a man who might fall a little in love with her. Maybe she wasn’t so impossible after all. Maybe love wasn’t so impossible. And if love was possible for Corrie Davis, maybe marriage and kids were also possible. Maybe. At some point.

      By the time she got her shower, ate lunch and tried to concentrate on paperwork, she was struggling between common sense and the tantalizing notion of possibility. Common sense finally won out, as it always did, and that fine, all too hopeful—and a little giddy—feeling leaked away.

      CHAPTER TWO

      IT WAS hard for Nick Merrick to think of Corrie Davis as a femme fatale. He still didn’t understand what his kid brother had seen in her years ago, not when he compared Corrie to the pretty and far more sophisticated girls Shane had preferred in high school.

      And still preferred, judging by the bevy of buckle bunnies who’d trailed him on the rodeo circuit. Two of those women had already called the ranch and left messages for him. A third had called after Shane had gone over to the Davis Ranch.

      Nick assumed that’s where Shane had gone, because he’d spiffed up just enough to hint he wanted to make an impression. Most of his other old girlfriends had either married

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