It was all he could take. “No way, lady,” he said and heard her gasp as he lifted her deftly off her feet and carried her into the house.

“Mason, stop! Let me down!” she cried as he marched determinedly down the short hallway to the bedroom where he’d first carried her bags years ago.

He dropped her onto the old double bed and as she landed, fell onto the sagging mattress with her.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

“Making love to you.”

“What? No—” He cut off her protests with a kiss that started in his lips but touched him so deeply that his groin tightened and his erection, already at half-mast, stiffened in anticipation.

Her arms wound around his neck and she sighed contentedly into his mouth. “Why is it I can never say no to you?” she asked as she opened the buttons of his shirt.

“Because I’m so damned irresistible.”

She laughed. “Oh, that’s it,” she said.

“Why else?” His breath fanned her ear and she couldn’t think. His hand caressed her breast and she moaned. From that moment onward, she was lost.

* * *

He spent the night and it seemed natural to wake with his arms around her, his face buried in the crook of her neck. How many years had she dreamed of opening her eyes to see the sunlight caress the contours of his face? His beard had grown overnight and his eyelashes brushed the tops of his cheeks. In slumber there were no lines of worry disturbing the skin of his forehead, no creases of suspicion pulling at the corners of his mouth.

I love you, she thought, but didn’t dare utter the words. This was an affair, nothing more; the culmination of years of old dreams. They weren’t kids any longer, but adults with their own sets of problems; their own lives. He ran several ranches and a corporation or two, she was working on becoming a partner in the firm where she worked in Seattle. He had an ex-wife and a daughter; she had Oscar, who, by the sounds of the whining at the bedroom door, needed to go outside.

She threw on a robe, padded down the hallway and let Oscar out the front door. Delores, the cook and housemaid, had the week off, but a few of the ranch hands had already parked their trucks near the barn.