“Let me guess. You’re here because I bought part of the ranch from Brynnie,” he said, as if he’d been expecting her.

“Right out from under Dad’s nose.”

“She approached me.”

“And you just couldn’t say no, could you?” Bliss said, folding her arms over her chest.

“I didn’t want to.” The smile fell from his face and she noticed the fan of crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. “I’ve always liked the place. Dreamed of owning it years ago.”

“And now there’s a chance to get back at Dad.”

“That wasn’t the intention.”

“Sure.”

He crossed the room and stood directly in front of her. She’d forgotten how intimidating he was, hadn’t remembered that the scent of him sent unwanted tingles through her blood. The temperature in the carriage house seemed to shoot upward ten degrees, and she found drawing a breath much harder than it had been. “Why, exactly, did you come over here?” he asked.

No reason to avoid the truth. “I think you manipulated this—this ridiculous situation. Somehow you convinced Brynnie that she needed to sell.”

“I said, she came to me.”

“You’re lying.”

“Ask her.”

“Why would she sneak around behind Dad’s back and—Oh!”

Quick as a rattler he struck, grabbing hold of her arm and yanking her toward him. “It was her idea.”

“I don’t believe—”

“Because you don’t want to. Brynnie’s a grown woman. She knew I was looking for a place and offered hers. We struck a deal.” His face was so close to hers Bliss could see the striations of brown in his gold eyes, and watched as sweat dotted his forehead, darkening his hair. His nostrils flared and his lips barely moved. “I’m not going to deceive you, Bliss. There’s no love lost between me and your old man. Never has been. But I didn’t have to coerce Brynnie into selling out. She was more than willing.”

“Was she?”

“Absolutely.”

“You are a bastard, Lafferty.”

His smile was cold and cruel, and his hand, rough with calluses, clamped in a vise-like grip over her wrist. But the scent of him, all male and musk and leather, filled the mere inches that separated his face from hers. “I wouldn’t be throwing that particular word too loosely around here, if I were you,” he warned. “It might hit a little close to home.”

Frustration pounded in her pulse. Blast the man, he was right. Her father had sired two children out of wedlock. Two that she knew about. “Let go of me.”

“If I only could,” he said. Then, as if her words had finally registered, he dropped her arm and backed off a step. “Hell.” With both hands, he plowed stiff fingers through his hair.

Idiot, she silently berated herself. How did it come to this—that she was alone with the one man she wanted to avoid, the one man who could make her see red with only a calculated lift of his eyebrow, the solitary man who had touched her unguarded soul?