He should forget Bliss. She’d stumbled into his life at a time when the last thing he’d needed was involvement with the boss’s daughter, but she’d been the most incredible woman he’d laid eyes upon in a long time and fighting his attraction to her had failed miserably.

Then he’d nearly killed her. He should never have let her take off on that horse in the middle of a storm. He should have risked her wrath and refused to let her saddle Lucifer. It would have been better to risk the old man’s anger and lose his job than to have Bliss’s life endangered.

But then he’d never been smart when it came to John Cawthorne’s daughter. He hadn’t been then; wouldn’t be now.

Ten years after the accident, he was still drumming up excuses to see her, to be alone with her. Even as he climbed into his truck and silently swore that he’d keep his hands off her, he already knew that he was only kidding himself. Before the day was out, he’d find a reason to see her again.

“Hell, Lafferty,” he told the eyes glaring back at him in his rearview mirror. “You’ve got it and you’ve got it bad.” He threw his pickup into reverse, backed out, then nosed the truck onto the dusty pothole-strewn avenue. “Real bad.”

Chapter Seven

Crossing the fingers of one hand, Bliss silently prayed and pushed a button on her new fax machine. “Let this work,” she muttered as the machine hummed obediently. She’d tried to transmit the bid she’d been working on for two days to her office in Seattle with no success. This time she was in luck. “Thank you, God of All Things Electronic,” she said as she filed her original away and heard the phone ring down the hall.

“For you!” her father yelled.

“Got it,” she sang back, conscious of the irritation in John Cawthorne’s tone. He and Brynnie were speaking again, but the situation was still tense and the wedding plans, though progressing, were in a constant state of flux. “Hello,” she called into the extension.

“Bliss, hi, this is Katie Kinkaid. I, uh, thought you might want to meet for coffee or lunch or . . . well, whatever.”

No time like the present, her mind prodded her, although, deep down, she wanted to avoid this meeting like the plague. “Sure, I can meet you, or you might want to come out here. Delores made a killer batch of pecan rolls and I brought some French-roast coffee from an espresso shop in Seattle.”

“You’re on,” Katie said with a lot more enthusiasm than Bliss felt. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

“Great.” Bliss hung up and told herself it was time to get to know her half-sister, whether she wanted to or not. She straightened the den and told her father goodbye as he and Brynnie were off to talk to the preacher, who, Bliss hoped, was a decent premarriage counselor.

By the time Katie wheeled into the drive, Bliss had heated the gooey rolls, made a fresh pot of coffee and was halfway through the newspaper.