“What’s wrong with you?” she hissed, her arms folded tight around her middle as she backed away several paces, putting distance between them. “My parents probably think we’re in here fucking.”

Grady blinked at both the dirty word coming out of her pretty mouth and at her demeanor. She was angry with him? She was angry with him? Jesus, was she for real? “Isn’t us fucking the whole point?”

It was not in Grady’s nature to be crude around women. His mother had brought him up to be polite and respectful with the opposite sex—well, just generally really, but with women particularly—and the uniform had demanded the same standards. But Suzanne knew exactly how to push all his buttons.

“At two o’clock in the afternoon?” she hiss-whispered.

Grady laughed out loud. She was really something. Did she not know that if what was happening between them was real, they’d be fucking all hours of the day and night? Grady would have absolutely no compunction delegating as much as possible to his hands so he could stay in the cabin with her until one or both of them were injured or dead.

“Oh, sorry, when do all the cool, hip New York artists usually fuck?” he goaded.

Even now, with her eyes shooting daggers at him, with her looking at him like she did that first day when she’d accused him of being a cowpoke, he wanted to sweep everything off his desk and give her the kind of afternoon delight that inspired pop songs. That yellow shirt of hers hugging her breasts was distracting as fuck. He wanted to stride across to where she was standing, tear it open, yank down her bra cups. He wanted to shove his hands inside her pants and kiss her again like he had out in the kitchen.

But deeper and harder and dirtier.

He wanted to make her come fast and furious, her eyes spitting chips at him even as she came apart and he whispered all the reasons why she should never piss him off again.

“Why did you drag me in here?” she demanded, wisely ignoring his deliberately crude inquiry.

Grady took a breath. He was too wired. Alert in a way that was reminiscent of night patrols in the Middle East. He needed to calm the fuck down or he was going to stroke out. He shoved his hands in his pockets, waiting several beats before he answered. “Burl seems to be under the impression that I have a girlfriend I’m keeping a big secret out here on the ranch. Could you enlighten me as to how he might think that?”

“Ah.”

“Yes. Ah.”

“I was going to mention it to you, but—”

“But?” he interrupted. Why was there even a but? Surely a heads-up would have been the only decent thing to do.

“I was hoping it wouldn’t get out.”

He snorted. “Guess what, Suzy? It did.”