If Suzanne was in her right mind, she’d have been amazed at the number of words Grady was speaking during their ranch tour. Poor guy was pretty much forced to as her parents peppered him with 101 questions. He did his best answering them in his preferred communication style of brevity while trying to be polite and respectful and fulfill the role of fake rancher boyfriend.

But throughout, his love and pride for this place—his uncle’s place—was evident.

He drove the fence line and pointed out herds of cattle now grazing on the more sheltered winter pastures where there were gullies and treed areas for wind protection during blizzards. He drove past several large crude structures closed in at three sides that looked like big open barns, which could be used for animals to shelter in during the worst snowfalls in winter and for storage of hay or equipment at other times. They also passed two small, rough-hewn shacks right out of the Wild freaking West that were there for emergency shelter should anyone ever be stuck out on the ranch in inclement weather.

But Suzanne only really kept one ear on the conversation. Her stomach churned and her brain was spinning like a top as it gnawed on all that had happened in the last couple of hours. How Grady was going to tell his aunt and uncle about them, and how she hated that they were somehow going to think less of her even though she barely knew Burl and hadn’t met Cora yet and might not at all, and, come the New Year, she’d never see them again.

How incensed he’d been about their secret getting out and how ragey she’d been that he’d dragged her into his office like a recalcitrant schoolgirl. And how he’d kissed her—twice—making her hot and needy and then angry. So angry she’d bitten him. God…she’d never bitten another human being in her life, let alone deliberately out of spite and malice and some wild sexual impulse she didn’t even want to think about.

She’d never been aroused by that kind of edginess, by the need to mark someone, but the way he’d reared back, the way heat had flared in his gaze as his tongue had lapped at the injured flesh of his lip had been a heady kind of turn-on.

And then the final insult—him not caring about which painting she handed over. It was such a ridiculous thing to be hung up on, but there it was. He’d been so specific the last two times, like he’d committed them to memory, thought about them a lot. His shrug had probably hurt more than having to use the paintings as a bargaining chip in the first place.