She pronounced it Su-sahn Saan Meeshell, which sounded very posh and very French and made Grady think about French kissing and then just kissing in general. He dropped her hand.

What the ever-loving fuck?

“Man,” she said, her accent 100 percent New York as she half turned to the view and inhaled deeply. “You’re really living the dream out here, aren’t you?”

Grady gave a ghost of a smile. He’d learned a long time ago that dreams were made of dynamite and horseshit. She didn’t appear to need an answer, though, as she chatted on.

“It’s so easy to forget in the city that there’s all this space and land and sky. It’s so flat, and there’s nothing for miles except fields and cows and horses. They’re such beautiful creatures, aren’t they?”

Her question appeared to, again, be rhetorical, and she barely drew breath before leaping into a change of subject.

Christ. She was a talker…

“I bet the stars are magic out here, aren’t they?” She paused to look at him this time but held his gaze only for a beat or two before she glanced back at the field and kept right on going. “Yep. No light pollution out here in the middle of nowhere. I bet it’s dark as pitch in the middle of the night. It’s the kind of sky that would have given van Gogh wet dreams.”

She faltered slightly, barely a hiccup in time, just enough for her to frown slightly, like she knew she’d just said something a little inappropriate. But, flattening her hand against her belly, she forged on.

“And it’s so quiet, no horns or traffic or blinking lights or sirens or crowds, or people for that matter. No background hum of chatter all around you. It’s so…serene.”

Yes. Exactly. Serenity. Something Su-sahn Saan Meeshell had pierced in about two seconds. Grady strapped on some mental Kevlar.

Suddenly, she turned back to face him with those startling blue eyes, pulling her woolen hat from her head. Fine, almost white-blond hair cascaded around her shoulders like a flurry of snow.

Yep…there went his serenity.

“So…” She inspected his face before dropping her gaze to take in his plaid flannel shirt, his well-worn Levis, and his even more worn boots. “You’re, like, a…cowboy? The real deal?”

Grady was silent for long moments. Was that another rhetorical question? When she continued to look at him expectantly, he answered. “I’m a rancher.”

She wrinkled her nose in concentration. “What’s the difference?”

“Ranchers ranch. Cowboys wrangle cows.”

“Kinda like a shepherd?”

Grady blinked. “Sure.” In the way a shark was kinda like a fish.

She was looking at him expectantly, those blue eyes trained on him as if she was waiting for him to elaborate, but Grady had just about surpassed his quota of words for the day.

“Okay then,” she said after several awkward seconds of silence that she—hallelujah—didn’t feel the need to fill up. “Your uncle said you’d show me the cottage?”

Grady nodded, grateful for something to do even if it did mean extending his time in Little Miss Chatty’s company. He glanced at the van and tried not to wince. “Drive your…vehicle round back.”