The rightness of it stunned her. He was everything she’d once been taught to hate by Lone Wolf—a Texan and a rancher. And yet, in his arms, as she was right now, she felt at home. At peace.

At least that was how she felt deep in her heart. Her head was another matter entirely. She had a hunch that struggle was far from over.

9

“Hot,” Janet murmured eventually, backing away from Harlan as if he were a stove and she’d been standing over it too long. If she’d owned a hankie and it wouldn’t have been a dead giveaway of how affected she was by his touch, she would have patted her brow with it.

“I’ll say,” he agreed, his eyes twinkling with amusement.

“I was referring to the temperature,” she insisted as embarrassment made her face flush even hotter. At this rate she’d wind up as a little puddle of mortified genes right at his feet.

“Of course you were,” he said perfectly innocently. “So was I.”

“The weather, dammit!”

He nodded. “If you say so.”

She turned her back on him and headed across the porch, trying not to mutter out loud about his impudence. On the way, she grabbed a glass of iced tea and held it against her feverish brow.

This attraction was getting out of hand. She was slipping into a pattern that had all the earmarks of surrender. It would be just her luck that she’d fall head-over-heels in love with Harlan Adams and then he’d discover that she was out to find a way to reclaim some of his land for the Comanches. He’d blow a gasket, blow her off, and they’d both wind up being hurt and feeling used.

She heard his booted footsteps as he crossed the porch to join her. He was moving slowly, almost as if he wanted to give her time to prepare. By the time he paused beside her, her nerves were jittery all over again. Damn, why did it have to be this particular man who made her feel like a whole, vibrant, sexy woman again?

“You still wrestling with yourself?” he inquired in that lazy tone that raised goose bumps up and down her spine.

“Wrestling, hell,” she admitted. “It’s all-out war.”

He chuckled at that. “Good.”

“You don’t have to sound so complacent about it.”

“Sure I do. That’s the nature of an Adams man.”

Despite herself, she laughed and shifted until she could look into his eyes. “Big egos, huh?”

“I prefer to think of it as self-confidence.”

“You would. Arrogance by any other name is still a flaw, Harlan.”

“I’m entitled to one serious defect, don’t you think?”

She held back another urge to laugh. “Just one? That’s all you’re admitting to?”