She opened the door and let him in.

“YOU REALLY DO make good coffee,” he said after they were drinking it at her small kitchen table. He made a face. “Even if it’s decaf.”

“Thanks.” She couldn’t tell him why she was drinking decaf. It might not be good for the baby to continue her strong caffeine habit. Amazing, that she felt shy with him, when they’d been intimate.

He saw that. It made him feel warm inside. The only dark cloud was her friendship with McGuire. He didn’t like her keeping company with him, but he had no way to stop it. Unless, of course, he married her.

“Where do you really live?” she asked.

“At Latigo,” he replied.

Her breath caught. Jake had mentioned that Cort owned a big ranch, but she hadn’t known it would be that one. She’d heard of the huge Santa Gertrudis stud. Most ranchers had. “That’s the biggest ranch in West Texas,” she said.

He nodded. “I owned it jointly with my brothers and my father, but I bought them all out. I’m running it myself now. Well, my father’s been helping me since his wife left him last week,” he muttered.

“Why did she leave him?”

“He was cheating on her.” He laughed hollowly. “He cheated on my mother when she was dying. He’s cheated on all his female companions. It’s the only way of life he knows.”

She felt her face go numb. They always said, look at the father and that’s the son in twenty years.

He could see the indecision in her face. “Our stepmother cheated on him, so he threw her out. It’s the only time he really got it back. Until last week, anyway.” He smiled sadly. “His new wife is an upright, moral woman. I liked her.”

“Doesn’t he love her?”

“Honey, I don’t think he really knows what love is,” he said softly. “Maybe he loved our mother, at first, but that wore off when she had the first baby and stopped giving all her affection to him.” He studied his coffee cup. “Apparently, when he feels he isn’t the center of attention, he does every bad thing he can think of to get noticed. He fired my foreman. I had a hell of a time persuading him to come back. And Dad’s still at the ranch. I can’t really leave him alone there for long, or I’ll be replacing everybody. He’s climbed into the bottle to drown his sorrows, and he’s a hell of a pain when he drinks.”

“And I thought I had problems with my little herd,” she mused. She sipped coffee and peered at him over the rim. “So you have to go home soon, I guess,” she added, and tried not to sound as sad as she felt.

He searched her dark eyes. It was like coming home. “I hoped you might go with me,” he said after a minute. His heart raced. It was the first time he’d really tried to commit himself to a long-term relationship and he was uneasy. It didn’t show.