“I wish my mother had never been around,” she said with a whimsical smile. “My life would have been easier if I’d been an orphan, I think.”

“You love cattle, don’t you?”

She smiled. “Yes, I do. Cattle and horses, dogs and cats. It’s so nice, being able to have them and not worrying about something happening to them.” She glanced at him. “Cousin Rogan told my mother that if any of the cattle or horses had ‘accidents,’ he’d make sure the proper authorities were contacted, and she’d read about herself in the tabloids. It was the only time I ever really saw her frightened.”

“Your cousin is a card,” he mused, and could have bitten his tongue for making that slip. He wasn’t supposed to know the man.

But it went right by her. “He is,” she agreed. “I wouldn’t even have had the ranch if he hadn’t intervened.”

“He and McGuire are partners in that Australian cattle station, aren’t they?”

She nodded. “Cousin Rogan hates snow. The station is near the desert, always hot,” she said on a laugh.

“I like snow,” he mused. “We don’t get a lot back home in my part of Texas.”

“I like it until I have to drive in it,” she sighed. “I’ve been stuck in ditches too many times in my life because I never learned how to drive properly.”

“Was there a reason for that?”

She nodded. “My mother couldn’t drive at all, and I’d have walked two miles to town before I’d have asked any of her lovers to teach me—especially Henry.”

“I thought they had classes in high school.”

“Not here, they didn’t. Budget issues,” she added. She put the piecrusts aside and started to pick up the basket of apples.

“Here. Let me do that,” he said softly. He lifted it up onto the table for her and set it down.

“Thanks,” she said huskily. “I didn’t realize how heavy it was.”

He smiled. “It’s only heavy to shrimps like you,” he said on a grin.

She laughed. “I’m not a shrimp.”

“Honey, compared to me, you’re a shrimp.” He moved closer, catching her by the waist. He pulled her against him and bent to brush his hard mouth against hers almost tenderly. “You taste like those apples,” he whispered into her lips. “Green. Very green.”

She hated herself because she couldn’t manage to pull back or protest. She looked up into his pale brown eyes helplessly as he teased her mouth.

“It’s a learning curve,” he whispered as his lean hands framed her face. “We all start out as beginners.”

While he spoke, he began to fit his lips exactly to hers, coaxing them to part, brushing and stroking until she was rigid with unexpected hunger. Her hands, still floury, pressed into his blue flannel shirt, feeling muscle and soft, cushy hair under it while she stood, breathlessly fascinated, in his arms.

She felt his tongue easing under her top lip, smoothing against the warm, moist skin with a motion that was arousing. It made her hungry. She went on tiptoe to tempt him to do it harder, but he drew back a breath and started all over again.