“You can’t depend on your looks around here.”
Melissa drew back in surprise.
“If I catch you batting those big green eyes-”
“I never-”
He leaned closer still and she shut her mouth. “You mess with my cowboys, and your pretty little butt will be off the property in a heartbeat.”
A rush of heat prickled her cheeks. “I have no intention of messing with your cowboys.”
A cloud rolled over the setting sun, and a chill dampened the charged air between them.
Jared’s nostrils flared, and his eyes darkened to indigo in the shifting light. He stared at her for a lengthening moment, then his head canted to one side.
How his kiss might feel bloomed unbidden in her mind. It would be light, then firm, then harder still as he pulled her body flush against his own. A flash of heat stirred her body as the wind gusted between them, forming tiny dust devils on the driveway and rustling the tall, summer grass.
The ranch hands still shouted to one another. Hooves still thudded against the packed dirt. And the diesel engines still rumbled in the distance.
“See that you don’t,” he finally murmured. “And move my damn horse.”
“Fine,” she ground out, quashing the stupid hormonal reaction. She’d move the damn horse or die trying.
Later that evening, in Stephanie’s dining room, Jared struggled to put Melissa out of his mind. His sister had obviously hired the woman out of pity. Then Jared had kept her on for the same reason. He wasn’t sure who’d made the bigger mistake.
“We’ve had thirty-five new requests for assistance this year,” said Otto Durand, moving a manila file to the top of his pile. Otto had been a board member of the Genevieve Memorial Fund for fifteen years. He was also the CEO of Rutledge Agricultural Equipment and a lifelong friend of Jared and Melissa’s parents.
“We do have the money,” Anthony Salvatore put in, flipping through a report. “Donations, they are up nearly twenty percent.” Anthony was a distant relative, the son of Jared’s mother’s cousin. The cousin had met and fallen in love with Carmine Salvatore on a college trip to Naples, and their only son had held a special place in Genevieve’s heart.