"Maybe I'm not such a bad cook after all. You managed to clean up your plate anyway." He pushed back his chair and stood up. "I'll get you something to drink. I should probably give milk to someone as young as you, but I hate the stuff and never keep it in the house. How about some orange juice?" He crossed the room to the refrigerator on the far side of the kitchen. "It's the only nonalcoholic beverage I have."

"That will be fine." She watched the slide of muscles beneath his khaki shirt as he opened the refrigerator door. He was tall, over six feet, and every inch was lean and powerful. She suddenly had a hazy recollection of how those muscles had exploded into lethal, totally devastating force tonight in the bar. She couldn't seem to connect the memory with the man who had held her with almost feminine tenderness in the jeep, or the master Frank was gazing up at with such hopeful adoration. Surely no one could look less threatening. He was dressed in faded jeans that hung low on his lean hips and a short-sleeved khaki shirt, unbuttoned at the collar to reveal the strong line of his tan throat. He was wearing brown cowboy boots, scuffed and weathered by the elements. Weathered was the word that described more about him than his boots. He looked totally experienced, as if he had gone through all the storms and droughts life could offer and had emerged not broken, only seasoned and tougher.

His skin was tanned by sun and wind to a deep bronze and laugh lines radiated from the corners of his brown eyes. His hair might have been a dark brown at one time but now it was sun- streaked, tawny, slightly tousled with… a cowlick. She smiled when she noticed that unruly lock of hair. No, she must have been mistaken about the lethal side of Gideon Brandt she thought she'd glimpsed in the bar. Who could be afraid of a man with a cowlick? "I'm not really that young. I'm seventeen."