If the intruder in question was enjoying a tour of the place, like some stalking voyeur, his ranch manager Mack would quickly catch up with her.

Acting on a hunch, he let himself out of the house through the study doors and started walking toward the vehicles parked out front. In case she made a dash for one of them, he’d be waiting for her.

To his shock, a woman answering Janine’s description got out of a white compact car and called to him in a slightly husky voice. “Excuse me?”

His jaw tightened.

She wasn’t at all what he’d anticipated. For one thing she couldn’t be in her thirties. For another, her suit was a pale lemon color, subtle and so phisticated. Her healthy, natural ash blond hair didn’t look anything close to the cheap image that had filled his mind.

With or without clothes on her slender yet rounded body, there was an elegance to her bones. Those long legs enabled her brilliant blue eyes to meet his without difficulty, and he was a tall man.

Her upswept hair caught in a loose knot revealed classic facial features that needed no enhancement flushed from the heat. He saw intelligence in her glance. More disconcerting to him was the passionate flare of her mouth, as if she could read his mind and enjoyed confounding him. But of course she didn’t have the power to do that.

He made the mistake of drawing too close to her. The combination of her own feminine scent and the fragrance either from her hair or perfume, or both, assailed him. Cole hadn’t thought anything could drown out the cloying scent of lilies coming from the funeral sprays.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, congratulating himself for sounding willing to help her without revealing the full state of his churning emotions thrown by her presence. But the fact that he had an inordinate curiosity about her proved to be the cause of a deeper irritation at his own undisciplined thoughts on this black day.