As usual, his face was poker straight, but his voice held that undercurrent of amusement that so riled Lucy. She didn’t believe a word of it. He was just teasing her, probably miffed because she thought that Kevin was more of a man.

Lucy’s chin went up. She had had enough of being teased by Guy over the last few days. ‘Prove it,’ she said.

‘Prove that I can ride?’ Guy rubbed his jaw, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. ‘Short of throwing myself on to a spare horse, I’m not sure how I can do that.’

‘We’re at a rodeo,’ she pointed out sweetly. ‘There are plenty of horses back there.’ She nodded in the direction of the holding pens behind the makeshift arena. ‘You could take part in one of the competitions.’

‘Have you seen those horses?’ Guy made a comic face. ‘Half of them are completely wild!’

Lucy shrugged. ‘You said you could ride,’ she reminded him.

‘Well, there’s riding and riding, if you know what I mean.’

‘You’re the one who said you could ride like Kevin. I don’t think it would be easy, but a real man would like a challenge. You obviously don’t,’ she finished dismissively, and then regretted it because Guy had straightened and suddenly he seemed very solid and very close.

For one frozen moment she thought she might have gone too far, but then he smiled. Taking off his sunglasses, he looked directly into Lucy’s hostile eyes. ‘I wouldn’t say that, Cinderella,’ he said softly.

Lucy had the strangest impression that the noise and smells of the rodeo had faded around them while blue eyes locked with blue. Hers were the blue of a summer sky, while Guy’s were darker, a deep ocean blue where laughter lurked like sunlight glinting on the water and, as she stared up at him, held against her will by their gleaming depths, she was suddenly acutely aware of him.

Ever since he had arrived, she had dismissed Guy as a playboy, too handsome for his own good, too charming to be real, but now, all at once, she saw him as a man. A man with warm brown skin and a hint of golden stubble, with a strong jaw and a slightly crooked nose and laughter lines creasing those blue, blue eyes, and something turned over inside her at the realisation that he was not only a very real man but that he was very close.