Wrangling the Redhead - By Sherryl Woods Page 0,21

be in.”

“Don’t get too cocky, sweetheart. There are other people in the world who have a way with fractious horses.”

“Maybe so, but none of them are me. Nor are they here. Right now, I’m all you’ve got.” She reached up and patted his cheek. “Be nice to me.”

The touch was no more than a two-second caress, but Wade’s pulse took off like a stock car at Daytona. The woman was a sorceress. At this rate, she’d have him tamed right along with Midnight. He couldn’t have that.

Before she could tuck her hand safely beneath the table, he caught it in midair and brought it to his lips. Gaze clashing with hers, he kissed her knuckles, lingering over the job until he felt her skin heat.

“A word of warning,” he murmured.

“What?” she whispered, her voice suddenly shaky.

“You don’t want to play with fire.”

“Oh, my,” a voice beside him murmured.

Wade looked up to find Cassie standing there with an armload of plates and a dazed expression. He grabbed a couple of the dinners before they wound up on the floor and passed them off to Karen and Grady, then took Lauren’s salad and served it to her. By that time, Cassie had recovered enough to set his own plate in front of him.

She regarded Lauren with a questioning look. “Anything else?”

“Oh, I think that about does it,” Lauren said wryly. “I’m apparently providing dinner and the entertainment. I hope everybody’s happy.”

Wade grinned at her. “I know I am.”

Chapter Five

It took a lot to rattle Lauren, but Wade had managed to completely disconcert her the night before. As she sat on the porch sipping her morning coffee, she considered the entire encounter at Stella’s. She wasn’t sure which had shaken her more, her physical response to him or the discovery that he had a stake in the ranch’s horses.

Since the latter was far less threatening to her personal equilibrium, she decided to deal with that first. Why had she been so surprised? Was it merely because Grady hadn’t mentioned it? Or was it because she’d dismissed Wade as being nothing more than a ranch employee who served at Grady’s discretion? Was she a snob—the spoiled brat that Wade had accused her of being?

No, she assured herself, that couldn’t be. She had always gotten along with everyone, respected them for the work they did, whatever it was.

As a child, she had known intuitively that the wrangler working for her father was as important as the foreman or, in terms of his workload, even as necessary as her father himself.

In Hollywood, she had accepted from the first that everyone on the set made a contribution, from the gofers right on up through the director and executive producer. She’d excluded no one when she threw a party, and on the set she’d been friendly with everyone. In fact, some of the people she’d been closest to had worked behind the scenes in the least lofty, and often least appreciated, positions.

Of course, she had learned one bitter lesson during that time. While she had viewed everyone as equally important and worthwhile, her ex-husbands had sought her out specifically because of what they viewed as her exalted position on the Hollywood scene and how that might help them climb the film world’s social and career ladders.

She sighed and went back to Wade. Her reaction to him had been based on his attitude, not on his position, she concluded after considering the situation from all angles. She was relieved by the assessment, if only because it meant she didn’t owe him an immediate apology.

As for the other matter, the way she’d responded to that glancing kiss he’d brushed across her knuckles, to his thigh snugly fitted against her own, to the burning intensity of his gaze…well, that was a whole other kettle of fish. Her reaction to that had been out of all proportion to the importance of the incidents. Heck, she’d been kissed with mind-numbing intensity on-screen and it hadn’t meant anything at all. This didn’t, either.

Of course, those on-screen kisses hadn’t stirred so much as a whisper of arousal, while the merest touch of Wade’s lips had sent her blood pressure into the stratosphere. What was that all about?

Loneliness, she concluded. That’s all it was. The absence of a meaningful relationship in her life. The absence of sex, while all around her the other Calamity Janes were falling madly, passionately in love with the men of their dreams.

She had spent the last year watching her best friends