The heated dreams of the night before suddenly rocketed through his brain and in his mind he was once more tangled in all that softness, touching his mouth to hers, tasting that sweetly curved mouth.
He heard a ragged-sounding breath and managed to drag his attention from her mouth—and from his own feverish imagination—to meet her gaze. Her pupils were wide, her color high, and thick, heady awareness suddenly bloomed between them.
He needed to kiss her. He didn’t want to, he knew he shouldn’t, but he had to know if she tasted as delicious as he had imagined. He couldn’t seem to stop himself from leaning forward.
An instant before he reached her, he heard the bang of the screen door and jerked back just as Ruby raced out of the house.
“Here I am! I changed and everything. Hi, Miss Barnes!” She hugged her teacher’s legs and Ashley looked dazed—whether from Ruby’s affection or their almost-kiss, he couldn’t guess.
“Do you want to come see my bedroom? It’s pink and green and my bed is in a real playhouse!”
Ashley cast a furtive look at him, her color high. “I... Of course,” she murmured, looking relieved at any excuse to escape.
“The steaks won’t take long,” he said, calling on all his long-neglected acting skills to keep any trace of embarrassment from his voice.
She nodded and walked out with Ruby’s hand tucked in hers, leaving him alone in the starlight to wonder what the hell had just happened.
Eleven
JUSTIN HARTFORD HAD nearly kissed her. If his daughter hadn’t come bursting out onto the deck, Ashley had no doubt that with a half second more alone with him, she would have been in his arms.
She followed Ruby up a sweeping staircase constructed of hewn half logs, painfully aware of the way her knees trembled and her stomach still felt jittery and weak.
Justin Hartford. Almost. Kissed. Her.
He had wanted to, anyway. She had seen the sudden heat in those heartbreaking eyes of his, the slight parting of his lips, and hadn’t been able to stop her body’s instinctive sway toward him.
What a jerk, she thought, but the familiar imprecation held no heat whatsoever. She had wanted him to kiss her. Another minute or two and she probably would have begged him to.
They reached Ruby’s bedroom and she could only stare. “Wow. This is your room?”
“Yep. It’s cool, huh?”
“Very cool.” It was a dream of a room for a little girl. Everything was pink and flowery and Ruby had told the truth—her bed was built into a massive playhouse built into the center of the large room. It was like a room inside of a room, with a door and windows and a gabled roof that touched the ceiling.
“Daddy and me built the playhouse. I helped hammer the nails and measure the wood and everything.”
“Oh?” It was very hard to dislike a man who could create such a wonderland for his child.
“Yep. My daddy makes really good things. My aunt Liddy says he has always been good with his hands. She said when he was a kid, he was always making stuff from junk wood he found around. And he’s strong, too. When we builded my bed, he carried all the wood in by himself.”
Ruby frowned for a moment, her brow furrowed in concentration, then it cleared and she smiled. “Oh, and he makes up funny stories. My favorite is about the ugly hedgehog. Daddy does all kinds of voices when he tells stories and he always makes me laugh. You should hear him.”
“Oh?” She tried to pretend disinterest, but in truth she was fascinated to hear about Justin’s interactions with his daughter.
“Yeah, and he can swim superfast! You should see him. And he rides horses better than anybody else in the whole wide world. I have my own horse, but my favorite is when I ride with my daddy.”
Why did Ruby suddenly remind her of a used car salesman trying to unload a junker? Ashley wondered uneasily. She really shouldn’t be listening to all these things about Justin. It made him seem too real, entirely too likable.
Still, she forced herself to smile. “It sounds like you have a lot of fun with your dad.”
“We’re best buds. Me and Daddy and Aunt Liddy are a team. Daddy says so. I love him a ton.”
She suddenly gave Ashley a funny sidelong look she couldn’t quite interpret.
“Except I think maybe he’s lonely.”
Twelve
JUSTIN HARTFORD LONELY?
She couldn’t even imagine it. Still, the conviction in the girl’s voice set off warning bells. “Ruby, is that why you’ve been misbehaving in class? Because you think if you’re naughty enough in school and don’t do your work, you’ll be sent home to the Blue Sage, where you can be with your father?”
Ruby’s big blue eyes opened wide and she looked so genuinely startled at the suggestion that Ashley knew she must be completely off the mark.
The little girl giggled. “No! That’s not why. You’re silly.”
Oh, she certainly was, especially if she thought a gorgeous, compelling man like Justin Hartford could ever be interested in a boring, naive schoolteacher like her.
“Will you tell me the reason?” she pressed. “I don’t think you really hate school, even though you pretend you do.”
“I don’t hate it,” she whispered. She looked down at the thick carpet of her room, digging the toe of her sneakers into the floral pattern.
Ashley paused, totally at sea to figure out what all this was about. “Is it me you don’t like? Perhaps we could switch you to the other kindergarten teacher’s class.”
“Noooo!” Ruby looked horrified by the very idea. “I don’t want another teacher. I have to be in your class. Please, Miss Barnes. Please don’t make me go to another class!”
She was trying to process that impassioned plea when she heard footsteps in the hallway and a moment later, Justin stuck his head in.
He looked incongruous in the girlie room, dark and gorgeous and uber-masculine,
