The speculative, heated look in his eyes made her breath catch in her throat. Nothing, she decided, could have prepared her for that. He looked as if he wanted her, as if he truly desired her, not just as if she were an acquisition he was considering to complete his life. It was a turn of events she definitely hadn’t considered.
“Can I talk you into opening your present?” he asked in a slow, lazy tone that made her pulse race.
“No,” she said in a rush, her gaze fixed on that lavish box with its fancy wrapping.
“It won’t bite,” he assured her.
“Jordan, I do not want your presents.”
“Not even if giving them to you makes me happy?”
She shook her head. “I should have guessed. We’re talking your needs here, not mine.”
“You have no idea what I need,” he commented, a challenging glint in his eyes. “Want to know?”
Kelly swallowed hard. “I don’t think so.”
“I’ll tell you anyway.”
He pulled the box toward him and slipped the ribbon off. He slid a finger under the wrapping paper and flipped it away. Then with the slow, tantalizing timing of a stripper, he lifted the top of the box. Kelly couldn’t have shifted her gaze away if her life had depended on it.
He folded back the layers of tissue paper and hooked a finger through a narrow strap of red silk. As he lifted his hand, the sexiest, most exquisite teddy she had ever seen emerged from the box. She felt his gaze on her, gauging her reaction. She couldn’t stop looking at that obviously outrageously expensive scrap of lace and silk. She thought of all the plain cotton underthings in her drawers upstairs. She wanted that teddy with every feminine fiber of her being. She stared at it, trying to hide her longing.
That, she thought, swallowing hard, was what he saw when he looked at her? When had he stopped thinking of her as denim and plaid? When had he stopped looking at her as a pal and begun noticing her as a woman?
“It’s…beautiful,” she said in a choked voice, reaching out to skim her fingers over the silk. She jerked her hand back as if that red-as-flame material were just as hot as any blaze, except perhaps the one inside her.
“There are more,” he said, dropping the teddy he held into a pool of red on the table.
Sinful black followed, then a wild, hot shade of pink. The last was a vivid, sapphire blue. Kelly loved them all. Never in her life had she owned anything quite so provocative. Her wardrobe of underwear tended toward practical cotton, with a few scraps of lace and silk for special occasions, but there was nothing, nothing like this. It hadn’t seemed necessary since she and Paul had split. Indulgences were something she couldn’t afford.
“Where on earth would I wear them?” she murmured, even as she clutched them to her.
“Why not here?” he asked. “The thought of one of these under your jeans and an old plaid shirt gives me goose bumps.”
“It’s not very practical,” she said.
“Not everything in life has to be practical,” he reminded her.
“It does when you’re trying to keep a ranch afloat.”
“Then think of me as the impractical side of your life.” He gestured around the kitchen with its faded wallpaper, old appliances and huge oak table. “All of this represents reality. Let me fulfill your dreams.”
Tears sprang to her eyes at the sweet, tempting suggestion. “Jordan, sometimes you say the most incredible things,” she said.
He seemed alarmed that she was crying. His finger shook as he wiped away the dampness on her cheeks. “Sweetheart, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“I know,” she said, crying harder, then laughing at herself. “It’s so silly. You’re making it so hard for me to go on saying no.”
“That’s the idea.”
“One of us has to be practical here. Obviously it’s not going to be you. Jordan, it wouldn’t work,” she repeated for what seemed the hundredth time. This time, though, even she could tell there was a lot less conviction behind the declaration.
“We’re not a couple of kids with stars in our eyes,” he said. “We could make it work.”
The remark, so like him, snapped her out of the dreamy, hopeful state of mind he’d induced in her. “But I want stars in my eyes. If I ever marry again, I want it all.” She fingered the piles of silk scattered across the table, then gazed directly into his eyes. “I want it all, Jordan. Nothing less.”
He stood slowly, then, the faintest hint of anger in his eyes. “I won’t stop trying,” he said with a touch of defiance.
“You’ll be wasting your time.”
Before she realized what he intended, he turned back, leaned down and kissed her, a bruising, hard kiss that stole her breath away. His mouth plundered hers, branding her as his as surely as if she’d been one of those heads of cattle at White Pines.
While she was still dazed, he said softly, “I don’t think so, sweetheart. I don’t think it will be a waste of time at all.”
Chapter Four
Jordan figured he must have gotten less than an hour of sleep the entire night. Despite his exhaustion, he was back at Kelly’s just before dawn, expecting to find her dressed and ready to get to all that fence mending she’d talked about the night before. Instead he found the house quiet and dark except for a faint light he thought he detected in the kitchen.
So, she hadn’t gotten much sleep, either. He counted that as a positive sign, an indication that perhaps she had spent the remaining hours of the night lying awake thinking
