Lone Stallion's Lady by Lisa Jackson

smile twisted his lips. “My thoughts exactly.” He slid from the saddle and advanced upon Gina. Her heart knocked wildly and she thought he was as purely male and sexual as men came. His hair was windblown, his jaw darkened by a day’s growth of beard. In faded jeans, boots and a shirt that had seen better days, he seemed a part of this raw, rugged land, at odds with the smooth-talking, slick businessman she’d met in Dallas.
    “How’d you find me?” she asked, ignoring the heat she saw in his blue eyes.
    “Just my infinite tracking skills.”
    “Oh, right.”
    “I think…no, I’m sure I have some Native American blood running through my veins. Isn’t that right? Or maybe in a past life I was a tracker.”
    “Give me a break.”
    He laughed and the sound was deep and true, rising above the babble of the creek. “Okay, so maybe Rand saw you riding this afternoon and pointed me in the right direction.”
    “That sounds more like it,” she admitted, and found his slash of a smile as infectious as ever. Why was it she couldn’t resist him?
    “It didn’t hurt that you took a main trail.”
    “So how do you know about it, and don’t give me any of that B.S. about being a native guide, okay? I’m not buying it.”
    His grin slid from one side of his jaw to the other. “Well, now, you know, I’d like to take all the credit, but I think my old pal Chester—” he patted the stallion’s neck “—wouldn’t much approve.”
    “And the reason you followed me is?” she asked.
    “I thought we needed to talk.”
    “Uh-oh. Look, if it’s about me lying to you about who I was, I think I already apologized. I made a mistake.”
    “ We made a mistake,” he said.
    She inwardly winced. He was right, of course. Falling into bed together was wrong. Too much wine, too little experience, and a curiosity about the sexiest man she’d ever met had been a lethal combination.
    “There’s no reason to rehash it to death.” She felt her palms begin to sweat a little and she was rambling. “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry I lied, it won’t happen again. We had some fun and— Oh!”
    His arm snaked out, he grabbed her wrist and yanked her hard against him. “Don’t.”
    “Don’t what?” she asked, breathless with surprise.
    “Don’t fake all this nonchalance, okay? Don’t act like it was just fun and games or a quick roll in the hay.”
    “But it was,” she countered, refusing to be seduced by words she wanted to hear. She ignored the denial drumming in her head. “What it was, Trent, was a one-night stand.”
    “That was your choice.”
    She felt as if he’d slapped her. “Wait a minute, are you trying to say that you and I would have…what? Dated? Gotten involved? What?”
    “You didn’t stick around long enough to find out, did you?”
    “I thought it was time to leave.”
    “Maybe I should have been consulted.” His gaze bored down at her with such intensity she wanted to squirm away. But she held her ground and swallowed hard when she noticed how dangerously close his lips were to hers.
    Don’t think that way, Gina, that’s what got you into trouble in the first place.
    “I, uh, I thought it was best to leave things as they were.”
    “Because you lied about who you were.”
    “That was part of it, yes.”
    “But someone who waits until they’re twenty-seven years old…” He paused and must have witnessed the flash of surprise in her eyes, because he nodded. “Oh, yeah, I know how old you are. I’ve done my own little investigation since Dallas. How does it feel to be the one under the microscope?”
    She jerked back on her arm, but he wouldn’t let go. He just kept driving his point home.
    “Anyone who’s a twenty-seven-year-old virgin doesn’t fall into bed lightly.”
    Angling up her chin, she said, “So you’re telling me that because I happened to end up in bed with you, it had to be because you were someone special, someone I’d saved myself for,