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Always a stickler for details, Sloan frowned. “Aren’t you forgetting about your great-great grandfather? His name was Chase Calder, too.”
“According to Gramps, he never used it. He went by Benteen.”
“I wonder why?” she murmured.
“Who knows?” Trey said, unconcerned, and downed the rest of his champagne drink in a series of manly gulps.
He examined the empty plastic glass for a moment. Then a restlessness seemed to sweep through him, and he rolled to his knees, shooting her a look as he shifted toward the picnic box.
“I’m ready for some coffee. How about you?” he asked.
“Not right now,” Sloan told him.
But she took advantage of the chance to study him unobserved. She thought back on the previous day’s encounters with him, first at the motel, then later at the rodeo arena. Initially she had regarded him as a rugged-jaw cowboy hunk with a smile that could make any woman’s pulse race. She certainly hadn’t been immune to it. But now she saw something more in him.
When he had suggested meeting at the street dance, she had agreed on a whim—partly to escape the monotony of another night in a motel room, partly out of curiosity about the event, and partly because of that potent smile. Any personal risk had seemed small, since it was a public event and she was furnishing her own transportation to and from it.
Just the same, Sloan had assumed she would be spending much of the evening fending off the advances of her lusty rodeo Romeo. However, except for that initial kiss that had relied more on raw heat than finesse, the evening hadn’t turned out that way.
The noisy crowd and loud music had kept any conversation to a minimum, which had suited Sloan just fine at the time. Then later, outside her motel room, when Trey had kissed her that second time—the mere memory of its slow, drugging force was enough to make her toes curl all over again with a remnant of that delicious ache she’d felt.
Studying him while he poured steaming coffee out of the thermos, Sloan was struck again by the fact that he looked every inch a cowboy. He had the physique of a rider, wide at the shoulders and narrow at the hip, with all lean, sinewy muscle in between. And he had a horseman’s way of walking as well, one that suggested he was more at home in the saddle than on foot.
In looks he was a throwback to something from the past, all steely strength and iron resolve. Handsome was too tame a word for the compelling quality of his features, features that were formed out of hard angles and smooth planes, without a trace of softness to them until he smiled and took a woman’s breath away.
Yet an ordinary cowboy he wasn’t. This breakfast selection showed Trey had a worldly side. More than that, it revealed he could be thoughtful and caring. And that discovery made Sloan wonder all the more about the kind of lover he’d be.
After tightening the thermos lid, Trey set the bottle back in the box and made his way across the blanket to rejoin her. His nearness coupled with the direction her own thoughts had taken started her pulse drumming a little erratically. To cover it, Sloan popped the last of the croissant in her mouth and reached for a napkin.
Trey helped himself to a handful of strawberries, then offered Sloan her choice. “Have one?”
Using hand signals and an exaggerated chewing motion, she indicated she already had a mouthful of food. His mouth quirking, he nodded in understanding and proceeded to stem the fruit in his hand and, one by one, eat the berries whole.
As Sloan washed down the last of the croissant with a drink of her champagne cocktail, Trey remarked, “It’s a beautiful morning.”
“It certainly is.” She let her gaze wander to the prairie-scape on the opposite side of the Yellowstone. “I wish I’d brought my camera.”
“Is this your first trip to Montana?”
“No, but all the other times I was here, I was always in the mountains or Glacier Park. The mountains are always big and beautiful, but here…there’s a different kind of bigness.”
“A big land and a big sky,” Trey agreed.
But he wasn’t looking at either. She could almost feel the touch of his gaze moving over her face, as in a caress. She felt self-conscious, wondering what he saw. As always, the attack of nerves prompted Sloan to keep her hands busy. She selected a big, ripe berry and made slow work of removing its stem.
“Where did you come by an unusual name like Sloan?” Trey asked. “There’s bound to be a story behind it.”
The question came almost as a relief. Mostly because the answer was easy. “Not a story exactly, but a reason. But before I tell you, I need to explain that my full name is Sloan Taylor Davis. Sloan is my mother’s maiden name, and Taylor is my dad’s mother’s maiden name. Which makes my name also my lineage. That’s become something of a custom in certain southern circles. Therefore, when you meet someone, you already know everything about their background. So it really isn’t unusual to meet a southern-born woman with a given name of Campbell or Fallon or Sloan.”
“That’s bound to make you think twice about the name of the person you marry,” Trey suggested, his voice dry with humor, “Can you imagine saddling a girl with a name like Lipshitz or Bumgartner?”
Sloan laughed. “I never thought of that, but you’re right. It’s for sure I’m never going to name any daughter of mine Davis.”
“That’s good.” He broke off one of the larger branches from the grape cluster.
“I thought so.” Sloan bit into the strawberry. Juice gushed onto her chin and she immediately tried to catch it in her hand. “Why didn’t you tell me how juicy these are?” she complained and hurriedly set her drink aside, freeing her hand to grab a napkin.
“You never asked.” Using his teeth, Trey calmly pulled a grape off its stem and rolled it into his mouth.
