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“Not just that. That capped it off. I proved to be a terrible marksman, but I couldn’t have shot anything if it had walked up and put its nose against the barrel of my rifle. I didn’t like anything about that whole scene.” Softly, she added almost to herself, “I wasn’t as good an outdoorsman as my brother Jeff.”
“Did your father expect you to be?” He had skewered the rabbit on a green twig and was now suspending it over the coals.
“I think he was hoping I would be.”
“Then he’s a fool. You’re not physically equipped to be a hunter.”
His eyes dropped to her chest. And lingered. Heat rushed into her breasts, filling them like mother’s milk, making them heavy and achy. Her nipples drew tight.
The reaction startled Rusty enormously. Instinctively she wanted to cover and press her breasts back to normalcy, but he was still looking at her, so she couldn’t. She didn’t dare move at all. She was afraid that if she did, something terribly fragile would be broken—something that couldn’t be replaced or repaired. Any reckless move would be disastrous and irrevocable. Something dreadful might happen as a result.
It was the first time he had made any sexual reference besides the vulgarities he’d spouted last night. He’d done that only to rile her. She realized that now. But this was something altogether different. This time, he was as much the victim as the perpetrator.
He yanked his eyes back toward the fire and the moment passed. But they didn’t speak to each other for a long time. Rusty closed her eyes and pretended to doze, but she watched him as he busied himself around what was gradually coming to look like a bonafide camp. He sharpened the hatchet on a stone. He checked the roasting rabbit, turning it several times.
He moved with surprising agility for a man his size. She was sure that some women would consider him handsome, particularly now that his chin and jaw were deeply shadowed by a twenty-four-hour beard. The wide, curving mustache was sexy...if one liked facial hair. It sat directly on top of his lower lip, completely obscuring his upper one, making the thought of going in search of it intriguing.
She found herself staring at his mouth as he leaned down and spoke to her. “I...I beg your pardon?”
He looked at her strangely. “Your eyes are glassy. You’re not going delirious again, are you?” He pressed his palm to her forehead.
Impatient with him and herself for her adolescent fantasies, she swatted his hand aside. “No, I feel fine. What did you say?”
“I asked if you were ready to eat.”
“That’s an understatement.”
He assisted her into a sitting position. “This has been cooling for a minute or two. It should be about ready.” He slid the rabbit off the spit and tore off a leg at the joint. He passed it to Rusty. Hesitantly she took it, staring at it dubiously.
“You’re going to eat it if I have to force it down your throat.” He tore off a bite of meat with his strong white teeth. “It’s not half bad. Honest.”
She pinched some of the meat off the bone and put it into her mouth, making herself chew and swallow it quickly. “Not so fast,” he cautioned. “It’ll make you sick.”
She nodded and took another bite. With a little salt, it wouldn’t have been bad at all. “There are some very nice restaurants in Los Angeles that have rabbit on the menu,” she said conversationally. She instinctively reached for a napkin, remembered that she didn’t have one, shrugged, and licked her fingers.
“Is that where you live, Los Angeles?”
“Beverly Hills, actually.”
He studied her in the firelight. “Are you a movie star or something?”
Rusty got the impression that he wouldn’t be impressed if she told him she was a three-time Oscar winner. She doubted if Cooper Landry put much stock in fame. “No, I’m not a movie star. My father owns a real-estate company. It has branches all over southern California. I work for him.”
“Are you any good at it?”
“I’ve been very successful.”
He chewed a mouthful and tossed the cleaned bone into the fire. “Being the boss’s daughter, how could you miss?”
“I work hard, Mr. Landry.” She took umbrage at his sly implication that her father was responsible for the success she had achieved. “I had the highest sales record of the agency last year.”
“Bravo.”
Miffed that he was so obviously unimpressed, she asked snidely, “What do you do?”
He silently offered her another piece of the meat, which she tore into as though she’d been eating fresh, unseasoned roasted rabbit cooked over an open fire every day of her life.
“I ranch,” Cooper replied.
