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“Looks that way,” he said, looking away from the fire to lock gazes with her. His lake-blue eyes shimmered in the firelight and seemed to burn just as hot as the flames.
“I checked cell service while you were taking another shower,” he said. “Still nothing. And I’m guessing it’ll only get worse. We’ll lose power for sure. I’m only surprised it hasn’t happened yet.”
The instant he said it, the lights blinked off, and startled, Chloe half laughed. “You should use your power for good, not evil.”
One corner of his mouth quirked, and that action tugged at something inside her. “I’ll try to remember.” He glanced at the gas fire, still burning merrily. “We’ve got this for light, anyway. Want more wine?”
“Sure.” Wine for breakfast. This was new. But somehow, it was as if they were out of regular time, so who cared? She held her glass out and watched as he filled it with a gold liquid that shined in the glow of the fire. Then he filled his own glass and lifted it in a toast.
“Here’s to...storms and surprises.”
She smiled and took a sip, still staring into those mesmerizing eyes. “You surprised me, too.”
“Not exactly the way most meetings end up,” he acknowledged.
“Not mine, anyway,” she said, taking another sip of wine. Chloe sat quietly thinking for a second or two, then asked, “Do you hate the idea of a girls’ camp?”
He studied the wine in his glass for a long minute, before lifting his gaze to hers again. “Seriously? You want to talk now?”
She shrugged. “Well, we’re not exactly busy, are we?”
He nodded. “Not at the moment. Okay then. No, I don’t hate it. Hell, I understand it.”
“Really.” It wasn’t a question, but she wanted an explanation anyway.
He stretched out his legs, and Chloe’s gaze dipped briefly to where only a corner of the blanket now lay across his groin. She took a breath to cool the rush of heat to the pit of her stomach, but it didn’t help.
“Remember, I grew up on a ranch.” Then he drew one knee up and laid his forearm across it. The blanket shifted again, and Chloe forced herself to keep her gaze focused on his eyes.
“Did you always live on the Perry Ranch?”
He nodded. “Most of my life, yes. My dad was the foreman there, and he taught me everything he knew about ranching—and that was a hell of a lot.”
“Now I’ll be jealous,” she said, shaking her head. “I grew up taking piano lessons and dance lessons that would have served me well in eighteenth-century Vienna.”
He snorted a laugh, and Chloe realized she didn’t mind the sound so much anymore. “At least they also gave me riding lessons, so a part of my yearning to be a cowgirl was fed at the local stables once a week.”
He studied her over the rim of his wineglass, and Chloe wondered what he saw when he looked at her. “How did you come to be Sterling’s foreman?” she asked. “Was it handed down from your father?”
“In a way,” he said, taking another sip. “When my dad died, Sterling offered to put me through college if I came back after graduation to work off the debt.” He shrugged. “Seemed like a hell of a deal to me. So I went to MIT—”
“Why MIT?” She frowned a little at the thought of a real Texas cowboy going to school in Massachusetts. “Why not UT or Texas A&M?”
That corner of his mouth tipped up again. “I wanted to see something of the country, I guess. Spread out from these hills and oaks.” Lightning flashed and thunder boomed. He waited until it was quiet again to continue. “MIT has a great genetics program, and one of the things I’m going to focus on at my ranch is breeding. I wanted to learn all I could.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah, I did,” he said, lifting the glass to look at the wine with the firelight shining through it. “Me and a couple of other guys came up with a few things while we were there and took out a few patents.”
Her eyebrows arched. “Patents? On what?”
“A couple on different methods of breeding.”
“There are different methods?” she asked, grinning.
