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Heath found himself even more confounded. Clearly, the previous owner of the bourbon was not someone she cared to discuss. Or at least not now. After all, they barely knew each other. “I’ll try the Willett. The twenty-four year. I’ve only had it once. It’s exceptional.”
“Sure thing.” She took a highball glass from a shelf inside the cabinet. “Here. Pour yourself as much as you like. Can I get you any ice?”
“Absolutely not.” Heath popped the cork from the bottle and slowly poured the deep amber liquid into his glass. “This is meant to be enjoyed as is.” He carefully put the bottle back in place and rolled the liquor in the highball, smelling the fragrance and admiring the color. “Are you going to join me?”
“I’ll have a glass of wine with dinner. For now, I’m going to go heat up the mug of cocoa I was drinking when you got here.”
Heath looked out one of the windows along the back side of the house. Impossibly, the snow seemed to be coming down even harder. “I suppose I will be here at least that long, huh?” He finally took a sip of the bourbon, which was even better than he remembered.
“At least until there’s cell service and I can call someone to get that tree out of my driveway.” Ruby strode to the other side of the open space and rounded a butcher block peninsula, into the heart of her kitchen. She placed a ceramic coffee cup in the microwave and hit a few buttons.
“If I had a chain and a chain saw and an extra hand or two, we could slice it up and haul it out of there with my truck.”
The microwave beeped and she retrieved her drink, wrapping her hands around the mug and closing her eyes to smell the steaming liquid inside. Damn, she was beautiful. She was enough to make him forget why he’d come here in the first place. Her eyes slowly opened and she took a sip, looking at him while she did it. It was a penetrating glance, one that seemed to get right down to his core. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t really strike me as a man who does that sort of work for himself.”
For the first time in a long time, Heath found that his first reaction to that kind of probing or inquisition was not to put up his guard. It only made him more curious about her. What was going on behind those mysterious green eyes? “I own and run a sizable ranch. Now, granted, I don’t do a lot of the day-to-day work. I have a whole crew working for me. But I know how to do it all. Ihavedone it all, and I’m not a man who’s afraid to get his hands dirty.” Despite the considerable revenue and income his ranch generated, Heath still thought of himself as a working man. He hadn’t come from old money like the Grandins or Lattimores had. And even though he’d inherited the ranch that eventually earned millions, it hadn’t been much when he’d started. In fact, the ranch had been in such disrepair that his brother, Nolan, had wanted no part of it.
“Can you saddle a horse?” Ruby returned to the living room and took a seat on the comfortable sofa nearest the fireplace.
Heath followed her lead and joined her, sitting at the opposite end. “Of course.”
“Rope a steer?”
“It might not be pretty, but I can get it done.”
“Ever birthed a calf?”
“Again, might not be pretty, but I can hold my own.”
That made her smile and her eyes twinkle. “You’re not quite what I expected, Heath Thurston.”
“You aren’t quite what I expected, either,” he said. That was the understatement of the century. This whole day had come as a complete surprise. “How does a young woman become a surveyor?”
“Not easily. It’s such a male-dominated field, but I can’t imagine doing anything else. It was my dad’s influence. He was a geologist. My mother passed away when my brother, Joe, and I were young. Dad had to travel for work all the time, all over the state of Texas, so he brought us with him.” Ruby pulled her knee up onto the couch and turned to face him directly. “We were a very tight little family, and he was an amazing dad. So it was only natural that I wanted to go into something along the lines of what he did. My brother did the same. He’s an environmental scientist.”
“Is it hard to make a living as a surveyor?”
“It’s not pretty, but I can get it done.”
He laughed at the way she’d effortlessly tossed his own words back at him. She was quick, with a very appealing spark. “Like I said a few minutes ago, you definitely aren’t what I expected either.”
“I’m not really sure what that means, to be honest.”
He cleared his throat, thinking about what had been running through his head as he’d driven up her driveway. “Your appearance. Your, uh, age.”
“I’m thirty years old. Or I will be next week. Why?” Her eyes scanned his face, zipping back and forth like she was looking for clues. Or answers. “Hold on a minute. How old did you think I was?” She ended the question by reaching over and pushing on his shoulder with her fingertips. Damn, she was sexy when she confronted or questioned him, which seemed to be often.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“You don’t want to tell me, do you?”
“Really. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Heath...I’m going to drag it out of you one way or another. We are stuck here for the foreseeable future. I have nothing but time on my hands right now.”
He swallowed hard, fighting an urge to smile or maybe even laugh. “Fine. It’s just that I pictured a much older woman. In my defense, even you said that your full name is a bit old-fashioned.” He watched as a look of horror crossed her face. Heath was prepared to do anything to make it go away. “I’m not saying I don’t love your name. I do. It’s beautiful. Just like you.”
Any offense she’d taken quickly melted away, replaced by skepticism. A woman as gorgeous and beguiling as her had surely heard hundreds of men tell her something similar. “I think the bourbon’s getting to you.”
