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He sighed. “Not at all. But you’ll try just about anything to take away the sting of rejection.” He sat down on a hay bale and started pulling on his boots. “Now I better get going. Daddy doesn’t mind me and Casey staying out all night as long as we’re home bright and early to get our work done.”
At the mention of his family, her eyes widened. “Oh, no! My family must be worried sick.” She frantically started searching for her socks and boots. Rome stopped her.
“Relax. I told Belle you were hiding out in the hayloft.”
That explained why her sisters and her parents hadn’t come looking for her. This wasn’t the first time Cloe or one of her sisters had spent the night in the hayloft. In a large family filled with stubborn, opinionated people, the hayloft had become a sanctuary the sisters all fought over. Last night, Cloe had needed a sanctuary. She just hadn’t planned on sharing it with the man looking back at her with misty gray eyes.
“I wasn’t hiding,” she said.
“No, you were just waiting for your Romeo. Who is he?”
She blushed as she turned away and continued to look for her socks and boots. “I was drunk and rambling. There was no Romeo.”
“Then why the comforter, lanterns, and champagne? It didn’t look like you were waiting for your grandma.”
She found her boots and socks and sat down on a bale of hay across from him to put them on. “The loft was like this when I got here. Decker or Sweetie must have set everything up.”
“That explains why they were late for pictures.” He chuckled as he finished tugging on his boots. “I guess you didn’t need a bodyguard after all.”
“A bodyguard?”
“I don’t seduce inebriated women and I don’t want any one else doing it either.”
All Cloe could do was stare at him in disbelief. He had stayed the night with her to protect her honor?
He must have read her thoughts because he shrugged. “Like I said, honorable to a fault.” He got to his feet and then held out his hand to help her to hers. She didn’t know where he’d found them, but suddenly he was slipping her glasses on and gently pushing them up the bridge of her nose.
“There,” he said. “Better?”
She could see better. Which wasn’t a good thing. Rome was standing much too close. The bright morning sun was behind him, casting a heavenly aura that made his hair look almost blue and his eyes look even grayer. They had always been intense. Rome was an intense man. But that intensity had never been focused on Cloe like it was now.
“So you don’t want a man climbing to your balcony and speaking of his undying love?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I would be worried the entire time that he’d slip and fall to his death.”
Rome laughed. “So no balcony climbing. What about poetry?”
“I don’t need fancy words.” She hesitated as thoughts of Brandon filtered into her mind. “But maybe that was my problem. I never expected Brandon to write sonnets about his undying love or send me roses or take me on special dates. Maybe if I had, he’d have valued me more.”
Once the words were out, she felt foolish. She had no business sharing such personal thoughts with Rome. She started to apologize, but he spoke before she could.
“I thought the same thing when Emily left. I thought if I had just done things differently, she would have stayed. But that’s the funny thing about the past, you can’t go back and fix it. No matter how much you might want to.”
She shook her head sadly. “No, you can’t.” A strand of hair fell over her eye, but before she could push it back, Rome did, his hot fingers streaking her cheek with fire as he tucked it behind her ear. His hand remained there. His eyes intense as they looked into hers.
“Then I guess all we can do is move forward.”
For a second, she thought he was going to kiss her. He shifted closer, his head drifting to one side as his lips parted. But before those lips could touch hers, a humming drifted in through the open doors of the loft and whatever spell that had been cast was broken.
Her eyes widened. “Mimi!” Without hesitation, she grabbed the front of his tuxedo shirt and pulled him toward the ladder. Or tried to. It was like trying to move a brick wall. “You need to get out of here and you need to get out of here now.” If Mimi caught them together, she would think Cloe had decided to go along with her far-fetched plan to save the ranch by marrying a Remington.
Rome laughed. “Are you saying I’ve overstayed my welcome, Cloe?”
Before Cloe could reply, the humming grew louder. Mimi was coming into the barn. Cloe sent Rome a panicked look as she placed a finger against his lips. The only man’s lips she had ever touched were Brandon’s. They were thin and usually chapped. They weren’t plump and soft and so warm that Cloe felt like she had just dipped her finger in perfectly heated bathwater. She jerked her hand away and stared at Rome as Mimi’s humming grew louder.
The song was “Get Me to the Church On Time” from the musical My Fair Lady. Mimi loved musicals. Cloe had spent many a night as a kid cozied up in her grandmother’s bed watching the fanciful shows.
The humming stopped right under the opening to the loft.
