He met her gaze. “I can’t believe you’re interested in birdwatching.”
“I can’t believe you are, either.” But she would be thrilled if he could be interested in her for the next couple of days.
“Maybe I made it up because I don’t want you to know I’m a lazy son-of-a-gun who whiles away the day on the front porch with a can of beer in his hand.”
“Try again.” She’d glimpsed great muscle definition under his white shirt. “You’re too fit for me to believe you lounge around drinking beer all day. I say you’re a working cowboy, and for some reason you don’t want me to know that. I’m assuming it has to do with the contest. Trust me, if you don’t want to be in it, I won’t coerce you. And I won’t sic George Forester on you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
He stood there looking at her, his blue eyes giving away nothing. “I’d better go get the cook, José. He wanted to meet you.”
“You’re going to keep me guessing, aren’t you?”
“Yep.” Then he walked out of the room.
She felt like throwing something. She would smoke him out, though. On the job she was known for her ability to coax people into spilling their secrets. Clint was going to tell his, even if she had to seduce them out of him. And she could consider that option without guilt now…because he had no girlfriend.
4
AS CLINT WALKED through the dining room into the kitchen in search of José, he felt no sense of victory. She was winning this game of hide-and-seek, and they both knew it. When he’d planned to fool her, he’d forgotten that she interviewed people for a living. She was trained to dig until she found the truth.
If she hadn’t figured out that he was lying to her about his cowboying skills, she would know it very soon. And maybe it didn’t matter. His half-ass disguise succeeded in sending the message that he didn’t want to be part of her ridiculous contest without him having to say it out loud.
When he walked into the kitchen, José spun away from the oven where he’d been checking his enchiladas. “She’s out there, huh?”
“Yep, she’s out there.” Really out there. He’d never known a woman this bold and sassy. He liked it too much. “Ready to go meet her?”
José gulped. “Now?”
“Why not?”
“Okay, but I need…a mission. I can’t parade out there without a reason.”
Clint heaved a sigh. “She’s just a woman.”
“That’s like saying my triple-chocolate layer cake is just a dessert. If she’s half as gorgeous in person as she is on TV, then—”
“You’ve watched the show?” Although Clint had seen it once, for research purposes, he wouldn’t have thought anybody else on the Circle W had bothered.
“Are you kidding? Every weekday morning! That woman is hot. I watch it live. The other guys watch the tape.”
Clint stared at his cook and waited for him to start laughing at the little joke he was playing on his boss. “You’re making this up.”
“Nope. I watch it here or down in the bunkhouse, wherever I happen to be. I’m usually the one that sets up the VCR down there for the other guys, and sometimes I go down at night so I can see it again. We don’t pay much attention to the program. Just her. Do you think her red hair is real or dyed?”
Clint shook his head in wonder. He had a bunkhouse full of groupies. “I have no idea.”
“Jed thinks yes, but Denny, who considers himself the expert on redheads because he is one, says it’s not real because she has brown eyes. Not too many true redheads have brown eyes. Me, I wouldn’t care either way.”
“I think the red’s real.” The words were out before Clint could stop them. His brain had quickly assessed her fair skin and the trace of freckles under her professionally applied makeup and had come up with the true-redhead verdict, which had then popped out of his mouth with no warning whatsoever.
“I think you’re right,” José said. “And no boyfriend. What a waste.”
“How do you know there’s no boyfriend?”
“She’s always talking on the show about not having dates. Me and the guys, we’ve joked about taking up a collection so one of us could fly up there and ask her out. Not that she would go. She probably doesn’t have dates because she’s picky.”
“I can’t believe she doesn’t have dates.” Clint pictured a new guy every week, who was then discarded like food gone stale in her refrigerator.
José shrugged. “That’s what she says on the show. Mel’s always teasing her about it. Maybe it’s because guys are afraid to ask her out. That’s what Denny thinks.”
“Well, yeah. Who wants to end up in the tabloids?”
“That’s what Denny says. She got famous so quick, and any guy who dates her has to know it wouldn’t be a private deal for very long.”
Clint gazed out the kitchen window and thought about that. For all Meg’s taunting comments about liking to get into trouble, she hadn’t gotten into much trouble at all since becoming a celebrity. If she had, it would be all over the rags in the grocery-store checkout line.
Maybe she’d been too focused on her career to bother with dating. He’d caught a whiff of naked ambition during their conversation on the front porch. But he wondered if she also might be a little bit lonely, a little bit frustrated. Now there was a stimulating thought.
And he needed to avoid that kind of thinking, considering they’d be alone in the house tonight.
“Uh, boss?” José waved a hand in front of Clint’s eyes. “Is it still okay if I go out and meet her?”
Clint snapped out of his daze. “Of course it’s okay. I specifically came back here to get you and bring you out there.”
“I know, but when I asked you just now, you just stared off into space and didn’t say anything, so I wondered if you’d changed your mind. Don’t worry. I promise not to do anything stupid like ask her out.” José looked suddenly shy. “But I sure would like her autograph.”
“Then you’d better take something for her to write on.”
“I have something.” José held up a pot holder that looked fresh out of the box. “Bought it at the convenience store today.”
“Why a pot holder?”
“Because it’ll prove she ate my food. I can hang it up in the kitchen.” He looked like a kid on Christmas morning as he described his plan.
Clint hated to admit he understood how José felt. Come to think of it, after watching her once on TV, he’d had to fight the urge to do it again the next morning. Just because she was here for an idiotic reason didn’t cancel out her sex appeal, although he’d worked hard to stay immune. The immunity was wearing off fast, unfortunately.
“Then let’s go,” he said.
“Let me get the place settings. That’s what I thought of while we were talking. I’ll take out place mats, napkins and silverware for the coffee table. Then I have a reason for going out there.”
Clint waited for José to grab a couple of straw place mats, knives, forks, spoons and two red cloth napkins. They hadn’t used cloth napkins since before his mother died, but he guessed this was occasion enough.
He wondered what his folks would have thought of Meg.