He came close, taking a long strand of her hair in his hand and holding it out in front of the fire.
“It looked so much darker before. But in this light, it’s almost like gold,” he said. “A golden red.”
“Yes.” Again, she felt uneasy, and again, she wasn’t sure why.
Did he know who she was?
Was that why he was suddenly so wary? Maybe even angry?
Paige’s family was Texas’s version of royalty, wealthy and often in the spotlight. She and her sister had been in the society pages of the Dallas Morning News and all the bigger papers in the state since birth.
And the hair was often what gave her and her sister away.
Not many women had this combination of reddish-gold hair.
“We never got around to introducing ourselves last night, Red,” he said.
“No, we didn’t.” She hadn’t wanted to. Hadn’t wanted to lie to him and hadn’t wanted to tell him her name, just in case it meant something to him. And she’d been happy to think of him simply as her cowboy, a man she’d admired and met by chance. Nothing else. Finally, she found the courage to ask, “You know who I am?”
“Now that I see that hair clearly, oh, yeah,” he said. “I’m afraid I know.”
Well, if he’d lived on this ranch his whole life, she couldn’t be that surprised. The feud was the stuff of Texas legends. Any long-standing family war over good cattle land was enough to make a story last. Throw in priceless jewels and a high-stakes poker game and you got…a good old tall Texas tale.
“One of the twins is a jewelry designer. I’m guessing she wouldn’t hold up as well down in a mine. So you must be the scientist,” he concluded.
She nodded, really hoping he wouldn’t be too mad. “I’m Paige McCord.”
She held out her hand.
He didn’t.
“That’s great. Just great.” He swore, shook his head in disgust or maybe fury and finally said, “I’m Travis Foley.”
Chapter Five
She laughed despite herself, and said, “No, you’re not!”
He nodded, looking like a man not in the mood to be patient with her while she worked this out in her own head.
“You…you were riding around like some ranch hand, checking the fences, checking the livestock. I saw you.”
“You were watching me?” he asked incredulously.
“Of course I was. Did you think I’d just show up one day and head down into the mine? With no idea of whether anyone ever came that way? Whether I’d get caught? I watched you for the last three days. Doing the work of a regular ranch hand.”
“I’m a rancher. It’s what I do. I work the land.” He looked furious.
“You’re supposed to be in Dallas at some big family meeting,” she remembered.
“I didn’t feel like going to Dallas for another family meeting,” he said bitingly. “And you? You’re spying on me? And my ranch?”
“It’s not your ranch,” she reminded him.
And, oh, wow.
That was clearly the wrong thing to say.
He looked like he might strangle her right there where she sat. He was breathing hard, towering over her, looking like he might grab her by her hair and throw her out right then and there.
But he didn’t.
He just glowered at her.
“No, it’s not my ranch. Believe me, your family would never let mine forget that. You probably wouldn’t understand this, but the thing is, a man works a piece of land every day, sweats over it, bleeds over it, takes care of it like it was his, he starts to get ideas he shouldn’t have—”
“That’s not what I meant,” she claimed. “I mean…I know you must…care about the place—”
“Care about it?” He laughed, still furious. “I care about what I have for dinner some nights, whether the Cowboys win a football game, whether it’s going to rain or be sunny. What I feel for this ranch is a helluva lot more than care.”
“Yes. Okay.” She got to her feet, tired of him towering over her, though in truth, he still did even when she was standing. “I’m sorry—”
“So for you to just waltz in here like your family owns the place, which I suppose you think you do, and head down into that mine, like you think you own that, too, to try to find that stupid diamond—”
“Yes. You’re right. I’m sorry—”
“To give me that I’m-just-a-grad-student routine? That it’s-the-chance-of-a-lifetime routine?” He took her chin in his hand, getting right up in her face and holding her there, glaring at her. “You lie really well, Red.”
She shoved him away hard, and then nearly tripped over the stone hearth of the fireplace as she backed away from him.
He swore, reached out to grab her to keep her from falling.
“You really didn’t know it was me?” he demanded, his grip on her nearly tight enough to hurt.
“No. Of course not. I told you. I thought you were just a ranch hand. I thought—”
“What?” he demanded.
“Nothing—” She was blushing, just thinking of what she thought. That he was a beautiful man. A beautiful, ordinary man. And of what she’d wanted from him, what she’d let him do.
Oh, Lord, what she’d let him do…
What she’d planned for them to do once they got here…
She swallowed hard, thinking for a moment of all she’d lost in this instant. Glad it hadn’t gone any further between them, and yet…
She couldn’t believe he was one of the Foleys.
Paige had been introduced to him, of course. A girl didn’t move in the upper echelon of Texas society for her whole life without being introduced to the Foleys, even if her family had been feuding with them since the Civil War.
So they’d no doubt exchanged icily polite, icily brief handshakes at various social functions over the years, charity balls, the governor’s mansion, that sort of thing.
There were three brothers, something of a mixed set, all young, wealthy, arrogant and good-looking. In her mind, she could see them standing in a row in black tuxedoes and starched white shirts, looking for all the world like they owned everything they surveyed.
She’d never really been that interested in the feud, in perpetuating it or ending it, had just grown up on tales of how terribly his family had treated hers and been happy to keep her distance from him and the entire clan.
So she’d shook his hand a time or two when forced to do so in the name of good manners and not having any interest in causing a scene.
She really hadn’t paid that much attention to the whole brood until her mother’s terrible secret had come out this summer.
That her mother had once loved his father, Rex Foley. Her curiosity had driven her to the Internet and the photos she could find. She’d skipped right over the brothers and zeroed in on the father instead.
His father had slept with her mother and fathered a child with her. Paige’s little brother, Charlie.
How could that be?
She still couldn’t quite believe it, couldn’t make sense of it, couldn’t…
And