There was the addition of makeup, too. She wore a dark gray eye shadow, and a coal-black liner and mascara that caused her pale eyes to stand out much, much more. Plus she was wearing lipstick she hadn’t been using the last time he’d seen her, a month ago.
The stuffy headmistress at the all-girls boarding school she’d only recently graduated from wouldn’t have approved of the changes she’d made to become the college Alyssa. But Joshua reminded himself that he wasn’t her former stuffy headmistress. He was her brother. And he couldn’t deny that she was all grownup. Whether he liked it or not.
So instead of interfering with her playing coquette to the cowboys, he sat back on the blanket as Alyssa went to stand between the horses and their riders.
Joshua didn’t abdicate all his responsibilities or brotherly protectiveness, though. Rather than lie down or close his eyes again, he stretched his legs out in front of him, propped one ankle on top of the other, and crossed his arms over his chest, lounging against the tree trunk to keep watch on the proceedings.
His sister’s back was to him so only a word or two of what she said as she talked to the cowboys was clear to him. They were grinning down at her and answering her questions with as much coy teasing and flirting as Joshua figured his sister was dishing out. But it all seemed innocent enough and maybe because of that, his mind started wandering.
Well, maybe because of that and because the sight of one of the horses served to prompt his brain.
The horse on the right was a reddish-brown color. Almost the identical shade of Cassie Walker’s hair.
Russet—that was what the color was. The color of the horse and the color of the freshman adviser’s hair.
Cassie Walker had russet-brown hair. Really stunning russet-brown hair.
Hair so soft-looking, so shiny, that he’d kept trying to will the band that held it to break so he could know how long it was. How it looked when it was free. So he could see it fall around her face…
It had been such a kid-like thing to be wishing for. He couldn’t believe he was thinking about her again now—he hadn’t been able to think about much else since they’d met, and this wasn’t something he’d experienced in all of his adult life. Not even with Jennie. It was a useless waste of the thought process. Of brainpower. And yet there they were, as big as life—thoughts of Cassie Walker spinning around in his head, out of control. As out of control as he’d expect from some horny teenager.
Thoughts and images of her hair, her face, her body…
It wasn’t even a remarkable body or a strikingly beautiful face or more than pretty hair. It wasn’t as if she had the kind of beauty he encountered day in and day out in the form of fashion models and other amazingly beautiful women who were at his disposal or in hot pursuit of him.
But Cassie Walker had something else. Something all her own…
No, she didn’t have the exaggerated cheekbones and sunken cheeks that were the prerequisites of the models he’d met in his travels, but she did have high cheekbones. It was just that they were more like little red apples. Little red apples that made her look healthy and full of life.
She also didn’t have the surgically precise nose or the forehead that would absorb a photographer’s light and cast it back just right. But what she did have was a smooth, flawless complexion and a nose that was small and pert and gave her a sort of air of mischief.
What Cassie Walker had was freshness. And what seemed to him like an inner sunshine that came through a face that was so pretty, so sweet, it just made him want to smile every time he thought about it, every time he pictured her in his head. It made him want to smile the way she smiled. With lips that were just curvy enough, just full enough, just luscious enough, without being overly anything.
And those dimples that appeared when she did smile? He was a sucker for those. They definitely put her over the top.
The dimples and her eyes.
She had great eyes. Turquoise, but more green than blue. Only unlike the stone, her eyes weren’t an opaque turquoise. They were luminous and glimmering and had a transparent quality to them.
She wasn’t statuesque, either. She was actually on the small side—not more than two or three inches over five feet, he thought. Tiny, almost, compared to the women he was used to. But tight and just round enough where it counted.
He’d liked her. That was the bottom line to it all, and he knew it. That was why he hadn’t been able to avoid thoughts like those he was having about her at that moment.
And it wasn’t only her looks or her body. She had a touch of attitude that had given him a charge, too. Despite the fact that the attitude had come through when she’d alluded to not being thrilled with the gig the dean had obviously thrust upon her at the last minute.
Attitude and spunk. In a package that might not fit into the category of fashion model, but that defined the word adorable for him.
And if that package were gift wrapped? It would have been gift wrapped in gingham.
Gingham that he might like to take some time to slowly, leisurely, tear away…
“Did you hear that, Joshua?”
The sound of his name brought Joshua out of his fantasy and forced him to pay attention to his sister and the two cowboys again.
“No, sorry, I didn’t,” he answered Alyssa’s question, hoping whatever it was he’d been supposed to hear had been said quietly enough to make it possible that it hadn’t reached him.
“They said would you make sure when we leave that the motorcycle doesn’t tear up the pasture,” Alyssa repeated.
“Sure,” he agreed. “No problem.”
Satisfied, the cowboys said goodbye to them both then and when Alyssa stepped back, they turned the horses and sauntered off the way they’d come.
“Why do I have the feeling there are horseback riding lessons in your future?” Joshua joked as his sister rejoined him on the blanket, glad to have her company to hopefully distract him from all those thoughts of Cassie Walker.
Alyssa’s sunny face erupted into a very pleased grin. “Horseback riding lessons,” she mused. “That might be a good idea. Now that I’m in Montana. This is the Wild West, after all.”
“Pace yourself, Lyssa. Don’t forget you’re new to this femme fatale stuff.”
Alyssa only smiled.
“You are new to it, aren’t you?” Joshua probed, wondering suddenly if this was just the first he was seeing of something that had been going on for a while.
“Whatever you say,” his sister finally responded as if humoring him. “But don’t you forget that I haven’t been locked away in a convent—even if that was how you saw boarding school. It was still in the heart of the French Riviera and there was some fraternizing with other, coed schools and the locals in town. You visited only when you could get away and that left me with a lot of time to fill….”
Joshua grimaced as if he were hearing more than he wanted to hear. “Leave me my illusions,” he begged.
“If that’s what you want.”
“It is.”
“Okay. Then we should probably be heading back soon so you can change for that meet-and-greet tonight,” Alyssa said then.
“Mmm. It’s just so nice and peaceful and quiet out here.”
“And with fabulous scenery,” she said, glancing at the cowboys retreating into the distance.
“Illusions. Remember