are brighter. It looks good.”

      To his surprise, she actually laughed the way he’d remembered. “What?” he demanded.

      “It’s eye makeup. Raylene swore to me that men never noticed things like that, so I put some on for the first time in ages.”

      Mitch could see it, then, the thin stroke of liner on her lids, the hint of pale blue shadow, the darkened lashes.

      “Was that for my benefit?” he asked, oddly pleased to think it might be.

      She blushed furiously at the question. “Maybe it was just a test. Maybe I was trying to prove her wrong, to show her that some men are observant.”

      He grinned at the deliberate evasion. So she wasn’t totally immune, after all. Now he just needed to figure out what he wanted to do with that information.