Then.
But now things were different. She was different. Even if she had slept like a baby for the past six hours.
“So why don’t you like pancakes?” he asked as they hit a pothole and she clutched at the chair’s edge.
“Who said I don’t like pancakes?”
“I offered to share and you turned me down.”
“It’s not that I don’t like them. I just don’t happen to want one right now.” Liar. She wanted one desperately. A bite of his pancake. A bite of him.
Whoa. Back the horse up.
Where had that thought come from? She didn’t want anything from Pete Gunner except his signature, which obviously wasn’t happening until he finished the mountain on his plate.
She drew a deep, shaky breath and tried to tamp down on the anxiety rolling through her. Gripping the chair, she slid around and sank down again before she broke an ankle.
Unearthing her cell phone, she spent the next few minutes doing her best to ignore Pete and his pancakes while she checked her voice messages.
Ten from Lisa wanting to know how things were going and when she would be back home. One from her dad telling her he would have a six-hour layover in Houston next week on his way to a Cubs’ alumnae dinner. One from Fred telling her not to come back without the papers in hand.
Ugh.
“You missed yoga this morning,” Lisa said when she picked up on the second ring. Lisa had been her first friend at Western. The first friendship she’d ever had that had lasted longer than six months. “Are you still in Dallas?”
“Not quite.” She watched Pete take a great big bite. Syrup dribbled down his chin and before she could stop herself, she licked her lips. He grinned and she gave herself a great big mental slap. “I, um, think this is going to take a little longer than I anticipated.”
“But you’ll be home by tomorrow, right? My parents are coming over to meet Mike and I want to finish painting my living room first. I need you to help.”
“You guys just started dating two weeks ago. Isn’t it a little early to spring him on your folks?”
“What can I say? When it’s right, it’s right.”
“Wasn’t it right with Wayne about three months ago? And Marty before that? And Kevin last year?”
“Mike is way better than all of them.” At the moment. Wendy was willing to bet Lisa would find something wrong with him when things started to get a little too serious. Just as she’d done with Wayne. And Marty. And Kevin. “Listen, can I borrow your red dress? He’s taking me out for a special dinner tonight and I don’t have time to comb the mall for a new outfit.”
“Only if you pick up Tom and Jerry for me. I doubt I’ll be home until late tonight.”
“On second thought, maybe I’ll swing by the mall—”
“They’re not that bad.”
“They ate my cell-phone case.”
“They thought it was a Twinkie and I promise it won’t happen again. You know I’ve been taking them to obedience classes. Please,” she added when Wendy hesitated. “I’ll throw in the open-toe shoes.”
“I still think I’m getting the raw end of the deal, but okay.”
“You’re the best.” Wendy killed the connection and glanced up to find Pete looking at her.
He arched an eyebrow. “Tom and Jerry?”
“A golden retriever and a Chihuahua.” She meant to stop there, but he kept looking at her as if he expected more and the words slipped out on their own. “My mom passed away in a car accident when I was just a few months old. My dad traveled a lot, so I spent way too much time staring at the inside of a hotel room. He bought me videos to help pass the time. I had every cartoon collection out there, but the Tom and Jerry ones were my favorites.” A smile tugged at her lips. “My dogs are always roughhousing and fighting, and so the names seemed to fit. What about you?” Not that she cared, but it was better to talk than sit quietly and lust after him. “Any pets?”
“Just one.”
“And?” she prompted when he seemed hesitant to continue.
“A miniature Yorkie named Tinkerbell.”
“It figures.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re the cowboy who refuses to grow up. I should have known you’d have a sidekick named Tinkerbell. But a Yorkie? What kind of a self-respecting badass buys a dog that can double as a powder puff?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t pick her. She picked me. Somehow she ended up scavenging around this old rodeo arena just outside of town. She managed to jump up into the back of my pickup and follow me home one night. She’s been with me ever since.”
She had a quick visual of him cuddling a tiny, yapping Yorkie and her chest hitched.
The realization made her back go ramrod-straight. So what if he had a dog? That was no reason to go all soft and gooey inside. He was still a major thorn in her side.
Still wild and crazy Pete Gunner.
“Living out of a suitcase doesn’t exactly lend itself to pet ownership,” she pointed out, suddenly desperate to kill the vision of him cuddling a ball of fluff. “That’s why I never had one when I was growing up. How do you do it?”
“My ranch foreman looks after her when I’m away.”
“Lucky you.”
“There’s no luck involved, sugar. It’s all hard work.”
“I’m sure signing autographs is hell on the knuckles.”
If she didn’t know better, she would have sworn that she’d struck a nerve. He frowned. “I do a lot more than sign autographs.”
“I forgot. You also dodge responsibility.”
Silence stretched for a tense nanosecond as he eyed her. “Apparently I’m not too good at it because here you are.” His frown turned into a full-blown grin. “Then again, I might be a damned sight better than I give myself credit for—” he motioned to the passing scenery, reminding her of the six and a half hours she’d just slept away “—because here you are.”
“You’re a jerk.”
“Keep up the sweet talk—” he winked “—and I’ll surely be scribbling my signature before breakfast is over.” Challenge gleamed hot and bright in his gaze, daring her to say something else, wanting her to. As if he liked the verbal sparring.
Crazy.
Men like Pete usually had a big head to go with their bad-boy reputation. They were used to having their egos stroked, not deflated, but Pete seemed different. Maybe she was imagining things. Even more, she was making her situation that much harder. The point was to coax him into signing, not piss him off.
She clamped her mouth shut and shifted her attention to the window while he went back to his breakfast. Pastureland stretched endlessly as they rolled along for the next ten minutes before the landscape gave way to haystacks and a sprawling one-story house with a gigantic wraparound porch.
“Home sweet home,” Pete announced before shoveling in his last bite. He pushed from the table and slid the plate into a nearby sink. The bus took a left and started down the long lane leading up to the house. Pete reached into the stainless-steel refrigerator and pulled out a pitcher of what looked like a lime-green