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his. “I have things to do, Mr. Constant.”
    “Jace.”
    “Jace,” she’d repeat faintly before vanishing into another part of the house.
    “Thrown to the dogs again,” Jace always muttered at the several warm, sleeping bodies stretched out in various corners.
    So the meals, albeit delicious, were also lonely. Delicious? Extraordinary! Fresh, homemade bread, warming bean stews flavored with exotic spices. Where had she learned to cook like that? Surely not in the Nevada desert.
    Jace had a million questions on the tip of his tongue. All he needed was the chance to ask them. Except, dawdle in the kitchen though he might, Alice never reappeared in the evenings. And even breakfasts were as solitary — and as delicious — as dinner.
    “Wonderful coffee, Alice.”
    “Freshly ground.” She wasn’t going to say more than she had to. He had forced her hand in renting the room, and she wouldn’t let him forget it. If only she’d been a run-of-the mill landlady. But she wasn’t. She was Alice: lanky, sometimes awkward, infinitely intriguing and downright — in her own original way — sexy.
    Go slowly, Jace, my boy
. Easier said than done. Patience had never been his strong point, especially when it came to getting to know women, and at the moment, his healthy male pride was taking a terrible blow.
    Now, catching her out here in the desert would make her escape more difficult. She couldn’t avoid talking to him, or letting him accompany her back to the house. She was trapped: no way she could retreat. He felt his mouth stretching into a welcoming grin. Yes, this evening he’d get through to her. He’d even come back early so there was no way she could claim she’d already eaten. And that bottle of fine wine waiting on the Rover’s back seat was just begging to be shared.
    Of course, seeing the almost hostile look on Alice’s face as she approached didn’t make him feel overly optimistic. She was about to give him the cold shoulder. As usual.
    Fortunately, Killer’s enthusiasm set the tone of the encounter. When he realized it was Jace standing there, he began whining piteously and tugging at his leash with frenzy. Killer was certainly a skinny animal, but he was a strong one, and Jace could see Alice was having a tough time holding him.
    “Let him go,” Jace called out to her.
    In his enthusiasm, Killer was becoming hopelessly entangled in the overly long leash, and now it had wound itself around Alice’s legs. Any minute now she’d come crashing to the ground.
    Jace to the rescue
,
he thought with glee, and jogged in her direction. It was only a very minor rescue, of course, but also a very pleasant one. He felt an almost irrepressible desire to nuzzle the little hollows on the inside of her knees as he untangled her. He felt considerably less content when Killer, in a tornado of dust, threw himself into his arms and covered him with excessively soggy dog kisses.
    Alice couldn’t restrain her laughter at Jace’s attempt to dampen the dog’s ardor.
    “It looks like I’ve been rolling in the dust,” said Jace ruefully when Killer finally lost some of his intense interest.
    “You do,” Alice confirmed. Her eyes were sparkling and he could see that she was making an effort not to laugh out loud. “And you don’t like dust, do you?” The gleam in her eyes was a malicious one.
    Jace realized she was poking fun at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He felt defensive.
    “Don’t think I haven’t noticed the way you polish your shoes every ten minutes or so.”
    “Old habits die hard,” he muttered sourly.
    “Or don’t die at all,” she countered.
    Things weren’t exactly going the way he’d planned. This conversation certainly wasn’t. It wasn’t seductive in the least. Foiled again.
    “It could be worse, though,” Alice added. “Imagine what you’d look like if Killer had been swimming in the gully down there.” She indicated a wide, dry slash on the desert