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feed from the back of the pickup. The conveyer had stopped moving and one of the hands had hopped back onto the tractor. With a growl and plume of black smoke, the old John Deere headed through an open gate.
    Horses nickered, cattle lowed, and a wasp buzzed as it worked hard on a muddy nest hanging just under the eaves. Gina inhaled the fresh air laced with the scents of spring flowers and new-mown hay, then sighed.
    “Heaven on earth,” she heard, and whipped around to find Trent standing in the doorway, one shoulder propped insolently against the jamb, his arms folded across his chest.
    “Looks like it.”
    “Even to a city girl?”
    “Especially to a city girl.”
    To her surprise, he strode into the room and swung the door shut behind him. “I think we’d better talk,” he said, grabbing the desk chair. He swung it around backward, straddled the seat and leaned his arms across the back. “You start.”
    “By?”
    “By telling me what’s going on. With the old man, with you—whoever you are. Let’s start with Dallas.”
    “That was a mistake,” she said, meeting his gaze evenly. “I think we both know it.”
    “It wasn’t a setup?”
    “Excuse me? A setup? What…?” She stared into his angry blue eyes and suddenly understood. “You think I planned meeting you and…and what?”
    “Seducing me.”
    She nearly laughed. The man was out of his ever-lovin’ mind. “Don’t flatter yourself, Remmington. I’d had too much to drink, so had you. I had no idea you’d be in that hotel bar that night and—”
    “And you knew who I was. An advantage, I’d say.”
    “It wasn’t a game.”
    “No?” He scowled and rubbed his chin. “Sure feels like one now. One that I somehow lost.” His gaze drilled deep into hers. “Believe it or not, I’m not used to losing.”
    The man was damned irritating, but someone she had to deal with, like it or not. “I understand.”
    “That’s right. You know all about me.” He stood and crossed the few feet separating them, looming over her to the point that she nearly backed into the open window, but somehow stood her ground. “And I know nothing about you, do I?”
    “Except what I’ve told you.”
    “Exactly. So let’s get one very important thing straight, shall we? I don’t like anyone snooping into my life. Period. And I don’t trust people who lie to me. So you already have two strikes against you in this little ‘non-game.’ The way I see it, three strikes and you’re out.”
    She told herself not to lose it. To grab on to the rags of her temper and hold tight. But she couldn’t. It wasn’ther nature. “Look, Trent—I can call you that, right, considering the circumstances. ‘Mr. Remmington’ seems a little formal. Yes, I was hired by Garrett to find you, not to pry into your personal life, but to locate you and determine that you were one of Larry Kincaid’s sons. That’s all. I lied to you that night in Dallas because I—I—”
    “Didn’t want to blow your cover?”
    “Well, yeah, that’s kind of a TV-cop way of describing it, but I’d told myself I wasn’t going to meet any of the Kincaid heirs, that I would keep this as professional as possible and then…okay, I blew it. I have to confess, when I stumbled into you that night and you started flirting with me, I couldn’t resist. I guess you’re just too damned irresistible. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
    He stared at her as if he couldn’t believe a word. Neither could she, but she couldn’t stop herself and she was far from finished.
    “So, in answer to your question—” she closed the gap between them to mere inches and glared up at him as if she wasn’t shaking inside “—meeting you wasn’t part of some nefarious scheme or shakedown or whatever you want to call it. It was, as I said before, a mistake. Maybe it’s one that we should just get over, okay?”
    A huge hand snaked forward to clamp possessively over her forearm. “Get over? I don’t know about