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celebrating going on at that cabin will be on the day you leave,” she said.
    Dillon heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Sweetheart, you’re breaking my heart.”
    “I doubt you have one.”
    He reached out and tucked a finger under her chin and forced her to meet his gaze. “If that’s true, Ashley Wilde, it’s because you stole it years ago.”

Chapter Four
    H ow could Dillon say something chauvinistically male and outrageous one minute and something so sweet and romantic the next? Ashley wondered during the ride to the cabin. One minute she had wanted to smack him for practically daring her to sleep with him, and the next he’d accused her of stealing his heart years ago.
    Which Dillon Ford was she supposed to trust? Probably neither one of them, when it came right down to it. For all she knew Dillon was a master of manipulation who knew exactly what he was doing when he’d melted her heart with that remark about her effect on him. It had probably been the first step in his deliberate campaign to get what he wanted–her in his bed. That wager of his might only be for a few bucks, but he clearly took it seriously.
    She spent the rest of the day giving him a wide berth, but there was no way to avoid him over dinner. While she’d been off on a solitary walk, he’d grilled the fish on her father’s gas barbecue, created some sort of vegetable and rice concoction that looked better than anything she knew how to prepare, and warmed a loaf of sourdough bread, which he actually claimed to have baked from scratch. Since no such loaf had been in with their groceries, she had to believe him.
    He’d set the table on the deck. “It’s too nice a night to eat indoors,” he said as she approached. “Is this okay?”
    “It’s fine with me. It’s cooling off, now that the sun’s going down. Let me get a sweater.”
    He gestured toward the back of a chair. “I brought one out for you.”
    The thought of Dillon in her room, going through her things, had her swallowing hard. It seemed there were limits to the degree of intimacy she was prepared to accept.
    She was about to lambast him for invading her private space when he said mildly, “It was in the living room, in case you’re worrying that I was going through your stuff.”
    His ability to see straight through her startled her. She must be far more transparent than she’d been led to believe. All those years of practice at hiding her real emotions in front of a camera hadn’t paid off, after all. Now, when it really counted, she couldn’t seem to mask a thing.
    “Thanks,” she said, pulling the warm crewneck sweater on over her T-shirt. She sat gingerly across from him. “Everything smells wonderful. Where’d you learn to cook?”
    “You seem to have forgotten my background,” he said.
    Ashley immediately recalled the forgotten tales of his childhood–a mother who’d died when he was a boy, a father who traveled on business. More often than not, Dillon had been left to manage for himself and his younger brother and sister. It was no wonder, everyone had said at the time, that he’d run wild. There’d been no discipline or parental supervision at home.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’d forgotten how difficult times must have been for you back then.”
    He shrugged. “We got along. I learned my way around a kitchen in a hurry. Actually, I enjoy cooking. It seems to be the only creative task at which I excel. Can’t sing worth a darn. Can’t dance or draw.” He grinned. “Obviously, I couldn’t do algebra. Took me two years to pass the class.”
    “Algebra wasn’t creative,” Ashley countered. “It was drudgery.”
    “How can you say that? You were in an advanced class and you got an A in that.”
    She stared at him in surprise. “You remember all that?”
    “When you were as bad as I was in a subject, you knew exactly which students were acing it. Did you know Mrs. Fawcett wanted to arrange for you to tutor me?”
    “Really?” she said in