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used to have her laughing one minute, sobbing the next, and then kissing him blind two seconds after that.
    And without a doubt he knew he was to blame for it. Being abandoned had a way of affecting a person adversely. His gut drew tight. He had a lot to answer for in his life. He just wished she wasn’t one of those things he’d messed up.
    â€œWhere’s your anger?” he asked as he leaned over to help her pick up the mess.
    Catherine considered her answer. She should be enraged at him, but oddly enough, once the initial shock of the encounter wore off she found herself completely numb to him.
    Well, not completely numb.
    In fact, “numb” described his effect on her like “handsome” described Abe Lincoln.
    A woman would have to be dead not to feel a vigorous stirring for a man so incredibly handsome as her wandering polecat. Especially a man possessed of such raw, primal appeal.
    Everything about him promised sheer, sexual delights. And all too well she remembered the way he had felt in her arms, the strength of his long, lean body caressing hers in playful abandon as he sent her spiraling off into blissful ecstasy.
    And right then, with his head just inches from her own, she could smell the raw, earthy scent of him. That leather and musk that had always titillated her. That warm, wonderful smell was a part of him like the innate power and authority that bled from every pore of his body.
    And those lips …
    Full and sensuous, those lips of his had kissed her until she lost all reason, until her entire body buzzed with lust and desire. And those wonderful, sensual lips had teased and tormented her body to the ultimate pinnacle of human pleasure.
    Good heavens, how she ached for him. Even after the way he had hurt her.
    What are you thinking?
    Catherine mentally shook herself. No, she didn’t hate him for leaving her the way he had—five years had given her time to lay her hatred aside.
    She wouldn’t get mad at this point.
    She would get even.
    He deserved to feel the sting of rejection. Then he would understand exactly what he had done to her. How it felt to be denied and forgotten.
    â€œI got over my anger for you, Mr. O’Callahan,” she said tartly, rising to her feet carefully lest she cut herself on the glass in her apron.
    She raked a look from the top of his head down to his still-smoking boot, took a step back into the house and spoke, “And then I got over you.”
    With one last stoic look at him, Catherine closed the door in his stunned face.

2
    Catherine’s words rang in O’Connell’s ears as he stared in disbelief at the closed door.
    Well, what did you expect? he asked himself as he retrieved his charred duster from the porch.
    Her hatred, in all honesty. That he had been prepared for. But her apathy toward him …
    Well …
    It was … insufferable.
    Anger over her rejection blistered his gut. How dare she dismiss him so. What did she think he was, some lost little puppy come to lick scraps off the floor?
    Well, he wasn’t a lost puppy. He was a man. A man sought by every woman who had ever laid her eyes upon him. Not that he was vain about it. Not overly so, anyway. It was merely a fact he’d long grown accustomed to. A fact everyone who knew him just plainly accepted.
    Women had always been partial to him.
    In Hollow Gulch where O’Connell had been working the last few months, the women had singled him out the moment he rode into town—baked him fresh pies, batted their lashes at him. Hell, one gutsy blonde had even snuck into his room and hidden herself naked in his bed while he’d been out drinking.
    Not that he had been interested in the blonde or any of the others. Unlike any normal, sane man, he’d sent her home as soon as he tossed some clothes on her body. And all the while she’d whispered to him the torrid, lusty things she’d do to give him pleasure.
    Her salacious