“You’ve never ridden a horse?” he asked, clearly shocked.
Grateful that she’d successfully diverted the conversation, she shook her head.
“Not unless the rocking horse I had as a child counts.”
His promising grin sent a wave of heat zinging throughout her body. “Looks like the next time you visit the Silver Moon, I’ll have to teach you how to do more than just drive.”
She swallowed hard as she tried not to think of the many other things he could teach her. And not one of them involved any type of horsepower—mechanical or otherwise.
Before she could think of something to say that wouldn’t give her inner thoughts away, there was a knock on her apartment door. “I think our dinner has arrived,”
she said, thankful for Mr. Chang’s habit of always being punctual.
“Why don’t you set the table while I take care of the delivery guy?” Travis asked, starting toward the door.
As he walked across the living room, he wondered what in the name of hell he’d been thinking when he’d taken Fin up on her offer to eat at her place. They couldn’t be within twenty feet of each other for more than a couple of minutes without the sexual tension around them becoming so thick it could be cut with a
knife. And just the thought of how responsive she’d been to his touch that night in his barn was enough to make his body as hard as a chunk of granite.
But no matter how strong the attraction was between them or how great the sex, nothing could ever come of it. Not only was she Jessie’s biological mother, Fin Elliott was a sophisticated career woman. She was city from the top of her pretty red head all the way to her perfectly polished toenails. Her lifestyle was glitz and glamour and that was a far cry from the simple life he led in the wide open spaces on the Silver Moon Ranch. While she attended formal galas and went to trendy nightclubs, he was more apt to be going to a stock auction or stopping in at the local honky-tonk for a cold beer.
As he paid the delivery boy, Travis took a deep breath. The best thing he could do for his peace of mind would be to remove himself from the temptation that Fin Elliott posed to his suddenly overactive libido. He’d take the food into the dining room, make his excuses and head back to his hotel for room service and a shower cold enough to make him spit ice cubes.
But a few minutes later, when he set the bag on the chrome-and-glass table, Fin’s warm smile had him settling onto a chair across from her. As he watched her pull white cartons with red Chinese symbols from the sack, he counted at least six, plus a couple of foam containers and some small waxed paper bags.
“How much did you order?” he asked, skeptically eyeing the amount of food in front of them.
She stopped fussing over the lids on the containers of what looked to be some kind of soup to give him a sheepish grin. “For some reason, everything sounded so good.” She caught her perfect lower lip between her teeth. “But I think I might have gotten a little carried away.”
“It looks like you’re getting ready to feed an army.” Laughing, he reached for one of the boxes. “Lucky for you, I’ve always had a pretty healthy appetite.”
“I normally try to watch what I eat, but lately, I’ve been absolutely ravenous,”
she said, spooning a heaping mound of rice onto her plate.
They ate in silence for some time, but Travis took little notice of the flavorful food. His mouth had gone as dry as a desert when he watched Fin delicately nibbling on a barbecue rib. But when her index finger disappeared between her kissable lips as she sucked away the last traces of sauce, his heart stalled and he felt as if he’d taken a sucker punch to the gut.
“That was good,” he lied when, several minutes later, they settled down on the couch to drink their coffee. Truth to tell, he had no idea what he’d consumed, let alone how it had tasted. But it beat the hell out of telling her the truth—that he’d been so caught up in watching her, he’d practically forgotten his own name.
“I’m sorry you missed out on your steak dinner,” she said apologetically.
“I wouldn’t have enjoyed it anyway.” He took a sip of the worst coffee he’d ever tasted in his entire life. Placing his cup on the coffee table in front of them, he decided that Fin might be beautiful and sexy as sin, but she couldn’t make coffee worth a damn.
“You wouldn’t have enjoyed your dinner because you missed getting to spend time with Jessie?”
“Not really.” Shaking his head, he grinned as he stretched his arm along the back of the couch behind her. “I’d had about all I could take of old Ornery and his hovering. That more than anything will put a man off his feed.”