“Like I said, I wanted to give the right signals.”
“What do you mean by signals?”
“A man shouldn’t give flowers to one woman when he wants another one. It sends mixed signals.”
Zoe looked around the kitchen at the plethora of flowers surrounding her. Warmth spread throughout her insides, but she remained wary. “And does the amount of flowers indicate in any way how much you want a woman?”
His eyes glittered midnight-blue in the fluorescent light and he started toward her. “I don’t know, but I bought out the floral department at the grocery store to be on the safe side. I would have bought out the florist too, but they were closed.”
“So, what happened tonight?” She backed up a step when he would have touched her. “Why did Carlene come over if you didn’t invite her?”
“Mixed signals.”
The roses. “I see. I guess you won’t be giving other women flowers for a while, huh?” At least as long as their affair lasted.
He took another step closer, crowding her. “Right.”
“What set off your sprinkler system?” She avoided meeting his eyes and focused on the yellow roses in the mason jar on the counter opposite.
“I don’t know.”
But they could both guess. Bud. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault, isn’t it?”
He reached out and pressed his big hand to the side of her face, gently turning her head until their gazes met. His expression was as serious as a heartbeat. “It doesn’t matter.”
Her breathing reflex short-circuited and she had to concentrate on sucking air into her lungs. “Of course it matters. Bud probably ate your wiring, and I’m the one who let him out of his cage.”
His thumb brushed down her chin and settled lightly against the pulse in her neck. “I don’t care.”
“But—”
“The only thing I care about is your promise to make love to me.” He leaned down until their breath mingled.
She fought hard to concentrate on what they were saying. “I thought you wanted to back off for a while.”
“I wanted to protect you. It’s an instinct I have a hard time ignoring. But if it means losing you I’ll ignore it—and anything else that could send you away from me.”
“Even gorgeous models from New York?” She couldn’t keep the residual pain from her voice. Her refresher course in that emotion was too recent.
His eyes narrowed while his mouth stopped a centimeter from her own. “What are you talking about?”
She tipped her head back, straining her neck to gain some distance. “It just seems to me that on the two occasions when you and I might have taken our friendship into the realm of the physical, you went for another woman instead.”
“What do you mean by might have? Are you saying you don’t want to make love to me? If you are, then think again. Things have gone too far for us to turn back to our old platonic relationship.”
“That’s what I thought when I was nineteen, but I was wrong then and maybe you’re wrong now.” She wanted to make love with Grant, but some irresistible compulsion was prompting her to rehash old memories and hurts.
“Four years ago neither one of us was ready for this.”
“Well, you certainly weren’t. It would have meant giving up the model.”
Suddenly she found herself sitting on the counter, a plethora of flowers and plants surrounding her, the smell of damp soil and the fragrance of flowers in bloom teasing her senses while Grant made a place for himself between her spread legs. “I didn’t have the model.”
“Come on, Grant. You took her for a midnight ride in your plane. What else were you going to do when you brought her back to the ranch?”
“Take her home.”
She let her expression speak her disbelief for her.
“Zoe, I took Madeleine up in the plane so I wouldn’t take you to an empty line shack and finish what we’d started in the barn. I didn’t want to have sex with her.”
For four years Zoe had taunted herself with the image of Grant and the willowy blonde in a clinch, and now he was telling her he had not even slept with the woman.
“Then why did you reject me?”
Confusion clouded his eyes. “Reject you? I never rejected you. You’re the one who ran from the barn wearing an expression that accused me of damn near attacking you.”
“I never did!”
He just stared at her.
“Okay. So, I ran. I’d never experienced anything like that before. It scared me, and I wasn’t ready to make love for the first time.”
“That’s what I said earlier.”
“But I got ready.”