Stella Bagwell - Millionaire on Her Doorstep

“I can’t afford to waste time.”

One brow arched curiously at her remark. “You have a date to keep?”

Her face grew stiff and devoid of emotion. “I don’t have dates.”

His slow perusal of her brought a tinge of color to her cheeks. Adam didn’t let her discomfiture stop him. “You’ll probably think I’m impertinent,” he said. “But I’m going to ask why anyway.”

She turned her head away, but not before Adam spotted the faintest tremble at the corner of her lips. “You are being impertinent, and my personal life—or lack of one—is none of your business.”

Yesterday, her clipped words would have put a smug smile on his face. He would have found enjoyment in the knowledge that she could be wounded. But today, all he could feel was an overwhelming urge to reach out and touch her.

“You’re right,” he said quietly, then cleared his throat and jammed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “It is none of my business. So let’s get back to the initial question. Would you like to come stay at the ranch?”

She glanced at him, and for a split second he saw a flash of raw hunger in her eyes. The brief sight of it stabbed him right in the breastbone.

“It is tempting. I hate motel rooms.”

Latching onto the uncertainty in her voice, he said, “The Bar M is beautiful. We have a swimming pool, there’s always plenty of good food to eat, and you’d have a room off to yourself. You wouldn’t have to see me or anyone else, unless you wanted to.”

She did want to see him. That was the whole problem. But it wasn’t as if she was going to throw herself into Adam Sanders’s arms. Since David had walked out on her, she’d developed a willpower as strong as steel. She could resist any man.

“You make it sound very appealing.” She looked at him with sudden resolution. “I think I’ll accept your invitation, Adam.”

He didn’t know which pleased him more—her calling him by his first name or the fact that he’d won her over and she was going to be staying on the ranch.

Resisting the urge to grab her hand and smother the back of it with kisses, he said, “Good. After work this evening, I’ll help you get your things from the motel and then you can follow me home.”

Follow me home.

As Maureen watched him leave the lab, she tried her best not to take his words literally. This brief stay on the Bar M with Adam and his family would only be a glimpse of what she would never have.

The more she reminded herself of that fact, the safer her heart would be.

Chapter Three

Adam glanced in his rearview mirror. She was back there. Just as she’d been when he’d checked five minutes ago.

He’d really done it this time! What the hell had he been thinking? It would have made much more sense to simply reimburse Maureen for her motel expenses instead of inviting her to the ranch.

But that was the whole problem, he argued with himself. The Bar M was only his temporary home. He had to consider his parents’ feelings in the matter. And he knew how pleased they would be that he’d been able to persuade Maureen to stay the next few weeks with them.

Chloe and Wyatt had always been generous people. Not just with their money or the things it could afford them to give, but generous of themselves. Adam had long wished he possessed at least a fraction of their generosity.

But now as Maureen followed him closely up the pine-lined lane to the ranch, he wished when he’d looked into Maureen’s warm brown eyes this morning, he’d been a bit stingier with his hospitality. In spite of the physical attraction he felt for her, he didn’t want to get involved with her. Or any woman. And he was going to make damn sure he didn’t.

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