Rather than return to her apartment, where she might risk meeting him again, she sat down at the small table in Ruby’s homey kitchen. Taking up the pad and pencil always left beneath the telephone, Rana idly sketched out some ideas she’d been toying with. Birds of paradise painted over a wash of pale lavender? A scarlet hibiscus filling the entire back of a bodice? Or how about a bold abstract design with orange and black and turquoise?

“Brainstorming?”

She dropped the pencil clumsily and, in her attempt to retrieve it, almost knocked over her glass of soda. “I wish you wouldn’t sneak up on me like that,” she told Trent crossly.

“Sorry. I thought you heard me. Guess you were lost in thought.”

She directed an accusing stare down at his bare feet. “If you would wear shoes, maybe I could hear you.”

“I rubbed a blister on my little toe this morning. Hurts like hell.”

If he was expecting sympathy, he was in for a disappointment.

She wanted to ask why he found it necessary to run around half dressed, but she lacked the nerve. Besides, she didn’t want him to know that she had noticed his cutoffs. The denim shorts gloved his thighs, hips, and manhood with a heart-stopping, breath-suspending fit. He now wore a sleeveless Houston Mustangs T-shirt that had been cut off just below his breast, leaving his midriff bare. His torso was so squarely symmetrical it could have been mathematically designed with a ruler. Her eyes were involuntarily drawn to his navel. Could navels be considered beautiful? Or was his merely mysterious in a sexy way? In either case, she wanted to investigate it.

“Is Auntie around?”

Rana yanked her eyes, attention, and imagination away from his lower abdomen and gestured toward a note secured to the refrigerator by a magnet shaped like a head of cabbage. “She went out for a while.”

“Hm.” His brow wrinkled. “She said she had stocked some fruit juice for me. Any idea where?”

“Check the refrigerator.”

He opened the door and surveyed the contents. “Milk, a bottle of Chablis, diet sodas,” he said, giving her a glance over his shoulder, “and something in a little brown crock marked by masking tape with ‘Do not throw out’ written on it.”

“That’s bacon grease.”

“I don’t think that’ll quench my thirst.”

Realizing her private interlude had come to an end the moment he entered the kitchen, she got out of her chair and, with a long-suffering sigh she made certain he heard, said, “Sometimes she keeps extra supplies on the sleeping porch.” She went through the doorway leading to the screened back porch.

“Believe it or not, I’ve actually slept out here,” he said.

“Really?”

“Lots of summer nights when I was a kid and my mom and I would come visiting.”

She feigned disinterest, though the picture of a tough little boy with dark hair and skinned knees came to her mind. “What about your father?”

“He was killed in an airplane crash overseas before I was old enough to remember him. Mom never remarried. She died two years ago.”

He was as alone in the world as she, but she couldn’t let herself feel sympathy for him. She couldn’t let herself feel anything for him, especially now that the scent of the beach had been replaced by that of clean skin, shaving soap, and citrus cologne.

She checked the pantry, where Ruby stored everything from toilet tissue and dishwashing soap to homemade jam. On one shelf Rana found a variety of canned fruit juices. “Apple, grapefruit, or orange?”

“Orange.”

He filled up the doorway between her and the kitchen. His legs were long and lean, but as hard as tree trunks. His biceps were lined with blue veins that her eyes followed all the way down his tanned forearms to the backs of his hands. A surgical scar was visible around his right elbow. Two of the fingers on his right hand were crooked from having been broken. Battle scars of his profession, she supposed.

“Excuse me,” she mumbled when she reached the door. He moved aside to let her pass, and she carried the can of orange juice into the kitchen. “Watch me so you’ll know where everything is next time.”

“You have my undivided attention, Miss Ramsey.”

Ignoring his teasing inflection, she opened the can with the opener she had located in a drawer and repeated the motions she’d gone through only minutes before in preparing her own drink. “There.” She handed the glass to him.

“Thanks.” He winked at her. Raising the glass to his lips and tilting his head back, he drank every drop of the juice. Rana watched his Adam’s apple slide up and down only three times as he drained the glass.

“More, please.” He extended the glass to her, and, dumbfounded that he could consume so much so quickly, she refilled it automatically. He gulped that glassful down the same way, smacking his lips with satisfaction when he was done. “Ahh. Now, this glass, I can drink more slowly.”

“You mean you want more?” she asked incredulously as he motioned to her to fill the glass again.

His eyes seemed to want to bore through her eyeglasses. “That’s only one of the unquenchable thirsts I have, Miss Ramsey.” Then his gaze slid down to her mouth.

“Hello, Ruby!”

Rana jumped as if she’d been shot. She recognized the postman’s cheerful voice. It was his custom to visit with Ruby every day when he delivered the mail. Had Ruby been twenty years younger, Rana would have said they were flirting. Perhaps that was exactly what it was, despite Ruby’s age.

She set the can of juice on the countertop. “Serve yourself from now on, Mr. Gamblin. In here, Mr. Felton,” she called out to the postman, hurrying to the back porch. “Ruby’s not here. Mercy, we have quite a lot today, don’t we?”

“Bills, mostly. A few magazines. Got everything? Tell Ruby I said hello.”

“I will.”

Rana returned to the kitchen with the mail and dumped it on the table. As she sorted through it, checking to see if anything was addressed to her, Trent moved up behind her.

It had almost become second nature to him to study and analyze Miss Ramsey. She was so different from the women he knew. He’d never seen uglier clothes than the ones she was wearing today. Her slacks, which she had gathered at the waist with a wide, functional leather belt, would have fit a woman twice her size. And they would have been right at home on a battleship. They were that drab, that utilitarian, that ugly.

If she had a fanny, he couldn’t begin to guess its proportions. The shape of her legs, too, remained a mystery. Goodwill would have rejected the paint-splattered man’s shirt she was wearing. The sleeves had been rolled back to reveal her forearms, but the shapeless vest she wore over the shirt hung straight to her hips. She couldn’t have much bosom, but in spite of himself he was curious to know just how much. He was almost crazy with curiosity about her breasts.

He stared down at the center part of her hair. She hadn’t gone to any trouble to style it. It hung heavy and straight down her back, well brushed, but otherwise uncared for. It sure as hell smelled good, though. He liked the floral fragrance of her shampoo. Or was that bubble bath he smelled?

The thought of Miss Ramsey languishing in a bubble bath was ludicrous. But all women, no matter how homely, enjoyed feminine indulgences like that, didn’t they? he wondered. Sure, she took bubble baths. Of course she did.

And what did she put on afterward? Scanty, lacy underthings that were as delicate as spider webs? Somehow he couldn’t picture her in anything frivolous or fantasy-inspiring. She probably wore opaque cotton that covered and contained completely.

Why the hell was he wondering about her lingerie anyway? Was he actually standing here speculating on Miss Ramsey’s underthings? Dear Lord, maybe he needed a woman worse than he’d thought. Maybe his body was desperately sex-starved and just hadn’t telegraphed the message to his brain yet. Maybe he should call Tom and have him send some willing woman to him. Without delay. Federal Express.