Grady let her rant until she wound down. Then he gathered her close, murmuring soothing, nonsensical words. Slowly she relaxed against him. Every inch of her was suddenly awakened to the sensation of their bodies pressed together, of his arms tight around her, his breath fanning her cheek.

“It’s okay, darlin’. It’s okay,” he reassured her. “That call wasn’t about the ranch, I promise. It was about something else entirely.”

She wanted to believe him, wanted to believe she had misunderstood, but how could she? She lifted her head from his chest to look into his eyes. What she saw there was even more troubling than the treachery she’d suspected. There was hunger and yearning and the kind of seething passion she’d almost forgotten existed.

His gaze locked with hers, he tenderly wiped the tears from her cheeks. His thumb caressed her mouth. The flash of heat in his eyes turned brighter. The air around them suddenly felt charged with electricity…and with anticipation.

And then, before Karen could guess his intentions, his mouth covered hers. The kiss was everything she’d ever imagined-and feared. It was devastating. It was pure temptation.

And Grady had stolen it.

If he could steal a kiss so cleverly when she’d been furious with him only moments before, would stealing the land she’d grown to despise be any challenge for him at all?

Chapter Eight

The first time Grady kissed her, Karen reacted with shock and dismay. How could she have let it happen? Why hadn’t she stopped it, slapped him, done anything to show her displeasure?

A quick peck on the lips could be explained away as a hit-and-run gesture, hardly worthy of protest, but this had been more than that. It had gone on and on. There had been plenty of time for the act to register and draw an appropriate protest, rather than weak-kneed compliance.

The taste and feel of him was still on her lips as she took a step back and then another, trembling with what should have been outrage but wasn’t.

“Why did you do that?” she demanded, her back braced against the sink as she finally-belatedly-put as much distance as possible between them.

“Because I’ve been wanting to forever,” he said, not looking the least bit remorseful. In fact, he looked suspiciously as if he might intend to do it again.

And, God help her, Karen wanted him to. Her pulse was thundering like a summer storm. Her breasts ached. Any second the temptation to reach for him, to slip back into his embrace, would be too much for her.

There was no time to recite all the reasons why it was a terrible idea. Instead, she counted slowly to ten and back again, as if that alone would cool her yearning, as the same technique was used to temper anger.

She heard Grady’s low chuckle and her gaze snapped to his to find amusement lurking in his eyes. “What?” she demanded.

“It’s not going to work,” he told her, clearly understanding the mental war she was waging. “I’m not going away and I am going to kiss you again. There’s your fair warning. Never let it be said you didn’t get one.”

She swallowed hard, accepting the warning as pure truth. All that remained was the anticipation.

“When?” she asked, hoping that knowing that much would give her time to prepare, time to win the struggle with a desire that had caught her by surprise.

He tilted his head, studied her intently, then responded solemnly, “Now, I think. Before you work yourself into a frenzy worrying about it.”

She gulped even as he claimed her mouth yet again with even more ingenuity, more wickedly clever passion. This time Karen wasn’t simply an innocent bystander to the kiss, either. She kissed him back, responding to every persuasive nuance. All those protests and denials had been for nothing, because there was no mistaking that she was as caught up in the moment as he was.

Her head was spinning, her pulse racing. There was so much heat-too much. And the neediness, the overwhelming sense of urgency slammed through her with unexpected force, leaving her reeling. She had never expected to feel like this again, certainly never with Grady Blackhawk.

His name, his identity, finally snagged her attention, cutting through all the other commanding sensations. She was appalled and shaken that she was willingly in the arms of the enemy, though it was getting harder and harder to think of him that way.

Even so, it took her a long time to disengage from his embrace, longer still to take a faltering step back.

“This is my proof,” she murmured, still dazed from the feel of his mouth on hers, but determined to inject a haughty note of disdain into her voice.

“Proof of what?” he said as he trailed more kisses down the side of her neck.

“That you’re a scoundrel and a thief. You stole that kiss,” she accused, managing to get the words out with a straight face, even though she knew it was a blatant lie. He had stolen nothing. She had given it to him willingly.

Laughter filled the air. Evidently he was no more convinced of the lie than she was.

“Maybe the first one, darlin’,” he conceded. “But the second one you gave me of your own free will. You can’t count that one against me, and I’d say it negates the implications of the first one. Once two people start to tango, so to speak, the blame pretty much falls by the wayside.”

She frowned at him. “You would say that, wouldn’t you? It serves your purpose.”

“And what is my purpose?” he asked, studying her with mild curiosity.

“To get my land,” she said at once, but she was no longer as certain as she had once been. A part of her was beginning to believe that he just might be after her, instead.

Grady went home that night and called his private detective, the one he’d had working for weeks to find out who might be behind the sabotage intended to take out the Hanson herd. Karen had walked in on him when he’d called Jarrod Wilcox earlier from her kitchen. He wanted to reemphasize to the man the urgency of the investigation. He needed results fast. He was growing less and less certain about why, though.

At first, he’d merely wanted Karen to know the truth so she could begin to trust him. He’d hoped that that would be the first step to getting her to sell the ranch to him. Now it was all tangled up in something personal. He wanted her trust, because he couldn’t bear to see that condemning look in her eyes one more time.

“I told you this afternoon that this is all but impossible,” Jarrod told him. “For one thing, the incidents took place a year ago or more. If there was any kind of physical evidence, it’s long gone. Seems to me like you’re throwing good money after bad by keeping me on your payroll.”

“If that’s your attitude, maybe I am,” Grady snapped. “Maybe somebody else would approach this with a more positive attitude, maybe be a little more aggressive.”

“Anybody legitimate would tell you what I’m telling you-forget about this.”

“What about the mortgage? Surely there’s paperwork about any attempt to buy up the Hanson note. The president of the bank didn’t just make that up. He either had a letter or a face-to-face meeting.”

“He claims the latter, and he claims it was with you,” Jarrod said.

“Since I’ve never set foot in that bank, he’s lying, then. Who’s paying him to lie?”

“Have you considered asking him that yourself? It’ll be a whole lot harder for him to pull off the lie if you’re looking him in the eye.”

Grady sighed. “You have a point. I’ll get on that first thing in the morning. Meantime, I want you to look into every person who owns land adjacent to the Hanson ranch. Either somebody wants that land for themselves or they have a reason for keeping me from having it.”

“Will do.”

“By the end of the week,” Grady added.