Taming Clint Westmoreland - Brenda Jackson [5]
“You’re a triplet, right?”
He glanced at her over the rim of his glass. “Yes. How do you know that?”
She shrugged. “It was common knowledge among the Rangers. I met your brother, Cole, once. He was nice. I also heard you have a sister.”
“I do,” he said, thinking about Casey, who had gotten married a few months ago. “If you go by order of birth, then I’m the oldest, then Cole and last Casey.”
“Is Cole still a Texas Ranger?”
He figured she must feel a little more relaxed to be asking so many questions. “Yes, he is.”
He didn’t know her well enough to reveal that Cole’s days with the Rangers were numbered. Like him, Cole planned to go out on early retirement; however, Cole hadn’t decided what he’d do after leaving the force. Clint wasn’t even sure if Cole planned to stay in Texas. His brother might take a notion to move to Montana like Casey had done to be near their father. The father the three of them thought was dead until a few years ago.
He took a sip of his coffee. In a way he knew what Alyssa was doing. She was trying to get his mind off the gigantic problem that was looming over their heads. But the bottom line was that they needed to talk about it and make some decisions. “Okay, Alyssa, getting back to our dilemma. What about you? Do you have any suggestions?”
She took a sip of her coffee and smiled before saying, “I guess I could go back to Waco and you remain here and forget we ever found out we were married and leave things as they are. As I said earlier, marriage isn’t in my future anytime soon. What about yours?”
“Not in mine, either, but still, having a wife isn’t something I can forget about,” he said. Several things could happen later to make him remember he was a married man.
For example, what would happen if she decided, as his wife, that she was entitled to half of everything he owned? His partnership with his cousin and brother-in-law was going extremely well. Not saying that she would, but he couldn’t take any chances. He had bought out Casey’s and Cole’s shares of the ranch and now it was totally his. The last thing he would tolerate was a “wife” staking a claim on anything that had his name on it.
And then there was the other reason he wouldn’t be able to forget he had a wife. She was too damn pretty. Her features were too striking and her body was too well-stacked. Even now sitting across from her at the table he could feel his temperature rise. Since he figured she hadn’t gotten that way overnight, he wondered how he had missed noticing how good she looked five years ago. The only excuse he could come up with was that at the time he’d been too heavily involved with Chantelle and only had eyes for one woman. Too bad Chantelle hadn’t had eyes for just one man.
“There has to be a way out of this,” she said, interrupting his thoughts with a disgusted look on her face. Disgusted or otherwise, her frustration didn’t downplay how full and firm her lips were, or how her eyes were so dark they reminded him of a raven’s wing. He wondered if her copper-brown hair was her natural color and he felt a tug in his gut when he thought of the one way he could easily find out. He shifted in his seat. His jeans suddenly felt a little too tight, especially in the area of his zipper.
Evidently she was waiting for him to respond, because her dark eyes were staring at him. He leaned back in his chair. “There is a way. We just have to think of it.”
Alyssa could feel Clint checking her out the same way she was checking him out, which only solidified her belief that living under the same roof with him wouldn’t work. There was a strong