Coming Home Read Free Page A

day, the sight of Jeb Delaney still had the power to scrape her nerves raw. It puzzled her when she thought about it. She made friends easily and had a reputation for being charming and easy to work with. She liked people—she couldn't have been the success she was if she hadn't. But Jeb Delaney…Jeb Delaney set her teeth on edge and made the hair on the back of her neck rise up…and, a small voice nagged, excites you more than any man you've ever met in your life.
    A big man, he stood six feet five and had the shoulders and chest to match. His arms were muscled beneath his plain blue chambray shirt and the tight, faded blue jeans he was wearing fit his lean hips and powerful thighs like a second skin. Sunglasses, dusty black boots, and a wide-brimmed black Stetson completed his garb.
    Watching him with all the enthusiasm she would have for an invasion of rattlesnakes, Roxanne demanded, “What are you doing here?”
    Jeb stopped about two feet from her and removed his sunglasses. His handsome face was expressionlessas his gaze roamed over her, taking in the long, long tanned legs revealed by her pink-striped shorts and the firm breasts only half hidden by the cut of her white halter top. There had been a few times in her career, not many, that she had posed nude, but she had never felt so very
naked as
she did at this very moment with Jeb Delaney's knowing black eyes moving over her.
    Her lips tightened. “I repeat: what are you doing here?”
    “Just being neighborly?” he offered with a quirk of his brow.
    She snorted. “Jeb, I haven't a clue as to what rock you sleep under at night, but neighbors we're not.”
    He rubbed his jaw. “Yeah, I guess not.” He looked around. “Seems an odd place for you to buy.”
    “And that's your business because…?”
    Jeb sighed and pushed back his black Stetson. “Are you always so prickly with everyone or is it just me?”
    She smiled sweetly. “Just you—I like everybody else.”
    He grinned, white teeth flashing beneath his heavy black mustache. It made him look like a brigand, a very, very attractive brigand, and Roxanne didn't like the way her heart leaped at the sight of that grin. The jerk.
    Her foot tapped. “Are you going to tell me what you're doing here or are we going to spend the morning exchanging insults?”
    “Princess, I haven't insulted you…yet. You just keep tossing those smart remarks out of that pretty mouth of yours and I might just have to do something about it.” His gaze fastened on her mouth and something dark and powerful leaped in the air between them. Then Jeb seemed to shake himself and took a breath. “Look,” he said quietly, “I just wanted to see if the gossips were right about you buying this place.” He glanced around. “After Dirk was killed, Danny and I came up here to double-check the place—it was a shambles—certainly not the sort of place I'd ever expect you to buy. Thought I'd take a drive up here and check it out. Since you're here, I guess this is one time that the valley gossip was right on the mark.”
    She was being rude. She knew it. She hated herself for doing it, but she just couldn't seem to stop. Looking down at her pink-painted toes in the flip-flops, she made the supreme effort and muttered, “The gossips are right. I did buy it.”
    “Why? Like I said, this sure isn't the kind of place one would expect the exalted
Roxanne
of fame and fortune to buy. Now, a mansion in San Francisco, where you could invite all your famous friends and hold wild bashes, yeah, I could see that. But here? A dead dope-grower's digs in the middle of nowhere? Don't tell me you're thinking of turning your hand to growing a little marijuana on the side?” Coolly, he added, “Not your style, Princess.”
    Who the hell was he, Roxanne thought furiously, to look down that oh-so-handsome nose of his at her? Most people, especially men, fell over themselves trying to attract her attention, but not Jeb. Oh, no. Hecouldn't even be