"It doesn't matter to me how beautiful I look."
Devlin raised an eyebrow. "Do you mean to tell me you haven't a trace of feminine vanity?"
"Of course I do. Do you think I like having chapped hands? Not being able to afford beautiful dresses and perfumed baths? Cooking and caring for rough men who don't have the manners or morals of a jackass?"
"I think," Devlin said gently, "that you work far too hard."
"Well, some of us don't have the luxury of choosing our livelihood."
"I also think that running a boardinghouse isn't a job for a lady."
Misunderstanding his concern, Jess took offense. "I know how to act like a lady, Mr. Devlin! I went to finishing school for nearly two years to learn how. But knowing how to pour tea and to balance a book on your head doesn't put food on the table or pay wages for a mine crew. And the fact that I do what I do doesn't make me any less a lady!"
"I never said you weren't a lady, sweetheart. I said you didn't know how to enjoy being a woman, feeling a woman's passion. There's quite a difference."
His half-lidded gaze was amused, Jess saw. And this subject was becoming highly dangerous. Devlin's expression had lost that grim edge, and he was grinning with a slow laziness, looking more like the handsome devil she'd come to know over the past week.
Deliberately, she averted her gaze, and her attention was suddenly caught by a bright silver-red flame streaking across the sky.
"Look!" she exclaimed in a hushed voice, as much to provide a distraction as in awe. "A falling star. We should make a wish."
She was silent for a moment, watching until it plunged beyond the horizon. "My mother would have called it a wild star," Jess said, half to herself. "That was how the Wildstar mine was named. One fell over the mine the first time Riley took her to see it." Her voice dropped to a murmur, sounding distant and yet dreamy, as if she was recalling fond memories. "Mama said that sometimes love was like trying to catch a wild star . . . elusive . . . always too far away. And if you did somehow manage to get hold of it, maybe you'd find out it wasn't what you wanted after all."
Devlin could find more than a grain of truth in that theory. He'd once been in love, but it wasn't anything like what he'd wanted or hoped for. He'd known the hungry yearning that love aroused, the confusion, the excitement, the joy, the fierce ache . . . the desperate hurt of having his love rejected. The mortification of knowing his prospective inheritance was his prime attraction. The blind determination afterward never to repeat his folly.
He no longer believed so blindly in love. Love made a man a fool, sapped him of wits and pride—and he'd sworn never to be played for a fool again. If his life was sometimes barren and lonely, if at times he still dreamed about finding a woman who could fill the emptiness . . . well, his wealth might be cold comfort, but it was good for something at least. He usually was able to find consolation in a pair of scented arms, between a pair of soft thighs.
The silence lengthened.
"What did you wish for?" Devlin murmured finally.
The sensuous, whisky-rough quality of his voice stroked all the feminine nerve endings along Jess's spine, as provocatively as a lover's touch.
Against her will, she turned her head and her gaze tangled with his. His smoke-gray eyes were fastened on her with an impact that made Jess catch her breath. There was a primal quality of seduction in Devlin's gaze that left her utterly weak. He couldn't help it, she was certain. Looking at a woman that way, as if she were the most beautiful woman in the world, was as natural to him as breathing.
She didn't want to succumb to him, though. The man who claimed her ought to be her husband and no one else. She had high standards for the man she would marry. She wanted a good man, someone kind and tender, one who was willing to work hard, who wasn't afraid to face tough odds. She wanted to be able to look up to him the way she did her father.
Garrett Devlin most certainly didn't fit that bill. Devlin was a gambler, a hired gun. The kind of man who lived off other men's sweat, whose loyalty could be bought . . . Well, maybe that judgment was a bit harsh. Devlin had taken on her fight against Burke, Jess reminded herself, and he was helping her now, tracking the gunmen who'd shot up the Wildstar and nearly killed Clem. He'd proved he was better than most of his kind. Yet he was still too self-indulgent, too sophisticated, too attractive for her taste. And he certainly wasn't the marrying kind. She knew better than to fall for his practiced charm.
Still, that didn't help her find him any less appealing, or make it any easier to forget the devastating kisses he'd given her yesterday . . . or allow her to resist his touch now. He had taken her hand again, and was holding her fingers firmly in his grasp while his thumb intimately traced the sensitive center of her palm. She couldn't have pulled away if her life depended on it.
"Wh-what did I wish for?" she repeated falteringly, her own voice sounding absurdly breathless. "The same thing I've wished for every day since this trouble started. That Burke would get his comeuppance."
Devlin looked down at her slender, work-worn hand with bemusement. He should have expected that answer; all she cared about was saving the Wildstar mine for her father. But it surprised him, the sting of envy he felt. What would it be like, being the object of such devotion? Having a woman care for him that much? A woman who put every ounce of energy and determination she possessed into seeing you fulfill your dream? A woman who wanted you for yourself, not for the depth of your pockets or your sexual prowess in bed? Someone to ease the loneliness—
"What did you wish for?" Jess asked, trying to sound normal.
He hadn't made a wish. He didn't believe in such foolish superstition. But if he had, Devlin thought silently, sentimentally, he would have wished for a woman who existed only in his deepest fantasies . . . one who would love him for himself, one who would give her heart to him totally, without regard to wealth or position. He'd never known a woman like that. He'd thought she didn't exist. He still didn't believe it. Jessica Sommers was no fantasy; she was a flesh-and-blood firebrand who was too hard-headed, too independent, too capable to appeal to a man who wanted yielding softness and sensuality in a woman.
Who are you trying to fool, Devlin? He couldn't possibly deny he wanted her, regardless of all her toughness. He wanted to taste her again, wanted her moaning with pleasure beneath him, wanted her long legs wrapped around him as he drove himself into her. Just the thought of it had the power to arouse him.
Devlin felt himself tugging gently on her hand, drawing Jessica's wide-eyed face closer. He knew damn well he shouldn't touch her. Especially now, when he was alone with her in a dark wilderness, with a crackling fire casting a golden glow over her skin. Especially when Riley had pleaded with him to take care of his stubborn daughter. Especially when his control was so tenuous. It could easily get out of hand. . . .
And yet he knew damn well he would touch her. If only to make certain her kisses held the same sweet innocence they'd held yesterday. To see if her lips possessed the same bold honesty that her words had tonight when she'd professed to scorn riches and rich men.
With his free hand, he reached behind her neck, wrapping his fingers around her nape. She was acting just like a skittery mare, nervous and wary. But he could read past the uncertain light in her tawny eyes. He'd been on the receiving end of enough sultry looks and honeyed kisses to know when a woman was interested in him and ready to be aroused, and Jessica most definitely was ready. Just now her lips were parted, her breathing shallow. He was certain that if he placed his hand over her breast he would feel her heart racing in anticipation.
"Jessica?" His voice was low, muted, and sleekly velvet as the night.