Free Lone Stallion's Lady by Lisa Jackson Page B

the up-and-up.”
    “Maybe you just asked all the wrong questions,” she fired back and jerked her arm away from him. He watched as she huffed off toward the house in a blazeof self-righteous and, as far as he was concerned, undeserved indignation.
    “Women.” He wanted to dismiss her, but somehow she’d gotten under his skin. She had from the instant he’d seen her sitting across the dance floor, alone, at a table, sipping wine and dressed to kill. At first he’d assumed she was waiting for someone. A knockout redhead like Gina wasn’t likely unattached, but when the date he’d thought she was waiting for didn’t show up, he’d taken a chance and sent over a drink.
    The rest, as they say, was history. He’d helped her “spill” her drink, had plotted to get her up to his room, but sensed that she wasn’t comfortable, wasn’t used to one-night stands. Hell, neither was he. Not any longer. But from his initial glimpse of her he’d known she would be different. Interesting. Intriguing. And she hadn’t disappointed. Just thinking of their night together made him hard. He’d woken up and found her gone, which was unusual. No note, no trace of her. He’d called the front desk and gotten no information on Celia O’Hara.
    She’d just disappeared.
    He’d decided to track her down, and felt like a fool. Never in his life had a woman walked out on him. Never. And he hadn’t liked the feeling. So he’d gone so far as to call a private investigator who’d done identity checks on people he was considering hiring for Black Gold. The man had come up empty. Celia O’Hara, the paralegal from Southern California, had disappeared.
    Or, as he learned later, had never existed. Then outof the blue he’d gotten that life-altering call from Garrett Kincaid telling him he wasn’t Harold Remmington’s son, after all. Hell, no, he was Larry Kincaid’s bastard.
    He’d been about to shelve looking for the woman, had even called his own private investigator and told him to quit searching—and now she’d fallen into his lap. Not as Celia O’Hara, the paralegal intent on becoming a lawyer, but Gina Henderson, a P.I. who had pulled the wool over his eyes and been investigating him, for crying out loud!
    He kicked at a rock and sent it careening into a fence post. From the porch the old pooch gave up a soft woof.
    The worst part of it was, he was still attracted to her. She’d lied to him, deceived him, played him for one helluva fool, yet Trent could hardly be around her without getting an erection that just wouldn’t quit. It was ridiculous. Foolish. His reaction to her was way out of line, as if he were a horny nineteen-year-old kid instead of thirty-two and supposedly an adult.
    But then everything about his life was a little out of whack right now. He’d considered phoning Blake and talking over the entire situation with him, but had decided against it. He and his twin, though identical in looks, were worlds apart in their thinking. Trent had always wondered about those twins who grew up wearing the same clothes, being each other’s best friend, riding matching bikes. He couldn’t imagine it. He’d been into leather jackets, jeans and T-shirts in high school. Blake had gone for a preppier look. Trent hadridden a motorcycle hell-bent-for-leather whenever he could, picked up more than his share of speeding tickets and was lucky he’d never spent a night in jail. Blake had driven their mother’s car when they lived at home, a dependable sedan when they were away at boarding school, put his nose firmly to the grindstone and with the idea of becoming a doctor chiseled into his brain from a young age, had put his goal in front of everything else. He’d even married well, a girl from a socially acceptable family, then moved to California where he’d set up practice as a pediatrician.
    Trent had almost envied his brother’s vision for his life, but that vision seemed to be blurring as Blake had divorced and, if Trent