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Tucking a hair behind my ear, I pondered how to ask him something I had wanted to know for a while. Since he tended to feel more comfortable when I joked around, I went with something a little silly. “I’ve noticed there’s no Mrs. Ryder Larsen anywhere on the ranch.”

Setting his hat back in place, he said, “Good observation skills you have there. Do you have a question to ask along with your pointing out the fact that I’m in my mid-thirties and still single?”

Shaking my head, I turned away from him, and made my way towards the door to the pen. He caught me by the arm and spun me, pressing me against the timber. The breath caught in my throat as I looked up at his taller frame. At those lips that just begged me to kiss them. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Biting my bottom lip, my eyes searched his for what he hoped to hear. I could feel his need for my raw honesty. “I was thinking that those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” I paused, lifting my face just a little, angling it so his lips were a little closer to mine. His eyes flicked to my lips, and while they stared at them, I continued. “It’s unfair of me to point out the lack of a Mrs. Larsen, when there is no Mr. Sienna Anderson to speak of either.”

I don’t add that it was much to Daddy’s disgust. At thirty-one, I suppose he’d hoped to have me married off by now. He and Momma had ensured I had several options laid out before me at galas and various meetings in the past couple of years.

“Why is that, do you think? Are you not looking? Concentrating on your career perhaps?”

The feel of his warm breath on my face almost hypnotized me into telling him that I just hadn’t met the right person yet. Luckily, I bit my tongue, before that confession broke free. Though something about him forced part of the truth free from somewhere inside me.

“I’m a strong-willed woman, and the man who ends up with me must be strong himself. Strong enough to handle me at both my best and my worst. Strong enough to take the lead when I need him to. Strong enough to protect me and the family we create together. Strong enough to take the lead in certain aspects of our life. Because only a man who can be all of those things will secure my heart.” I paused, leaning off the gate a little further to press my chest against his. “So far, the men I’ve slept with haven’t been up to par in any department.”

My hands slowly came up between us to rest on his hips. I liked the feel of him under me and so, I gave him a small smile, with just the hint of a challenge.

His nostrils flared at my admission, while the lower half of his body pinned me to the gate. “You have obviously been searching for these men in the wrong areas, darlin’. Because where I’m from, a man looks after his family above all else. He protects them with every fiber of his being, he loves so fiercely that there is no doubt in his woman’s mind how much he burns for her.”

His words sent an electric current pulsing through my body, lighting a fire in my core. My hands curled against him, and he leaned closer. His nose brushed against that super-sensitive spot below my ear, causing a shiver to run over my entire body, before he whispered, “He sure as hell never leaves his woman wanting for anything in the bedroom department.”

His comment threatened to snap the control I was holding over myself. I wanted nothing more than to pull him to me and kiss him. To push my tongue into his mouth and enjoy what I had no doubt would be a kiss that would make me entirely weak in the knees and breathless. But I didn’t. Instead, I stayed perfectly still. Waiting to see if he would make the first move.

That perfect southern gentleman.