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“You really date men called Fang?”

Lea jumped, startled by Westin’s voice. It wasn’t that she’d forgotten he was there exactly. It was more the way he had of intruding on her thoughts. It was like he knew the direction her mind was taking and exactly when his words would have the most impact.

“It’s a nickname.”

“I assumed there weren’t parents out there cruel enough to name their child Fang on purpose. But, again, some of the names I’ve heard people call their kids…”

Lea laughed because she couldn’t help herself. Maybe he wasn’t as isolated up here in the middle of the frozen nowhere as she’d originally believed.

“You done with my phone?”

“Yeah.” She tossed it over to him, and he caught it gracefully, barely moving anything more than his arm. She whistled. “Good catch.”

He dropped the phone on his flat belly and lifted his arms up behind his head. “Baseball.”

“You play in school?”

“Yep.”

She nodded as her eyes appreciated those thick muscles in his thighs and upper arms again. He had the build for it. “You grow up around here?”

He shook his head. “Denver. You?”

“This is my first visit to the great state of Colorado.”

“Enjoying it?”

Once again she laughed, wondering if he was serious. Her only experiences here were being attacked by Fang, dragged out of her car by her hair, and then rescued by a group of cowboys who seemed lost as to what to do with her now. “Are you guys going to take turns invading my privacy?” she wondered aloud as she stretched out a little more comfortably on the bed, crossing her own ankles as she repositioned the towel over her hips and chest. The one she’d wrapped around her head came loose, so she took it off and flung it onto the windowsill, then watched it slowly fall to the floor.

“That’s the plan, for the moment.”

“How did you get to be the lucky guy to get first shift?”

“It was my morning off.”

“Sorry.”

He rolled his shoulders. “This is easier duty than dealing with the wealthy tourists the others are preparing for.”

“For this ‘Cowboy Experience’ thing?”

“Yep.”

“What is that?”

He peeked at her from under the long fringe of impossibly thick eyelashes. “It’s a gimmick to make a little money over the winter.” He rubbed his chin with one hand, a heavy sigh escaping his full lips. “A group of tourists come up here—usually twenty or less at a time—and we teach them how to ride a horse, how to chase a couple of old cows around a paddock, shit like that. Show them a very small portion of what we do on a daily basis at a cost that rivals what I make in a month.”

“You don’t help with it?”

“I do. I do the chuck wagon.”

“The… what?”

He grunted, peeking at her again. “The chuck wagon. Food. We take them out into a pasture and cook biscuits and beans over an open fire like they might have done on the trail years ago.”

“You do that?”

“I do. I make the biscuits and run the show.”