"You're lying."

"Actually, for a change I'm not. Ask her. If she denies it, you'll know she's lying. She's not very good at it. Or you could just look in her trunk. She's got a couple paintings of you—one is rather revealing. I found them the day Kathleen taught her to ride. Yes, I snoop. So what? Being on that ranch was driving me mad with boredom."

She chuckled again at his expression before she stepped back into her room and closed the door on him. She'd done what she'd intended, shocked him so thoroughly that he just stood there, unable to absorb it all.

She was deliberately causing trouble again. What other reason could there be, for her? A favor? She'd probably never done anyone a favor in her life.

That he wanted to believe her was almost proof that he shouldn't, since she so often set up situations to shock or severely disappoint people. Of course it wasn't true. Marian would have told him. She wouldn't have let him go on this long, berating himself for having made such a colossal mistake.

He glanced back down the corridor. She was alone in her room. If nothing else, Amanda had given him a reason to talk to Marian again. They could get angry at Amanda together. Find some common ground.

He didn't knock. Actually, he expected the door to be locked this time. It wasn't. She'd probably been too angry to think about locking it when she'd slammed it shut on him.

He found her sitting on the edge of her bed, staring at a canvas she'd unrolled. She was so deep in thought she hadn't even heard him enter and close the door again, though she did hear his footsteps as he approached. She glanced up and gasped.

But instead of telling him immediately to get out, she quickly rolled the canvas back up and shoved it on the bed behind her. She stood up, and only then started glaring at him.

"What are you doing back here?"

Without answering he nodded toward the canvas behind her, and asked, "Mind if I have a look at that?"

"I do mind."

He was standing next to her now. "I've been advised to look at it anyway, so I think I will."

"No!" she exclaimed.

Her protest wasn't going to stop him at that point. If he had to apologize afterward, so be it, but he was going to see what she was hiding. He grabbed the canvas and turned away from her when she tried to snatch it back from him.

He unrolled it, heard her say, "Damn you, you have no right."

He was disappointed. It was a portrait of him. A damn good one, but it told him nothing. So she'd painted him. It was her hobby, something she enjoyed doing, and she was very good at it.

He turned back around, blushed a little as he handed the canvas back to her. "I'm sorry. My father would probably buy that from you. It's an amazing likeness."

"My paintings aren't for sale," she said stiffly.

He started to shrug, then remembered there were supposedly two canvases, and said, "Where's the other one?"

"What other one?"

"You painted two of me."

"I didn't," she insisted, but now she was blushing. "Who told you that?"

"Your sister just told me."

She snorted. "And you believed her?"

He frowned. "If you weren't blushing, I'd say no. But she was right, you're not very good at lying."

"I'm very good at kicking unwelcome intruders out of my room. I'm going to start screaming in one second if you aren't on your way out the door."

"Go ahead," he dared her. "Then the entire floor can find out what you're hiding."

He'd already spotted her trunks in the corner. He headed toward them. She didn't scream. She raced around him and sat down firmly on one trunk.

She pointed a finger at him. "That's far enough. You are not going to rifle through my personal belongings."

He shook his head at her. "Mari, do you realize how oddly you're behaving? And why? Over an exceptional talent that you want to keep to yourself?"

He didn't wait for an answer. He lifted her off the trunk, held her back with one arm while he opened it. There were two rolled canvases resting on top of the clothes she hadn't unpacked. He reached for one and howled—she'd slammed the trunk lid down on his arm.

He managed to get his arm out, and he turned toward her. But before he could say anything, she threw herself at him. And kissed him. He knew she was doing it to distract him from her trunk, and, damn, it worked.

He gathered her close, molded her body to his. She locked her arms around his neck. There was desperation in her efforts, but it was so close to passion it took him a while to note the difference. He still wasn't going to refuse what she was offering, when he'd been starving for the taste of her for too long.

He lifted her hips against the swelling in his loins. Her groan was lost in his mouth, slanting across hers. Her feet already off the floor, he started walking toward her bed, reached it, managed to get them on it without breaking the embrace, his body half-covering hers. She was clinging tightly to him still, as caught up in the kiss as he was. She wasn't in shock this time, knew what she was doing, which gave him hope. He let his desire reign unchecked, touching her, he couldn't get enough of touching her. His lips moved to her neck, kissing her there next to her ear. He reached for her skirt...

She immediately wiggled out from under him and shot off the bed. Now why didn't that surprise him?

"You know, darlin', you can only push a man so far," he warned as he stood up.

She was standing there panting for each breath, her lips swollen from his kisses, her blue eyes almost black they'd turned so dark. But Amanda wasn't the only twin who could have a one-track mind, and Marian's was still on what she was hiding from him.

As if he hadn't spoken, she said, "All right, I'll tell you what's in the trunk if you'll stop this nonsense. It's not something that I'm hiding from you, it's something I don't want anyone to see. It's a nude, the first I ever attempted, and since I didn't have a model, it's not the least bit accurate. I can easily paint from memory, but in this case I simply used my imagination. I'd always wanted to do a nude, I just never had an interesting enough subject to attempt it before, and I painted it prior to you and Amanda ..."

She didn't finish. She didn't have to. She was blushing again, but it could just be because of the subject, rather than a lie.

Interesting she called him. She saw him as interesting—artistically. Under the circumstances, that was about as unflattering as she could get.

And he was starting to feel like an ass. So she'd painted a nude of him. Nudes were common. For all he knew, all artists painted them. And while he'd like to see it, it would prove nothing. As usual, Amanda had merely caused emotional turmoil by suggesting otherwise.

He tried to relieve her embarrassment—as well as his own. With a grin, he asked, "You want a model?"

"No!"

He shrugged. "Didn't think so." He turned to leave, then paused. "My apologies, Mari. You'll think about what I said earlier?"

"Absolutely."

Too strong a word, which meant she wouldn't. Just as he'd feared, all his chances to win her had died the moment she'd heard that he had made love to her sister.

Chapter 55

"WHAT'D YOU DO, PRESS your ear to the door?"

"Of course," Amanda admitted, then complained, "My room would have to be across the hall from hers this time, rather than next to it."

She'd opened her door again the very moment Chad had stepped back into the corridor. He didn't try to avoid her this time. Actually, she was standing in the middle of the hall, so he couldn't.

"That does make it hard to eavesdrop, doesn't it?" he said, his tone sarcastic.

"Yes, unless voices get raised," she agreed, then raised a brow at him. "What do I have to do, lead you through this step by step?"

"You could try minding your own business, or is that too much to ask?"

"When you're making such a muck of yours?"

"You made a muck of mine. And you still are. If you were a man, I'd—"

"Yes, yes, I'm sure you would," she cut in impatiently. "You didn't ask her, did you? You were supposed to tell her you knew the truth. That's the only way you're going to get her to drop her defenses. You can't get rid of the hurt unless you lay it bare, and you can't get to that point unless you find it first. She'll never own up to it on her own. She's too proud for that."

"You're bored again, aren't you?" he guessed. "Three days with nothing to do until Bridges returns to town. That's what this is all about, isn't it? Just a new scheme for your entertainment because it amuses you to trifle with other people's emotions."

She sighed. "I'm trying to help you. If you'd just get over past grievances for a few minutes, you'd see that. I've given you the truth. I even told you where to find the proof of what I said. But you didn't even bother to look at the paintings, did you?"

He sighed. "The painting of a nude isn't proof of anything, Amanda."

"Of what?"

"Mari told me she painted a nude of me because she found me an interesting subject. Hardly flattering, and definitely not proof."

Amanda started to laugh. "Oh my, that's priceless. She told you about it instead of letting you actually see it. Good for her. Threw you off track and kept you from seeing the real painting. I didn't think she had it in her, to lie that well."

"But you do."

"Sure I do. It's an art, you know. But occasionally it isn't useful to lie, and this is one of those occasions. I told you I'm feeling benevolent, so let me tell you about the real painting. She rendered you lying in a bed of straw, in the process of removing your shirt. And looking up at her, your expression is so filled with passion, there's no doubt you're looking at a woman. She would have had to be standing over you to have that view. Did she? I only eavesdropped, so I didn't actually see you two. But the painting says it all, a perfect likeness, even shows a scar near your navel. That's not something she could have imagined, unless you don't really have a scar there. Do you?"

"You should know," he gritted out. "You were the one standing over me."

Amanda rolled her eyes. "I don't paint. I tried it once and was so embarrassed by my lack of talent, I never touched a brush again. I've always been jealous of Mari's talent. I admit it. She got all the artistic ability, leaving me none. So I had to create a talent of my own.

"To manipulate people."

"Yes, how astute of you," she said dryly. "But wake up, cowboy. That's not what I'm doing here. What's preventing you from seeing the truth?"

He gritted out what she was overlooking, "For the simple reason that she would have told me. She wouldn't have let you get away with such a lie."

"But she did. Find out why, and you'll probably find the hurt you need to mend."

* * *

For the fourth time that day, Chad turned the handle on Marian's door. It was locked this time. He had no patience left to knock. He slammed his shoulder against the door. It didn't give.

But he heard from the other side, "Don't you dare!"

He slammed his shoulder against the door again. Damn door still didn't give way. But she opened it before he tried a third time and stood there with a furious glare.

"I don't believe you just did that!" she hissed.

"And I don't believe you let me think, even for a minute, that I made love to Amanda!"

She caught her breath, stared at him. He walked past her into the room, so angry at that moment that he probably shouldn't say another word.

He swung around. "You would have let me marry her based on a lie!"

She lowered her gaze from his. "No, I wouldn't have. I would have spoken up if you'd been forced to go through with that—even though I didn't think you'd appreciate it, or that it would matter."

"How could it not matter?"

"If you didn't believe it. And at the time, I was sure you wouldn't. But I would have made the effort anyway. There was no point, though, after Amanda married Spencer."

"No point? No point! Just leave me agonizing over what I thought was the biggest mistake of my life? You were never going to tell me, were you?"

"No."

"Why the hell not?"

"You know why. I thought you were making love to me, but you weren't. You thought it was her all along."