A Touch in Time by McKenna Chase Read Free Book Online Page A

whispered huskily, “If you really were my wife, Brianna, I promise you’d be more than satisfied in our marriage bed.”
    She shuddered, knowing it to be the truth. But thanks to the twist of fate that had brought her there, thanks to Deke and his unrelenting quest for revenge, she would never be that wife.
    She glanced back over her shoulder with a smile. “But they don’t know that. And you know us females. We like having something to gossip about.”
    He spun her around to face him. “Reckon, I’d best go greet our guests with you.”
    Her gaze left his face to trail down his broad, very bare chest. “What about your shirt?”
    “Let them get the vapors. It’ll serve them right for showing up uninvited.”
    Those women wouldn’t be the only ones having vapors. Laughing, she let him lead her outside, admiring his broad, muscular back and the lean, hard ass encased in denim.
    “After you, darlin’,” he motioned her on past him. “They’re here for you.”
    No, they were here for him if she were to judge by the looks on the women’s faces as they eyed her half-dressed ‘husband’.
     
    Jake watched his ‘wife’ sashay her way out to greet the arriving gaggle of female geese. If the smile on her face when she’d walked away was any indication, she wasn’t the least bit intimidated by his threats. It appeared he really had lost his edge. What sort of Ranger couldn’t even give a woman pause for thought? Hell.
    As if reading his thoughts, Brianna glanced back over her shoulder, that sexy smile of hers still intact.
    “Mrs. Dawson,” one of the women called out as the group waved in greeting.
    “Hello, ladies,” Brianna chirped far too sweetly. She was up to something.
    In several long strides, he made sure he was standing beside her. “Ladies,” he said, tipping his hat.
    Their attention shifted to his bare chest and Jake found himself wishing he had taken Brianna’s advice that he put a shirt on.
    “If I had known you were coming,” Brianna said the wagon rolled to a stop beside her, “I would have baked a pie.”
    “No need to go to any trouble,” the leader of the group assured her. “We just wanted to make sure you were settled in and...” Her gaze swept down Jake’s lean form. “...that you were being treated well.”
    He slipped an arm around his ‘wife’s’ shoulders, waiting for her to make good on her threat of convincing the women he wasn’t doing his husbandly duty in the bedroom. And the second she did, he was going to pull her into his arms and show them exactly how attentive of a husband he was. Hell, he’d have the old hens fainting all over his yard and enjoy every second of it.
    “I couldn’t be happier,” Brianna said, her response not at all what he’d expected. “Especially in the bedroom.”
    Jake’s eyes widened.
    “Oh,” one of the women gasped, pressing a hand to her breast.
    Another sat fanning her flushed face. The other women just sat there in shocked silence.
    He grinned. “I’ve discovered that her bedroom skills make up for her lack of sewing skills.”
    More gasps.
    Seconds later, the women were high-tailing it away from the ranch, leaving a trail of dust rising up behind them.
    “That oughta give them something to talk about,” Jake said with a chuckle.
    “You’re so bad,” she exclaimed with a conspiratorial giggle.
    He gathered her against him. “I’m about to show you just how bad I can be.”
    “Promises. Promises,” she taunted as he swept her up in his arms and carried her back to the cabin.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    Jake stabbed the pitchfork he was grasping in his hands into the pile of hay at his feet. Frustration and anger boiled to surface every time he thought about Brianna leaving. In less than twenty-four hours she would be on the stage bound for his brother’s place in Montana. He’d have sent her away sooner but she’d needed dresses made to go with the other female necessities he’d