Cowboy's Kiss by Victoria Pade Read Free Book Online Page B

than what you’re wearing. Jeans. No shorts. No sandals. Wear socks.”
    She considered snapping to attention and saluting him but thought better of it. She had enough to deal with, just fighting the unwelcome and wholly surprising rush of her blood through her veins, the sense that she could actually feel heat from the gaze he’d rolled over her.
    â€œAnd you’d better do somethin’ else with all this,” he added, reaching to catch a long, curly strand of her hair between his fingers. “Tie it up off your neck or you’ll die of the heat.”
    Had his voice grown slower, thicker, huskier? Or was it just that Ally heard it that way through some very confusing emotions that suddenly popped up inside of her at even that small contact?
    Let go! she ordered. But only in her mind. Somehow the words didn’t go beyond that, and instead she found herself looking up into the shadow of his eyes, too aware of the way the moonlight kissed the hollows of his cheeks, christened the sharp rise of his cheekbones and dusted his mustache. The mustache that made his mouth so intriguing....
    Ally pulled back, realizing only as she did that they’d somehow moved closer together, that she was suddenly not too far away from that mustached mouth.
    Oh, Lord.
    â€œI’ve been dressing myself for some time now, and I think I can figure out what to do with my own hair,” she snapped, though it lacked the bite she’d meant for it to have.
    He’d lost the smile she was coming to think of as sinister and seemed as taken aback as she was by the currents that had passed between them.
    After her comment, his smile slid into place again.
    He shrugged a broad, powerful shoulder to let her know he’d only been offering a suggestion, that he didn’t really care whether she took it or not, or what consequences she might suffer if she didn’t.
    â€œAt 5:00 a.m. Sharp. And that doesn’t mean that’s what time you get yourself out of bed. That means you’re downstairs, dressed and ready to go then.”
    â€œI’ll be there.” She sneered back at him, turning around and following the same path her daughter had to the house as he stayed right where he was.
    The whole way she could feel Jackson’s gaze on her as surely as she’d watched Meggie. Well, if he was looking for some sign that he’d cowed or frightened her, he was going to be disappointed. She kept her back straight as a board and her walk confident.
    But internally she was a mass of jelly, though not over the prospect of being ready to work at five in the morning or of wondering what that work might entail.
    What had left her quivering inside was that moment when he’d held her hair and she’d been drawn to him.
    That same moment when she must have lost her mind.
    Because for just a split second she’d actually had a flash of curiosity about what it might have felt like to melt into his arms....

Chapter Three
    A lly was not a morning person and when she left her bedroom at 5:00 a.m. on the dot the next day, her doubts about being at the ranch were at an all-time high.
    A small house in Elk Creek without a resident tyrant who ordered her up before the sun, cooking at the honky-tonk—all seemed vastly more appealing.
    But that wouldn’t have been too different from what she’d left behind, and then Meggie wouldn’t be around the animals she loved and have the advantages of the ranch, which was why they’d come in the first place, so Ally discarded the notion of calling ranch life quits before it had even begun.
    Besides, she thought on her way downstairs, wouldn’t Jackson have a heyday over her being shooed away by something as minor as one crack-of-dawn day!
    And she was not about to give him the satisfaction.
    He was already in the kitchen when she got there. Dressed in worn jeans and a chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled up above his elbows, he looked ready for