Desert Heat by Kat Martin Read Free Book Online Page B

she saw Patience’s empty drink.
    “It’ll get better in a minute,” Dallas promised, though a minute with your entire body on fire felt more like an hour, as Dallas and the others knew firsthand.
    She was still making a sort of wheezing noise, but the tears had finally stopped. Her water glass was empty, not that it had done a lick of good, but the milk seemed to help. Patience chugged the liquid and set the glass back down on the table, wiping her lips with a paper napkin.
    When she spoke, her voice sounded hoarse. “Gee, guys, thanks a lot. That was really terrific, but I’m still kind of thirsty. Maybe I ought to have another one.”
    The table erupted into hysterical laughter and even Dallas found himself smiling. She was a pretty good sport—for an easterner.
    “One’s the house limit,” he said, and caught a flicker of gratitude in those pretty green eyes.
    “Too bad,” she croaked. “Maybe next time.”
    Shari was proud of her, he saw, beaming at Patience as if she had just won an endurance race. Wes and the barrel racer were grinning. Jade’s phony smile looked riveted in place.
    She didn’t like Patience Sinclair. That definitely gave Ms. Boston a mark in the plus column, as far as Dallas was concerned.
    He watched her off and on through supper. She intrigued him. No doubt about it. He wondered what her story was and made a mental note to find out. If he didn’t think there would be serious complications, he might not mind getting into P.J. Sinclair’s very snug, very well-filled-out jeans.
    But he had a feeling there would be. Shari and Stormy had been casting long glances at each other all evening. Stormy and Dallas were hauling Shari’s horse, which meant Dallas and Patience were bound to be thrown together. With the Circle C problems and having to miss some of the bigger shows, Dallas needed more trouble like a hole in the head.
    Fortunately, he didn’t think Patience felt the same unwanted attraction for him he was beginning to feel for her, which should have made him happy and somehow irritated him instead.
    Dallas watched her scrape the hot sauce off her enchilada and take a tentative bite. A long string of yellow cheese slid past her lips and his groin tightened. Beneath the table, he went hard.
    Damn woman. She was definitely a temptation. Dallas was grateful he would be leaving for New Mexico as soon as tomorrow’s performance was over. Temptation was always easier to resist when it was kept well out of sight.
     
    Shari was up and gone when Patience rolled out of her bunk the following morning. Her roommate had a horse to take care of and since she had been raised on a farm, she was pretty much a morning person. Shari came from Guymon, Oklahoma, a longtime, major rodeo town. With her dad’s coaching, she had started barrel racing when she was ten years old.
    Fortunately, her father had insisted she finish high school before she started rodeoing full time. It was good she had. Last year, she had decided to continue her education, get at least a two-year degree then see what her options were.
    Shari got up early, but Patience preferred to stay up a little later, then sleep till seven-thirty or eight, a routine which gave them both more room in the tiny RV.
    It didn’t take long to shower and dress. Patience’s freshly laundered, now slightly faded jeans were a lot more comfortable, and, except during performances, instead of the stiff western shirts she’d been wearing, she wore scoop-necked cotton tops, cooler in the Texas heat.
    Eager to get back to the research she had been doing before she left Boston, she ignored her contacts, pulled on a comfortable pair of tortoiseshell glasses and spent the morning at her computer. She worked an hour typing the mental notes she had made about the women rodeo contestants she had met, then dug out the information she had collected on early rodeo women, the very first cowgirls, the name they gave themselves way back then.
    As a student of western