Her Ideal Man by Ruth Wind Read Free Book Online Page B

With a distant part of his mind, he realized he hadn’t spoken so many words to anyone in one day in literally years. “Not too many other animals around here would be dangerous. If he saw a wildcat, unless it was trapped somewhere, it would just run away.”
    â€œBears don’t run away?”
    â€œSometimes, but not like a lot of other wild animals. They’re curious, and they’re hungry, and with the development in the mountains, there are fewer and fewer places for them to hide.”
    â€œThat’s sad.”
    â€œYeah, it really is.” The fire behind him was quite warm now, as flames caught on the new wood. Tyler could go back to bed. He told himself he should.
    But it was warm, and Anna was so pretty and earnest that he couldn’t find the motivation to leave. “Bears and wolves pay a big price for humans falling in love with wild places.”
    She sucked her lower lip into her mouth, as if in thought, and narrowed her eyes faintly. When she looked back at Tyler, letting go of the lip to speak, it glistened with moisture, and the sight sent a hard, leaping life through his loins. He swallowed, trying not to think—
    â€œI worried about that,” she said soberly. “That maybe it would be bad for the land for me to come here, like everybody else running to Colorado. Another pair of feet to trample all over the forest, another body to drink the water.”
    It surprised him. “You really thought about it?”
    â€œAll the time.”
    He leaned forward. “How did you come to terms with it?”
    She lifted one shoulder, and the gesture caused the shirt to slip off the shoulder on the other side. She grabbed it quickly, but not before Tyler saw the whole of one white shoulder, unbearably feminine and alluring, below the fabric. She wore no bra, which was only normal, since she was in bed, but the knowledge sent a new level of heat through him.
    He needed to get out of there, but instead he stayed where he was, perversely enjoying the vicarious thrill of imagining her breasts naked beneath flannel he’d worn against his own skin.
    â€œI didn’t really solve it,” she said, and Tyler was lost for a minute. Solve what? “Don’t laugh, but I gave it to the saints. If I should go, somebody would give me a job. If I shouldn’t, nobody would.”
    â€œThe saints, huh?” He found himself smiling gently. “Does that mean you’re a good Catholic girl?”
    Her smile was not good. It spread sensually to show her even white teeth, and glinted wickedly in the limpid pools of her black eyes. “There is no such thing.”
    For one purely sensual moment, Tyler forgot everything as his blood heated and tingled, and lust as narcotic and forbidden as opium pulsed through him. It would be easy, so easy, to move forward and touch her. And she would be the kind of woman he had sometimes wanted, free and wicked—
    He heard the traitorous thought and abruptly stood up, catching his robe around him so that she would not know what she’d done to him with that throaty laughter and wicked smile. “I’d better get to bed.”
    â€œGood night, Tyler,” she said softly.
    He backed out quickly and shut the door safely behind him, tugging the fabric of his robe around that ridiculous flesh that had tried to leap between the folds of fabric to freedom and woman.
    He scowled. That was the trouble with biology. It was so damned undignified. With a sigh, he climbed back in bed and covered his face with a pillow, trying to blot out the past and the future, and the sweet curves of a woman who smelled like hope.
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    The storm intensified during the night. Anna awakened several times to hear the wind howling and screaming through the trees. It slammed against the little cabin with rocking blasts, rattling the windows and throwing things around. Twice she heard something hit the house with a fierce thump.
    The second