Last of the Red-Hot Cowboys by Tina Leonard Read Free Book Online Page A

he held her in his big, strong arms. Arms that felt amazingly and alarmingly wonderful.
    â€œPut me down.”
    â€œI like a woman with curves, just for the record.”
    â€œPut me down.”
    He set her gently on the ground. “Shall I get the worms, then?”
    â€œI’ll walk back to town if you don’t get to the point immediately.”
    â€œSassy. I do love a lady with spice. Okay, no worms. We’ll use corn.” He grabbed the fishing poles and a plastic bucket and headed down a path to the blue-green pond she could see just at the edge of a few oversized willows.
    Ava looked around, annoyed. She could follow him, find out what was on hismind. That would be what Judy would advise. Clearly he had something on his mind or he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble and ruse of dragging her out here to be his fishing buddy.
    She doubted very seriously Trace had fishing on his mind.
    She could hear him whistling at the water’s edge, setting up a couple of camping chairs he’d pulled from under a tree. “You ass,” she muttered. “You really think the world turns because you say it does.”
    Her gaze fell on the shiny set of keys hanging from a Billy Bob’s key chain, dangling from the ignition. Where she came from, a man’s truck was his castle.
    A castle with keys in it was just too hard to resist.
    She got in the truck, turned the engine on, and drove away, Trace’s yells following her for a good hundred yards.

Chapter Four
    Ava let out an
oof!
and a shriek when something hard and heavy landed on her in the night, bringing her straight out of a deep sleep in which she’d been dreaming of Trace and his sexy mouth and the magical things she imagined that mouth could do. She recognized the very appealing aftershave, and the bull-in-a-china-shop style of the bent-out-of-shape cowboy. Not to mention his body felt exactly as hot and sexy as she’d thought it would.
    It would do no good to let Trace know that she wasn’t entirely immune to his roguish charm.
    â€œGet off!” She shoved him. “Have you lost your mind?”
    She turned on a lamp so she could glare at him.
    He blinked at her pink T-shirt.
    â€œPink?” Trace said. “I had you figured for black and high-necked.”
    â€œGet
out
!”
    He put his hands behind his head against the headboard, quite at home, his boots off the bed and not on top of the coverlet—probably only because it was his bungalow and not out of real courtesy to her. “By chance have you seen my truck keys? A woman with a firecracker temper stole my truck today.”
    â€œMaybe I have seen them,” Ava said. “I may even give them to you. Depends on how nice you are. And how fast you leave my house.”
    â€œ
My
house.”
    â€œNot at the moment. Not while Judy pays rent.”
    â€œJudy hasn’t paid me a cent—yet.” He crossed his arms, checked out her T-shirt again. “What does it say?”
    â€œIt says, Get the hell out of my bed.”
    â€œVery funny.” He tugged at it so he could read the silvery letters. “ ‘Where have all the cowboys gone?’ ” he read, grinning. “You’re looking in all the wrong places, gorgeous.”
    She wasn’t going to favor him with a reply, not while those dark brown eyes grinned at her, pleased with himself for putting one over on her in return for her stranding him at the pond.
    â€œSo you don’t like to fish.”
    â€œThat obvious, huh? You
are
fast.”
    He chuckled, slow and deep, and Ava’s senses went on red alert. The man was too sexy for his own good, and he knew it, and that was a terrible combination.
    Super-scoundrel
.
    â€œI surrender. If I give you your keys, will you get out? Judy has us up early tomorrow to ride at the Horsemen’s place.”
    The smile disappeared, replaced by a scowl. “That’s a really bad idea.”
    â€œSo