The Rancher and His Unexpected Daughter by Sherryl Woods Read Free Book Online Page A

trait Cody possessed, he had learned it at his father’s knee. That included everything from charm to arrogance. Still, she couldn’t help responding to that infectious grin andthe teasing glint in his eyes as he squared off against Harlan. The squabbles around here must have been doozies.
    â€œWhy don’t you make yourself useful?” Harlan suggested. “Janet says the air conditioner in her car has gone on the blink. Do you have time to take a look at it?”
    â€œSure thing,” Cody said readily. “Let me get a beer and I’ll get right on it.”
    â€œI could get the beer,” Jenny piped up eagerly.
    Cody tipped his hat. “Thanks.”
    Janet speared her daughter with a warning look, then said to Cody, “If one single ounce of that beer is missing when it gets to you, I’d like to know about it.”
    â€œYes, ma’am,” Cody said, winking at Jenny, who blushed furiously.
    When they were gone, Janet turned to Harlan. “If he were giving the orders, I suspect Jenny would be docile as a lamb the rest of the summer.”
    â€œBut he’s not,” Harlan said tersely. “I am.”
    â€œJealous of the impact your son has on the Runningbear women?” she inquired lightly, just to see if the remark would inspire the kind of reaction she suspected it would.
    Harlan’s expression did, indeed, turn very grim. “He’s married.”
    She grinned. “I know. Heck, everyone in town heard about his courting of Melissa Horton. It was still fresh on their minds when I moved here. But last I heard, looking’s never been against the law. I ought to know. I read those big, thick volumes of statutes cover-to-cover in school.”
    He scowled. “You deliberately trying to rile me?”
    â€œI didn’t know I could,” she declared innocently.
    â€œWell, now you know,” he asserted.
    Janet couldn’t help feeling a certain sense of feminine satisfaction over the revelation. But hard on the heels of that reaction came the alarm bells. It was entirely possibly that she was enjoying taunting Harlan Adams just a little too much. She had a hunch it was a very dangerous game to play. He struck her as the kind of man who played his games for keeps.

Chapter Four
    H arlan hadn’t liked the gut-deep jealousy that had slammed through him when he’d seen the amused, conspiratorial look Janet and Cody had exchanged. Her comment that checking a man out wasn’t any sort of legal sin had grated on his nerves just as badly.
    Even though he’d guessed that the woman was deliberately baiting him, his blood had simmered and his temper had bordered on exploding. It was an interesting turn of events. He hadn’t expected to react so strongly to a woman ever again.
    Oh, he’d been attracted to Janet Runningbear the moment he’d set eyes on her. He’d been convinced, though, that he’d deliberately set out to settle her into a corner of his life just to relieve the boredom with an occasional feisty exchange. She was doing that, all right, and more. In spades.
    She was stirring up emotions he’d thought had died the day he’d buried his wife just over a year ago. He wasn’t so sure he wanted that kind of turmoil.
    Unfortunately, he was equally uncertain whether he had any choice in the matter. It had been his observation that when a man was hit by a bolt of lightning—literally or in the lovestruck sense of the phrase—there was no point in trying to get out of the way after the fact.
    Given all that, he was almost relieved when Cody announced that the car’s air conditioner was working. Janet declined a halfhearted invitation to stay for supper, insisting that she and Jenny had to get home. Harlan waved them off with no more than a distracted reminder to be there at dawn again.
    â€œWell, well, well,” Cody muttered beside him.
    Harlan frowned at his son’s knowing