The Rancher's Dance by Allison Leigh Read Free Book Online

just a drag to eat alone.”
    There was a rosy glow on her high cheekbones that hadn’t been there before. His need to escape battled something else.
    The something else won, and he subsided on the couch. “I s’pose. I haven’t eaten alone in a long time.”
    She paused, her laden fork aloft, as she gave him a quick look. “You live with your father and daughter?” The spaghetti disappeared into her mouth.
    He realized he was staring, and not entirely because the mouthful she’d taken had been enormous.
    This particular dancer wasn’t exactly eating like a bird. Her appetite looked as healthy as his.
    â€œYeah,” he answered a beat too late. “We’re all usually together when it’s mealtime.” He wished he’d have been as careful with that point when his wife had been alive.
    Lucy swallowed and her tongue snuck out to lick the corner of her lips.
    His appetite gave a low, rumbling growl and it had nothing to do with food.
    His fingers drummed on the upholstered arm of the couch as he felt an urgent need to escape. The opened front door wasn’t doing a good enough job of allowing the cooling air inside. He abruptly pushed off the couch. “You need something to drink with that.”
    â€œYou don’t have to wait on me.”
    But her voice was following him because he pretty much bolted toward the kitchen.
    The glasses were in the cupboard next to the plates. He got one down and turned on the water faucet. Looked over his shoulder through the doorway.
    All he could see was the back of her blond head. The hair that she’d had twizzled up that morning in a messy clip and that had been mostly hidden beneath her raggedy cowboy hat that afternoon was now down, pooling over the couch cushion behind her head, looking as pale and soft as moonlight.
    Water spilled over his hand, cooling the twitch in hisfingers that seemed to know, instinctively, how soft those strands would be even though they’d been unforgivably forgetful about what his wife’s hair had felt like.
    He shut off the water, wiped his hand on his shirt and carried the glass into the living room. He set it on the coffee table in front of her, then took the seat adjacent to the couch.
    Lucy toyed with her fork, trying not to watch Beck too closely. She feared that if she did, it would spook him. And even though she wasn’t sure she wanted any company at all—not when her knee was throbbing so badly it made her feel ill and long for the pain pills that were in bedroom upstairs—she felt reluctant to do anything that would cause him to bolt.
    â€œYour dad’s a good cook.” She lifted a bite to her mouth again, feeling only a twinge of guilt for what was an unusual gluttony of carbohydrates.
    â€œSometimes.” Beck’s lips twitched faintly, and Lucy realized that she had yet to see him actually smile. “But he’s always better than me, so we’re happy.”
    She reached forward to retrieve the water glass and instinctively knew the moment that his gaze shifted a little. It happened at the very same moment that she felt the lapel of her robe loosen and gape slightly as she leaned forward.
    She was no exhibitionist.
    So there was no reason for her to sit up more slowly than she should have. No reason at all.
    But that’s exactly what she did.
    She sat up slowly, tucking her loose hair behind her ear as she did so. She didn’t know how much she was revealing as the silk lapels tightened again against her chest, and that not -knowing was sending nearly as much warmth through her veins as his suddenly sharp gaze was.
    But once she was sitting upright once more, his gaze hadmoved circumspectly back to her face—or at least around her face, because his eyes didn’t meet hers. But her breath still felt strangely short, and the brush of her robe against her nude skin felt strangely erotic.
    She sipped the water, not entirely sure whether