The Texan by Joan Johnston Read Free Book Online

breasts … and lingered there appreciatively. His heavy-lidded gaze lifted to her mouth, and she nervously slid her tongue across her lips. She felt aquiver of anticipation as his eyes locked on hers, hot and needy.
    “You can’t come with me,” he said at last. “You’d be a … dangerous distraction.”
    She heard herself swallow. “Then I’ll go by myself.”
    “The lawmen posted at the park entrance will have orders to keep you out.”
    “Then I’ll go around the entrance,” she said stubbornly. “There are other ways to get into the park.”
    “It’s not safe—”
    “You
owe
me,” she said, cutting him off.
    “How do you figure that?”
    “Your mother put my father six feet underground. Your brother Trace stole my sister Callie’s heart and spirited her away to live with him on some cattle station in Australia. And you put my brother Sam in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.”
    Owen’s jaw tightened, and his face paled. “It was an accident. We were playing football.”
    “Maybe it was,” she conceded. “But your mother certainly caused my father’s death. And Trace was ruthless in his pursuit of Callie. I’d say the debt is all on your side, and it’s time to pay up. I’m coming with you to make sure my brother gets home alive and well. You owe my family that.”
    “The Big Bend is too hazardous a place to go with some civilian traipsing along behind me,” he said.
    “I’m willing to take my chances.”
    “I’m not.”
    Bay played her ace. “Luke called me on my cell phone while I was delivering Ruby’s foal.”
    Owen hissed in a breath of air.
    “Ask Summer,” Bay said. “She’ll confirm that I’mtelling the truth. I know where to look for my brother. I can save you a great deal of time and effort. But only if you take me with you. You can pick me up at Three Oaks tomorrow morning, right after you talk to Bad Billy Coburn. I’ll be waiting for you.”
    Bay turned and marched away. She didn’t look back. But she could feel his eyes on her, assessing her, devouring her. And her stomach responded with that appallingly delicious flutter.
    THE FOREMAN’S HOUSE WHERE SAM LIVED WAS DARK, AND Bay presumed her brother must be at the Homestead, a half mile farther down the road, which blazed with light on the lower floor. She parked in back of the house and could see through the screen door that her mother and elder brother were sitting at the large trestle table in the kitchen.
    As she stepped inside she asked, “Have you heard from Luke?”
    Her mother had risen to pour Bay a cup of coffee from the electric pot on the counter and set it in front of her as she joined them at the table. Bay put several spoonfuls of sugar in her coffee and added enough cream to make Sam laugh.
    “I’ll never get used to the way you drink coffee,” he said.
    “There’s still plenty of caffeine in it, which is the only reason I swallow the foul-tasting stuff.” Bay sipped at the steaming coffee, swallowed before her tongue could burn, and said, “I think Luke might be in serious trouble.”
    “That irresponsible whelp,” Sam muttered. “When is he going to grow up?”
    Bay met Sam’s eyes and lifted an admonishing brow. It had taken him eleven years to start pulling his own weight. Bay was still getting used to the changes in her brother over the past year. When Sam had woken up in the hospital after his accident on the football field, a cripple for life at eighteen, he’d railed against his fate. For the next eleven years, he’d been a surly, miserable creature, drunk as often as not.
    Her father should have brought Sam to heel sooner, but since it was Owen Blackthorne who’d crippled him, Sam had been allowed to nurse his grievance against the world in general, and the Blackthornes in particular. It was only after their father had been killed and their mother wounded in the same hunting accident—which had been arranged by Eve Blackthorne with the help of her