Wild About the Wrangler by Vicki Lewis Thompson Read Free Book Online Page B

Just knowing you’re on the job is enough for me. See you at six.” She rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe I just said that. See ya. I have to go home, drink warm milk, and read a boring book.”
    â€œGood luck with that.” She made him laugh, which might be more arousing than anything else about her.
    â€œIt’ll never happen. I’ll be up until two like always and shuffle in here like the living dead.”
    â€œI look forward to it.” She had no idea how much.

CHAPTER 4
    W hew. That had been exciting in more ways than one. Anastasia left the stables on an adrenaline high that was partly due to the interaction with the horse and mostly due to the interaction with the man. She wanted to sketch the picture of Mac she still carried in her head, but she didn’t feel like going home.
    Instead she walked along a back road that meandered through the sparsely populated area west of Main Street. Her mother wouldn’t be expecting her for dinner. After her mom’s nightly happy hour, she usually nuked a single serving of something prepackaged and let Anastasia fend for herself.
    That was perfectly fine. Evelyn’s life seemed to revolve around reality TV and e-mailing with friends from Abilene, where she used to live before marrying Georgie’s dad. That left Anastasia free to make her own plans.
    Mac had asked her what she’d do if her mother sold the house. Of course she’d miss it. The Victorian had been home for more than twenty years. But she’d never felt she quite belonged there. Georgie did, though. The Bickfords had settled the town and built that house.
    Thinking of that, she realized why she’d unconsciously walked in this direction. She wanted a sisterly chat. Vince was in Houston, so this could be the perfect time. She pulled out her phone and dialed Georgie’s number. “Hey, can I invite myself over for dinner?”
    â€œSure, if you’re okay with pasta and a salad. When Vince isn’t here I eat light.”
    â€œDo you have enough for both of us?”
    â€œI do.”
    â€œI’m on my way.” She needed to tell Georgie about the riding lessons, but that wasn’t the only item on her agenda. Her reaction to Mac was more potent than she’d counted on. When he’d stepped in to show her how to touch Jasper, she’d desperately wanted to touch him instead. She could use some advice from her big sister.
    As she cut across a field to get there, she almost stopped to quickly sketch a gnarled mesquite. Nope, the twenty minutes it would take her would be twenty minutes Georgie would have to wait and worry. Not a nice payback after getting herself invited to dinner.
    But she made a mental note of the mesquite’s location so she could come back another time. The rebirth of her creative drive had been life-changing. She’d come home from art school burned out from too much structure and disappointed in love.
    Not only that—the sheer number of aspiring artists had intimidated her into thinking she’d never make it. They all seemed so much better and more confident than she was. But in the past six months that depressing attitude had been banished to the far corners of her psyche.
    Mac, and to a lesser extent Travis and Vince, was the reason. She’d always be grateful for that. When she’d first seen Mac, she’d had an uncontrollable urge to get that handsome face down on paper.
    At the time she hadn’t come in contact with a guy that gorgeous in a while, so her response had been understandable. She and Georgie lived in a town essentially without single men, let alone good-looking ones. Once the town had started going downhill, the unattached men in their twenties had all moved elsewhere to find work.
    The arrival of Mac, Travis, and Vince had been the catalyst for change, both in the town and in her. She’d ended up sketching all three of them, and their awed response had poured