Wish Upon a Cowboy by Maureen Child, Kathleen Kane Read Free Book Online Page B

about her cooking specialties. Her voice soon became a drone of sound ringing in his ears. Words tumbled over each other in her haste to fill any chance at silence, and Mac had the distinct feeling that even on her deathbed, when she couldn't draw a breath of air into straining lungs, Hannah Lowell would find a way to talk.
    She was right about one thing, though. He did indeed need help. The question was, did he need it badly enough to let Hannah stay here at the ranch until Juana was up and around again? It could be weeks. By the look of things last night, Juana's sister was in no hurry to send the woman back to a job that paid way too little.
    Now Hannah was humming.
    An odd tune, one he'd never heard before but almost seemed to recognize. The thread of the melody settled deep within him, plucking strings of memory and then quieting them before they had a chance to raise up fully in his mind.
    Tired, he told himself. Too damn tired for any of this.
    Mac frowned to himself as he watched her moving around his kitchen. Even in this, the biggest room in the house, he felt as though she were right on top of him while she worked. The rest of the house was so cramped, they'd be living in each other's pockets for however long she was here.
    Which brought up a whole new set of problems.
    Idly, his gaze slipped to the swell of her bosom and then down to her narrow waist and the curve of her hips. For a tiny thing, she had a form to make a dead man sit up and shout. "Amen." But it wasn't just what she did to his insides that had him worried. There was the other thing, too. A woman who proposed marriage to a stranger and expected brooms to sweep across the floor under their own steam couldn't be fully right in the head.
    No doubt about it, Hannah Lowell was trouble. He felt it deep in his bones. Every instinct he had was screaming at him to get her out of his house now. While he still could.
    And then he took a deep breath and inhaled the rich, full scent of coffee on the boil. Even the smell of it was reaching into his brain and giving life to a mind so numbed with fatigue it was a wonder he was standing upright.
    She finished sweeping, opened the back door, and swished the flour and dust mixture out into the yard. Then she shut the door, turned to look up at him, and smiled again. Really, the way her eyes lit up when she smiled was as devastating a weapon as a fully loaded Colt.
    "So?" she asked, meeting his gaze squarely, "do I get the job?"
    Mac took another sniff of coffee and rubbed the back of his neck. He had no other choice and he knew it. But at the very least, he could protect himself, and her, from the strangest of her delusions. "On one condition."
    A slight frown twisted her mouth a bit and he fought the urge to smooth over that lip with the pad of his thumb. Cocking her head to one side, she asked, "Which is…?"
    He leveled his gaze on hers, telling himself to ignore the swirling, rich deep green of her eyes and concentrate on the slightly off-kilter mind behind them. "No more talk of marriage."
    She sighed, then gave him a soft, knowing smile.
    "I mean it, Hannah." Weary to the bone, he nonetheless stood his ground. He wasn't a man to take advantage of a female light in the head. He wanted her to know right from the start that she wouldn't be changing his mind about marrying her. A job was one thing. If she could cook and make coffee, then it didn't really matter if her mind wasn't all it should be. "Lord knows I can use your help, if you're as good a cook as you say you are."
    "I am."
    "Be that as it may," he said quickly, before she could get going again, "I don't want to hear any more nonsense about you and me getting married."
    It was going to be hard enough as it was to be around her in close quarters without having to listen to her talk about marrying all the time. Because to Jonas—hell, he figured, to any man—thinking about marriage led directly to thoughts of the marriage bed. And there was no sense in