AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She pointed. “Ideal partner. Why would he think I’d want to date a cowboy?”
“I believe Hutch said that was the only type you hadn’t tried before,” Ty replied in neutral tones.
“What?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “A small misunderstanding?”
“To put it mildly. Oh!” She began to laugh. “Oh, dear. Ithink I see.”
“Care to clue me in?”
“It’s Hutch’s dad. Lonnie was something of an expert at trying out different fields of endeavor. Ibelieve at the time of our divorce the only type of employment he hadn’t tried was wrangling.”
Ty’s mouth curved upward—amost attractive sight. “Got it.”
She glanced at the sheet again and promptly choked. “Pet peeves...April Mae. Iswear I’m going to kill that kid.”
“Would you care to change it?”
“Yes! Where’d that pen go?” He recovered it from his shirt pocket and handed it over. “Turn around.” Using his broad backas a table, she took perverse pleasure in scratching out April Mae’s name and scribbling in “liars”.
“Hey, easy. You already ruined one shirt today.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“Done?”
She forced herself to step away, fighting the temptation to linger over the broad, sweeping planes of his back and all those lovely, irresistible ripples. Yum. “Okay. I’m through.”
He twisted around. “I think the rest of the questions were ones you answered on the phone. But you might want to give them a quick check, just to be sure.”
She scanned the last few pages. “Looks fine to me.”
“In that case, I’ll give Willie the changes and let her run it again.”
“Is that it, then?”
“Not quite. There’s one more detail we still need to check out.”
“What?”
“This.”
She should have seen the kiss coming. Or perhaps she had and pretended otherwise. So much for absolute honesty. Just as before, she dove into the kiss with an enthusiasm he couldn’t mistake. With a soft groan, he responded with equal zeal. Why did this keep happening? Cassidy wondered helplessly. She should be shoving him away, not clinging like moss to arock.
The image seemed appropriate, though—soft on hard, flourishing in a place no life should be possible. Ty offered her heat where for so long she’d only known cold. He gave freelyof himself rather than doling out affection in grudging nuggets. He’d never shown annoyance with her clumsiness or accused her of gracelessness. He hadn’t even thought it. If he had, she’d have heard it rumble through his dark voice or seen it slip across his expression. She’d have sensed his impatience or distaste.
Instead, all he’d ever betrayed had been a stark desire, followed by an immutable determination to put his stamp on her, to claim her as his. She’d never experienced that before. And despite herself, she found it all too compelling. She wanted to be loved to the exclusion of every other woman, just as she wanted to love as completely in return.
Love.
She ripped her mouth from Ty’s, fighting for breath. Where the heck had that word come from? “I can’t do this,” she whispered, escaping from his arms in a whirlwind of hands, elbows, and knees.
For a large man, he moved with amazing agility, escaping serious injury thanks to hair-trigger reflexes. “Easy, sweetheart, easy,” he soothed. “It was just a kiss.”
“If that’s all it was, Iwouldn’t be overreacting like this,” she argued, despising the small quiver fluttering through her voice. It made her sound unbearably vulnerable.
Gentle laughter glittered in his pale eyes. “Then you admit it was more than a simple kiss?”
