Hot Cowboy Nights (Lucky Penny Ranch #2)(93)

“Hell, no! My truck is a wreck. I’m going to be late to dinner, and I’m so mad I could spit tacks,” she screamed, and shook her fist at the gray skies. “Damn tires only needed to run for another half a mile. Now I’ll have to walk, and I didn’t even bring a decent coat. Since when does Dry Creek get snow in November?”

“I can take you wherever you need to go,” Jud offered.

“No, thank you. It’s not that far and I can walk.” She stopped ranting and shivered. “Do you know where Audrey’s Place is?”

He nodded. “Yes, ma’am, that is where I was headed. You must be…” He hesitated, trying to remember her name. Faith. Fancy. Something that started with an F or was it a V? If she was headed to Audrey’s, then she had to be the youngest Logan sister, the redheaded one who was married, doing very well, and on her way to giving Midas a run when it came to money. So what the hell was she doing driving a ratty old truck?

“I’m Fiona Logan and thank you. I’ll get my purse. The suitcase and box can wait,” she said.

Evidently she’d decided he wasn’t an ax murderer or a crazy ex-con because she smiled. “Just so you know.” She opened the passenger’s door of the truck and fished around in the glove compartment. “I do carry a weapon and I have a concealed permit and I can take the eyes out of a rattlesnake at twenty yards.”

Damn, but she was cute with that curly red hair, a faint sprinkling of freckles across a pert little nose, and all those curves. “I’m not a rattlesnake, ma’am.” Jud grinned. “And since we’re already here, why don’t we throw your things into the backseat of my truck and take them now? It’ll save a trip back.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that.” She nodded toward the fence. “Looks like I’ve done some major property damage to the Lucky Penny. My sisters and their husbands own this place. I hope they’re not mad at me for tearing up the fence.”

“Pleased to meet you, Fiona Logan. And your sisters will be so glad you aren’t hurt that they won’t care about a few feet of fence. And I’m Jud Dawson, cousin to your new brothers-in-law, but you already know that. Turns out, I’m staying at Audrey’s. Your mama didn’t want me to live in the travel trailer with winter coming on.” Jud removed an expensive, monogrammed suitcase from the passenger seat. It looked as out of place in that old vehicle as a cowboy at an opera.

“Maybe if I don’t have to ask them to come out here and get my stuff they won’t make me fix the fence,” she answered.

The stories he’d heard did not match up with a truck that looked like it was ready to cross the bridge into that great junkyard in the sky. The suitcase was one of those fancy four-wheeled jobs, but there was no way it would travel across the rough ground, so Jud hefted it up on his broad shoulder.

“What did you pack in this thing? Rocks?” he asked.

“Everything I could. What wouldn’t fit in there is in the box.”

“Lot to bring home for a four-day holiday,” he said.

She ignored his remark with a shrug and a shiver.

He whipped off his Sherpa-lined leather coat and handed it to her. “You’re freezing. Get inside the truck and warm up. This won’t take but a minute.”

The box was only slightly lighter than that monster suitcase. As he was walking away from her vehicle, he heard a hiss and turned back to see steam escaping from under the hood. Either the steel fence post had punctured the radiator or barbed wire had ripped away hoses and belts.

He shoved the box in the backseat beside the suitcase and slammed the door, circled around the front of the truck, and crawled inside. “Looks like you’ve made your last voyage in that thing.” He started the engine and eased down on the gas. Ice and gravel crunched under the truck’s tires as they eased on ahead.

“I was hoping that it would get me all the way home.”

A little shorter than either of her sisters, she was definitely built with curves in all the right places. He started the engine, eased forward on the slippery road, and stole a glance toward her. She sat ramrod straight in the seat in a no-nonsense, take-control posture, but her dark green eyes and the way she kept biting at her lower lip said that Fiona Logan wasn’t real sure of herself that Thanksgiving.

Her obvious insecurity didn’t jibe with the stories he’d been told about the third Logan sister, either. It was shaping up to be an interesting day.

“So what are you doing out on these roads today?” she asked.

“I was sent on an errand. It appears that giblet gravy cannot be made until there is a can of evaporated milk in the house, and since Thanksgiving dinner can’t be put upon the table unless there is giblet gravy, then someone had to go for milk,” he drawled.

She nodded and looked even more nervous when the old brothel known as Audrey’s Place came into view.



Fiona cut her eyes around at the cowboy. So this was Jud, the cowboy in the Dawson family that everyone said was the lucky one. His blond hair was a little shaggy, hanging down to the collar of his pearl snap shirt in the back. An errant strand or two peeked out from under his black cowboy hat and inched down his forehead toward his dark chocolate brown eyes. His face would make a sculptor swoon with all those perfect planes and contours, and the way his muscles bulged under his shirt when he’d picked up her suitcase and box could turn a holy woman into a hooker.