Holidays on the Ranch (Burnt Boot, Texas #1)(107)

The picture she was about to paint was etched firmly in her mind and she’d sketched in the beginning lines. So she stopped, sat down in the chair next to Creed, and stared at him.

Know thy enemy, is it? Grand’s voice whispered.

She whipped around to look behind her and set the rocking chair in motion. She expected the squeaking rocker to wake Creed, but he didn’t move.

That’s right. I’ll get to know him and find the very weakness that will run him off this ranch. You will not go through with this deal, Grand, she argued.

Thick, dark lashes fanned out on his angular cheeks that sported a day’s worth of black scruff. He was one of those men who had to shave every day and twice if he was going somewhere that night. He reminded her of her friend, Lawton Pierce, who owned the biggest spread in the whole canyon. Like Creed, Lawton had dark hair and long lashes and a beard. They could have easily been cousins, but Sage didn’t give a rat’s ass if he was Lawton’s long lost younger brother and they’d been cut from the same tanned leather cowhide. She still wasn’t going to like him.

Creed wiggled and sighed. She sure didn’t want him to catch her staring at him, so she stood up so fast that she got a head rush. Her chair sounded like a bird chirping as it flipped back and forth several times. But then he settled back into a deep sleep and she sat back down. She had the strangest urge to run her fingers through all that dark hair and see if it was as soft as it looked. Would he be a tender lover or a demanding one? Would his kisses build a fire in her or would they turn her completely off?

Now where did that come from? I’ve only just met him and I’m determined that he won’t be here more than three weeks, so there will be no kisses or sex. Besides, Grand would have a pure old hissy if she found out I’d slept with a man in this house, she thought.

“I couldn’t face her,” she whispered.

“You talkin’ to me or the dog?” he asked without opening his eyes.

“I was just muttering while I decide how to paint that picture over there,” she said.

His eyes opened slowly and he sat up straight. “Guess I’d best put the soup on if it’s going to be done by dinnertime. That and a skillet of corn bread should do for dinner and supper both, right?”

“I’ll make the corn bread,” she said.

“You don’t cook,” he reminded her.

“I lied. I can cook. I just don’t enjoy it. Grand made me learn enough to survive, and I make a mean skillet of corn bread and the best Christmas sugar cookies in the whole canyon.”

“You lied! What else did you lie about?”

Dammit! Was it a real lie if a person just omitted details?

“I saw the cardinal, but it was earlier in the day,” she said.

“That all?”

She squinted at him and set her mouth in a firm line. “Did you tell any lies this morning? About that dog, maybe?”

“I did not. Your grandmother didn’t say a word about a dog on the place and mine are registered redbone hounds. Two of them, Reba and Wynonna. They sure don’t look like that mutt. So one more time, darlin’—that animal did not come from my neck of the woods.”

She giggled. “Did you really name two bitches after the red-haired country singers?”

“You got it. They sing real pretty when they tree a coon or track a coyote.”

She looked at the sleeping dog. “Think they’ll like Noel?”

“They probably won’t even think she’s a dog. She looks like a big ball of tangled up yarn, don’t she?”

The wiry dog did look like its momma had been a poodle and its daddy a cross between a schnauzer and a ball of wool yarn. She opened one eyelid and whimpered.

Sage bent over and scratched the dog’s ears. “It’s okay, Noel. He didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Her fur is a whole lot softer than it looks, Creed. Do you think we should give her an old quilt? That hardwood floor is hard and cold.”

“Might be nice.” Creed grinned.





Chapter 3


Creed was a big man and Sage wasn’t a midget. The kitchen was small, and every time he or Sage moved an inch they bumped into one another. A shot of her rounded fanny bending over to slide the corn bread inside the oven shouldn’t have been sexy, not in sweat bottoms, but it was. Breasts brushing against his upper arm or plowing into his chest were a different matter. That he could understand stirring up things behind his zipper.

It had been a long time since he’d had sex, but his body could have behaved a lot better in his estimation. She’d made it very clear that she did not like him and intended to throw every obstacle she could in his way to keep him from buying the ranch. She’d lied to him about her cooking abilities, and now she was tempting him with every touch and move.

It wasn’t fair. She was getting away scot-free and he was being punished. He’d gotten into scrapes. What kid didn’t? He’d been drunk at rodeos. What cowboy hadn’t? But God did not have to hate him so badly that He made his body respond to a woman who would shoot him stone-cold dead and never feel a bit of remorse about it.

He’d made several trips to the window to imagine lying naked, facedown in the driving blizzard. Thinking about something that cold on his bare skin and manhood usually shrank it back down pretty fast, but each time it took longer than the last time because pictures of Sage lying naked next to him kept popping up. And the imaginary heat between them melted every bit of the snow for a hundred yards and turned what was falling into warm rain.