Page 16 of The Mountain Man's Mail Order Temptation
“Oh. That’s okay. I have help.”
“Looks like he’s busy.” He steps closer, and a second man drifts in behind him. “We’re just being neighborly.”
My heart starts to race.I glance at the parking lot. Anson’s still on the phone—but he’s watching. When our eyes lock, he hangs up and strides toward us.
“We’re talking to you,” the second cowboy says, gripping my shoulder and turning me too hard.
The movement knocks me off balance. I stumble into the railing, hitting my hip. “Ow.”
A shadow falls over me.
Anson is suddenly there. He grabs the first cowboy by the back of his shirt and slams a fist in his stomach, shoving him away, then spins and pins the second face-first against the wall before the man knows what’s happening. “You don’t touch a woman without permission,” he growls, low and lethal. “Especially not mine.”
“Get the fuck off me. You can’t threaten people with knives.”
I don’t see a knife, but I have no doubt my weapon-obsessed man has one.
Anson’s lips move, voice too low for me to hear what he tells the man.
“Let’s go, Sherman,” the first cowboy says.
The second cowboy glares at Anson, then me, and shrugs out of his hold. Though I’m certain, if Anson wanted him on the ground, he would be.
“What the hell, Tucker? You were no help,” he says to his friend, wiping a smear of blood off his lip.
“I’m smart enough not to mess withhim,” Tucker mutters as they slink away.
Anson sheathes a slim blade at his waist. He’s a walking weapon.And judging by the wide berth other shoppers are giving us, I’m not the only one impressed.
He removed both men so fast, so efficiently, I barely had time to gain my feet.
Anson comes slowly toward me. “You okay?”
I nod.
He scans me from head to toe. “If they hurt you…”
“They didn’t. I just bumped my hip.”
He scowls. “I’ll rip those motherfuckers apart.”
Later. Right now, I just want his arms around me. My heart is slamming in my chest from the odd events, and my hero is back to keeping distance between us.
Not this time.
I don’t even think, just cup his bearded cheeks, rise on tiptoes, and kiss him.
He freezes.
Oh no.He doesn’t want this?—
Then he groans.His strong arms wrap around my waist, yanking me against his chest, and I’m kissed breathless by thesexiest man in town. Right there on the sidewalk in front of half of White Falls.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ANSON
She tasteslike sugar and vanilla. Sweet, addictive, and all mine. The second she opens to me, I deepen the kiss. Stroking her tongue and claiming her mouth with all the hunger that’s been burning inside me since I found her on my porch.
