Page 1 of Dirty-Talking Cowboy
CHAPTER ONE
Maggie
The trunk of my ten-year-old SUV was a disaster of cardboard boxes and garbage bags stuffed with everything I owned. I was sweating through my cotton t-shirt trying to haul a particularly heavy box of books across the gravel driveway when I heard it. The sound of hoofbeats, slow and deliberate.
I straightened up, shoving my hair out of my face, and turned toward the sound.
My breath caught in my chest.
A man on horseback was riding toward me across the open field that bordered my property—my property. I still couldn’t wrap my head around that. Even from a distance, I could tell he was big. Broad shoulders, narrow hips, sitting in the saddle like he’d been born there. The late afternoon sun was behind him, turning him into a dark silhouette of muscle and masculine confidence, and something low in my belly tightened in a way I’d never felt before.
I stood there like an idiot, a box of romance novels at my feet, watching him approach. He didn’t hurry. Just kept that steady, ground-eating pace until he was close enough that I could see details. Worn jeans that hugged thick thighs. A dark shirt rolled up to the elbows, showing off tanned forearmsroped with muscle and veins. A black cowboy hat pulled low, shadowing his face.
And then he stopped, maybe ten feet away, and just looked at me.
I shivered. A full body, what the heck had just arrived, kind of shiver. I couldn’t see his eyes beneath the brim of his hat, but I felt his gaze move over me like a physical touch. Starting at my face, dragging down my body with a slowness that should have offended me but instead made my skin flush hot. Over my breasts, my waist, my hips, my thighs. Then back up, just as slowly, until I knew he’d catalogued every inch of my curvy body and filed it away for later consideration.
My heart was pounding against my ribs. My palms were damp. And between my legs, I felt an ache that I’d only experienced with the touch of my own hand.
He didn’t say anything, and neither did I, which was unusual because I always had something to say. But my mouth had gone dry, and I couldn’t seem to make my brain form coherent sentences when all it wanted to do was focus on the way his thighs gripped that saddle and wonder what they’d feel like between mine.
Way to go, virgin brain, I scolded myself. First look at a cowboy and you’re already drooling.
“You must be the new owner.” His voice was deep, rough, like gravel and whiskey, with just enough Montana drawl to make my toes curl in my sneakers.
I swallowed hard. “Margaret Garrison. Maggie. And you are?”
“Rhett McKinnon.” He shifted in the saddle, leather creaking, and tilted his head just enough that I caught a glimpse of his face beneath that hat. Sharp jaw covered in dark stubble. A mouth that looked like it knew exactly how to make a woman beg. And eyes—God, his eyes were gray, almost silver in thesunlight, and they were looking at me like I was the most interesting thing he’d seen in a long time. “I own the property next door.”
The way he said own made it sound territorial. Possessive. Like he was used to owning things… Of course, my brain went there. Him owning me. In bed.
Alright, I had official crossed into some alternate universe. Or it was the sun. Wasn’t Montana sun hotter? Or was that the altitude? Either way, I was suffering from something.
Yeah, a flareup of your sex drive, dummy. Congrats, you’ve officially come down with a bad case of cowboy fever.
I lifted my chin, suddenly annoyed by my body’s traitorous reaction to him. “Nice to meet you.”
“That remains to be seen.” He leaned forward, crossing his forearms over the saddle horn, and I tried not to notice the way his biceps flexed beneath his shirt. “You know anything about ranching?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
His laugh was short, humorless. “City girls don’t last out here.”
My spine stiffened. I’d been here all of thirty minutes and already had some cowboy—admittedly the hottest cowboy I’d ever seen, not that I’d seen many—telling me I couldn’t handle it. “If you’re trying to scare me off, you’ll have to try harder.”
Something flickered in those eyes. Surprise, maybe, or interest, or something darker that made my pulse jump. His gaze dropped to my mouth, lingered there long enough to make me aware of my bottom lip and the way I was unconsciously biting it. Did he want a taste?
Suddenly, I felt in need of a very cold shower.
“You should sell,” he said, voice flat. “Property like this, you could get good money for it. More than it’s worth to someone who doesn’t know a damn thing about cattle.”
“And that someone might just be you, wouldn’t it Mr. McKinnon?” The moment he’d said his name, I’d realized who he was. My closest neighbor—and the man who’d been trying to buy my aunt’s land for the better part of the last twenty years.
I didn’t know why she hadn’t sold it. The attorney who’d found me had suggested I do just that. When I’d question him about my aunt not selling, he’d simply said it was her home.
I had never known that feeling. My mother hadn’t been in the picture, and my father had done the best he could. The places we lived were just that—places to live. No white picket fences. No homemade bread fresh from the oven. Just him and me struggling to survive.
The total opposite of the lifestyle the man staring down at me had lived.
