Page 27 of Untaming the Cowboy
“Make it, cowboy,” she said, the grin turning faint but certain. “I’m worth it.”
He stepped closer, voice low. “You’re trouble, you know that?”
“Good trouble,” she flirted, her dark brown irises flashing mischief. “The kind you don’t want to end.”
He swallowed hard, voice rougher when he spoke again. “You’re not safe out here. Not with me watching you like that.”
“Then stop watching,” she murmured. “And do something.”
“Dahlia,” he warned, but her name came out more drawl than caution.
The gate creaked behind them, wind stirring dust. Wynn shifted in the dirt with a sigh. Cookie raised her head across the paddock, ears flicking. Everything around them seemed to pause.
Luc reached up, brushing a loose curl from Dahlia’s temple. His knuckles grazed her skin, and her breath caught. He lips parted, an invitation he didn’t need words for. He leaned in?—
A truck door slammed across the yard.
“North fence is down!” Beau’s voice carried from the distance.
Wynn barked, startled. Cookie snorted and bumped Dahlia’s shoulder.
She giggled. “Saved by your foreman.”
“Or sabotaged,” Luc muttered, still close enough to feel her breath. “Tonight? Over tea, more stories.”
“Luc, you in the stables? Need your help, brother,” his best friend and foreman called.
“Later,” she promised, her palm pressing against his chest. “Go fix your fence, cowboy.”
He hesitated before stepping away. One more second and he would’ve kissed her.
Luc let his hand drop from that wild ringlet and forced his boots toward the pasture. At the stable door, he glanced back. She stood with Cookie’s lead slack in her hand, sunlight sliding across her arms—a woman who knew how to listen without pulling him apart.
He walked off, tasting her in his head and hating the space between them.
12
DAHLIA
“Dinner’s ready!”Dahlia called over her shoulder, stirring the last of the gravy. She’d heard the front door open, and their loud bantering in between boots scuffing the hardwood floors. “Y’all wash up, and I’ll set the table in just a sec.”
She turned, expecting Beau’s deep voice leading the charge—but froze when Luc walked in with the rest of the crew. His hat tilted low, his shirt clinging to the frame of a man who’d spent the day mending fences and not one ounce of energy caring what it did to women’s nerves.
“Evenin’, DeeDee,” Beau said, grinning wide as everyone filed toward the sink.
“Good evenin’,” she replied, but her eyes didn’t acknowledge him.
Her attention was on Luc. Unlike Beau, who had to duck coming into the door, Luc just barely missed the top of the frame. Tracking him cross the spacious kitchen had Dahlia moistening her suddenly dry lips. Forget about watching him walk away, seeing this sexy cowboy enter a room was worth the ogling.
Sexy?The thought entered her mind without hesitation. Even if she wanted to deny it, she couldn’t. Her coochie antennae was tuned in to the Lucas A. Stanley channel and she was binging on this show. She hadn’t been with one in a while, but Dahlia sure as hell wasn’t blind. Any woman seeing this tall man with that wide gait, wearing those worn jeans would agree. Lucas Stanley was a one fine cowboy, oozing nothing but big dick energy.
Her thoughts didn’t have the chance to wander into the dangerous zone of what ifs. Luc brushed past her to wash his hands, sleeves rolled to his elbows, water catching the tan lines along his forearms. She had to brace the edge of the countertop to keep from buckling under his shifting gray gaze. Were they green right now?
He nodded once. “Smells good.”
“And it’s gonna be good,” Beau stated, already dragging his chair out from the trestle dining table.
“Hope so,” she said, reaching for the plates before her nerves betrayed her.
