It Takes A Cowboy (Heart Of The West #5) Read online

  “She’s always done that, Kirk,” he said. “And she always will. We’ll both take care of Jeffrey—that’s a promise.”

  Blair smiled mistily at him. When he glanced at Jeffrey, the boy was smiling, too.

  The absolute trust in their eyes filled a painful emptiness that had gnawed inside Scott for a very long time.

  EPILOGUE

  BLAIR WATCHED with a wince as her nephew and her husband scrambled over rocks and limbs, skidding perilously on slick spots, stumbling in occasional holes, shouting challenges at each other. It was an all-out race to the vacation cabin, similar to the one they’d engaged in a year earlier and to many races since. She followed more sedately, picking her way carefully over the familiar path, slowed somewhat by the awkwardness of early pregnancy.

  Scott had given her everything he had promised, she thought with a happy smile, resting a hand on her stomach.

  Jeffrey won the race. He did so by slipping through a narrow crevice much too small for Scott to get through. By the time Scott went around the massive rocks Jeffrey had scrambled over, the boy was almost to the porch. He got there a full two seconds before Scott.

  “I win!” he shouted, planting his boots and pumping the air with his fist. “I finally figured out how to win—even though your legs are still longer than mine.”

  Scott grinned, looped an arm around the boy’s neck and gave him an affectionately rough hug. “Yeah, kid, you won.”

  “I used my natural advantage. Just like you taught me,” Jeffrey said, grinning impudently at him. “But I will congratulate you on running a good race.”

  Scott laughed and rubbed his knuckles against the boy’s head, initiating a giggling wrestling match.

  Finally reaching the porch, Blair leaned against a post and sighed, shaking her head.

  Scott looked at her, flashing his wicked, dimpled grin. “What are you looking at?”

  “A couple of crazy cowboys.”

  Her guys stood side by side, hands on their hips, smiling at her, and her breath lodged in her throat.

  “Any complaints?” Scott asked, his voice a warm drawl.

  “Not a one,” she answered with all her heart.

  She’d come to realize that this cowboy had been just what she had needed all along.

  *

  HEART OF THE WEST

  continues with

  HITCHED BY CHRISTMAS

  by Jule McBride

  Luke Lydell was supposed to be Claire Buchanan’s last fling before her Christmas wedding—a gift from her sisters. But Claire told herself she didn’t want him...not that way. She didn’t need his hard body, she didn’t need the passion that sizzled between them. She needed him to find her missing fiancé!

  Here’s a preview!

  EXCERPT

  “THOSE WILD LITTLE sisters of yours obviously think you need a fling with a dangerous man,” Luke said.

  Claire’s heart hammered. Just what had her fool sisters said? “They said I needed a what?”

  “You heard. That’s why they procured me.” Luke glanced away and when his eyes seared into hers again, their liquid blue heat ran right through her veins. “Procured,” he continued. “I think that’s the word Emma Jane used.”

  “They...” Her cheeks suddenly felt boiling hot, and she stared at Luke, taking in his irritating, mildly bemused expression, and how the breeze lifted his fine blue-black hair. “Procured you...”

  “Like a stud bull, Claire.”

  His lips suddenly twitched, and as much as she fought it, Claire almost smiled, herself. “They wanted us to go on a...like a...date?”

  Date was definitely better than whatever “stud bull” implied. Still, one look at Luke made Claire’s mind start running to hot musty haylofts and steamy summer nights in the grasslands.

  He was shaking his head. “Not a date, Claire. They said they were paying for a fling,” he continued, his lips still curled in faint bemusement. “There’s a difference.”

  “As if I didn’t know.” Ignoring the crazy jitters of her insides, Claire managed a shrug. She wasn’t about to allow Luke to rile her passions again, just so he could watch her flounder like a fool. “Well, just consider yourself off the hook.”

  “Mighty kind of you.”

  “I’m not kind,” she tossed back mildly. “I’m engaged.”

  “So I hear.”

  He looked as if the news hadn’t affected him a bit, and she hated the fact that she wanted it to. Raising her hand, she waved away a buzzing fly more energetically than was necessary. “You could at least say congratulations.”

  “Congratulations.”

  Something unexpectedly terse in his tone made her say, “You have a problem with my getting married?”

  “None whatsoever. Girls get married.”

  Girls, she noticed, not women. Now she definitely knew he was trying to goad her. He was thirty, not that much older than she. “I’m twenty-six.”

  “All grown-up.”

  “Grown-up enough not to let you take potshots, Luke.”

  “Sorry,” he said, squinting those incredible eyes at her. “But you came barreling over here like you had an ax to grind, Claire.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  “Now, don’t go having a conniption fit. It’s not my fault your sisters bid for me.”

  She felt more unwanted color pour into her cheeks. “Well, the way you were parading around, Luke, I guess you were asking for it.”

  He surveyed her another long moment. “Was I?”

  Her heart fluttered as she remembered how good he’d looked flexing his muscles. “Yes,” she returned, thinking it was the wrong time to remember they’d been near this spot the last time they’d been together. It was years ago, after another fund-raiser, but even now, Claire could feel both the heat of his kisses and the sting of his rejection. Watching him sober, Claire felt her throat ache with something she couldn’t quite name—maybe regret for what she’d once thought they might share, maybe longing.

  He said, “Been a while since we’ve talked, hasn’t it?”

  Her lips lifted at the corners. “Hmm. And I thought we were just baiting each other.”

  He chuckled softly.

  Suddenly it seemed easier to study her boots than his broad-shouldered, half-naked body, and she toed the dust a second before lifting her gaze again. “Really, Luke...Tex wanted to make a contribution to Lost Springs, and he would have, whether my sisters bought a—a bachelor—or not.” Somehow, calling him a bachelor hurt. Wasn’t Luke ever lonely, living by himself when he could so easily find a woman to look after him? To love him? Glancing away again, Claire suppressed the emotions, taking in the soothing wash of pale summer colors she loved—the cerulean sky, the burnt umber and sienna in the bone-dry arid land.

  “The way I figure it, Claire,” Luke said when she looked at him again. “Tex paid good money for a service so, no matter how we feel about it, we’ve got no choice but for me to oblige.”

  The comment was so unexpected that Claire almost burst out laughing. She didn’t know what possessed her, but she said, “Whoa. Let me get this straight, Lydell. You’re offering stud services?”

  He grinned.

  Her heart did a three-sixty in her chest and she stared at him, wondering if he was serious, and chastising the part of herself that so desperately wished he was.

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