Free Unforgettable (The Dalton Gang #3) by Alison Kent Page A

wouldn’t call you back?”
    Eyes closed, she remembered the scruff of his beard on her skin and shivered. “When I called, I wasn’t even thinking about yesterday.”
    “I haven’t stopped thinking about yesterday.” His voice slid over her, silky and smooth and warm.
    Her heart thumped hard, and then a second time, but she held back admitting how often he’d been on her mind. “I actually called because of work.”
    “Work can wait. Tell me about the scarves.”
    “What?” she asked, her heart tumbling and turning the word breathless.
    “Tell me about the scarves.” It was a demand, not a question, and the skin at her nape tingled.
    She closed her eyes, swallowed. She supposed his curiosity shouldn’t surprise her. “What about them?”
    “Well, I sure as hell don’t want to know where you bought them or how much they cost.”
    That had her smiling again. “And here I was all set to give you shopping advice.”
    “I want to know why you made me keep my hands to myself for so long.”
    An explanation that would take too much time to go into; it had been stressful enough telling her girlfriends about her ex. Telling Boone the full story would add levels no amount of wine would help relieve, and so she glossed over the truth. “I like getting what I want. The scarves make sure I will.”
    “You’re talking orgasms,” he said, and when she stayed silent, added, “You could’ve just asked.”
    It had happened before, a man promising to show her heaven, then making the trip alone. “Until the fund-raiser, we’d hardly spoken two words to each other. I didn’t know what you’d say.”
    “I’m a guy. That should’ve been enough of a clue.”
    “Some guys want things to go their way.”
    “Some guys are selfish pricks, but I get it. I could’ve been one.” More banging of dishes. “Now you know I’m not. At least most of the time.”
    Really. He made it so easy to smile. “So, the reason I called—”
    “Fourteen times,” he cut in to say.
    “The reason I called fourteen times was to ask if we could get together for an interview.”
    “An interview?” he asked after his silence had her swallowing half the wine in her glass.
    “For the paper. I’ve been assigned a human interest story on the return of the Dalton Gang to Crow Hill.”
    He grunted. “Not sure the type of interest humans around here have in the Dalton Gang is fit for the
Reporter
to print. Not sure it’s the type the boys and I want printed.”
    That sounded a lot like a rehash of Arwen’s and Faith’s argument. She gave Boone the same response she’d given them. “Whitey wants a story. Who would you rather have write it? Whitey, me, Clark Howard, or Cicely Warren? Because it’s going to be one of the four of us. And my bias is going to be a little bit different from theirs.”
    “Well, that’s a given,” he said, then added a quick, “Hang a sec,” returning after the kitchen faucet came on and went off. “Dax once cut donuts in Clark’s front yard after he told him to stay away from his daughter, so he’s no fan. And Cicely’s hardly any better. She propositioned Casper when he was sixteen.”
    “What?” Everly asked, nearly spilling the refill of wine she was pouring.
    “He told her he’d rather take it up the ass from one of Rooster Hart’s Charolais bulls than let her get hold of his dick.”
    That had her sputtering. “Cicely’s got to be twenty years older than Casper.”
    “And probably just as much of a degenerate now as she was then.”
    Everly was never going to be able to look at Cicely Warren with a straight face again. “And Whitey? Did one of you ruin his yard or his daughter’s reputation? Because if he came on to you, I do not want to know.”
    This time it was Boone laughing, a low rumbling growl that slid into the pit of Everly’s stomach. “Not that I can recall. But Whitey will want to sell as many copies as he can, so he’d be the worst choice. He’d make what dirt he can