Free Love at Any Cost by Julie Lessman

while he raked her head to toe, making the sting of the cattle prod cool by comparison. “Your majesty,” he whispered with a slight bow, voice husky and brimming with tease. “From the lovely lay of your dress, I assume all burrs have been appropriately removed from your saddle?”
    You betcha, and now lodged in my throat . . . She tried to reclaim her hand, as stunned and lightheaded as when she’d been thrown from Daddy’s prize filly for the very first time.
    â€œYour majesty?” Aunt Cait said with a frown, gaze flitting from Cassie’s blazing face to the pretty boy’s annoying smirk. “You two know each other?”
    â€œNot exactly ‘know,’ ” he said.
    He had a death grip on her hand and a lock on her eyes. The deepest dimples she ever saw flashed with a half-lidded smile that heated her temper along with her cheeks.
    His smile worked its way into a grin. “Ran into her at the train station where I apparently swept her off her feet.”
    Cassie sprung up as if bucked by a rodeo bronc, yanking her hand away. “Mowed me down is more like it,” she blurted. Leaning in, her taffeta bodice quivered with every ragged heave. “And the only burr in my saddle today, Mr. MacKenna, was you.”
    Eyes bugging wide, Alli jumped up, suddenly all ears. “Wait— this is the ‘pretty-boy yahoo’ you told me about, the one who ran you down at the train station?”
    â€œYahoo?” Jamie said, brows bunched in a frown.
    Bram grinned. “Cheer up, Mac. After all, she did say you were ‘pretty.’ ” He shook his napkin free with a chuckle and placed it in his lap. “Although that’s a far cry from free Dr Peppers in a bar.”
    Blake leaned in at the other end of the table, his grin as broad as Bram’s. “No kidding, MacKenna? You bowled Cassie over?”
    â€œBulldozed is more like it,” Cassie said with a fold of her arms.
    Jamie shrugged and shot Blake a sheepish grin, kneading the back of his neck. “Afraid so, and I’m sorry to say she fell pretty hard.” His gaze settled on Cassie with a dangerous smile that seemed all too familiar. He leaned in with a whisper, his tease sultry and low. “But then they usually do.”
    She stabbed a finger at him, shooting a hard gaze at Blake over her shoulder. “ This is your friend? This . . . this . . . womanizer?”
    Bram chuckled. “I thought you said she didn’t know you, Mac?”
    â€œCassie darling,” Aunt Cait said with concern in her eyes, “I don’t know what Jamie did to anger you so, but I assure you he is not a womanizer.”
    â€œNo?” Cassie spun around, almost grateful for the corset so she couldn’t blow. “Explain that to the girlfriend he put on the train before he asked me out to lunch.”
    â€œGirlfriend?” Blake’s lips inched into a half smile. “You holding out on us, MacKenna?” “Yes, girlfriend,” Cassie snapped, grateful she could expose this Lothario for the scoundrel that he was. “Completely manhandled her in broad daylight before putting her on the train, and the tracks were still warm when he turned his attention to me.”
    â€œIt-was-my-cousin,” Jamie enunciated slowly, the smirk on his face fading enough for his irritation to show. “And of course the tracks were still warm—a 450-plus-ton locomotive just rolled by on a hot summer day.”
    â€œYour cousin—ha! Likely story. Kissing cousins, no doubt.”
    â€œUh, Cass . . .” Alli chewed on the edge of her smile. “It was Jamie’s cousin—he brought Sara by a number of times.” She shot Jamie a sympathetic smile. “So she’s on her way home to Tulsa?”
    â€œYeah,” Jamie said with a tight smile. His eyes shifted to Cassie, gaze narrowing considerably. “A little