Free Iron Cowboy by Diana Palmer Page B

she’d delivered Jared’s books to him. She admired the sprawling white ranch house with its hanging baskets of flowers and the white wooden fences that surrounded a well-manicured pasture. Jared ran purebred Santa Gertrudis cattle here, not horses. Sara enjoyed watching the calves. Pastures were full of them in spring, just in time for the lush new grass to pop up. Or, at least, that would have been the case if the drought hadn’t hit this part of Texas so hard.
    â€œHow do you have green grass in a drought?” she asked suddenly.
    He smiled. “I sank wells and filled up tanks in every pasture,” he replied, using the Texas term for small ponds.
    â€œNot bad,” she remarked. “Do those windmills pump it?” she added, nodding toward two of them—one near the barn and another far out on the horizon.
    He glanced at her amusedly. “Yes. It may be an old-fashioned idea, but it was good enough for the pioneers who settled this country.”
    â€œYour grandfather, was he born here?”
    He shook his head. “One of his distant cousins inherited a piece of property and left it to him. He ranched for a while, until his health got bad.” His face seemed to harden. “He took a hard fall from a bucking horse and hit his head on a fence. He was never quite right afterward. He put a manager in charge of the ranch and moved up to Houston with his wife. One summer day, he shot my grandmother with a double-barreled shotgun and then turned it on himself.”
    Her gasp was audible.
    He noted her surprise. “My father brought him down here to be buried, although nobody knew how he died. None of the family ever came back here after that,” he said. “I guess we all have something in the past that haunts us. I shouldn’t have been so blunt about it,” he added, when he realized that she was upset. “I forget that you grew up in a small town, sheltered from violence.”
    Obviously he considered her a lightweight, she mused. But it was too soon for some discussions. “It’s all right.”
    He pulled up in front of the house, cut the engine and went around to pick Sara up in his strong arms and carry her up the three wide steps to the front porch. He grinned at her surprise.
    â€œColtrain’s nurse said to keep you off your feet for another day,” he mused, looking down into her wide, soft green eyes.
    â€œSo you’re becoming public transportation?” she teased, and her smile made her whole face radiant.
    It made her look beautiful. He was captivated by the feel of her soft, warm little body in his arms, pressed close to his chest. He loved that smile that reminded him of a warm fire in winter. He liked the surge of excitement that ran through his hard body at the proximity. His eyes narrowed and the smile faded as he held her attention.
    â€œListen, don’t you get any odd ideas,” she cautioned with breathless humor. “He didn’t do that buttonhole surgery, he split me open at least six inches and sewed me back up with those stitches that you don’t have to take out later. We wouldn’t want my guts to spill out all over your nice clean floor, now, would we?”
    The comment, so unexpected, caused him to burst out laughing.
    â€œGood God!” he chuckled. He bent and brushed his hard mouth over her lips in a whisper of sensation that caused her entire body to clench. It was a rush of sensation so overwhelming that she felt her breath catch in her throat.
    His eyebrows arched at her response. He pursed his lips and his green eyes twinkled. “What a reaction,” he murmured deeply. “And I barely touched you.” The twinkle faded. “Suppose we try that again…?”
    She started to give him ten good reasons why he shouldn’t, but it was already too late.
    His hard mouth crushed down onto her soft lips, parting them in a sensuous, insistent way that took her breath away. Her