Free Billionaire Boss by Meagan McKinney

downstairs, made herself a cup of hot tea in the kitchen and went to find a book to take upstairs.
    Nothing interested her. The books were all dry-as-dust tomes on the bond market.
    Disappointed, she sat down on the couch, sipped her tea while it was still hot and made a pledge to go into town the next day and buy some novels and magazines.
    Chilled, she sat closer to the fire still burning in the large fieldstone fireplace. Curling her bare feet beneath her on the couch, she made a mental note not to get too comfortable.
    She didn’t want to stay too long. Seth would be returning any minute from his ride, and shedidn’t want him to catch her cozying up by the fire. His fire.
    But the tea warmed her, and soon her thoughts drifted. Unable to summon the energy to crawl back up to her bedroom, she closed her eyes for a few seconds, just enough to regain her momentum.
    Before she knew it, she was fast asleep.
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    Dust laden and worn-out, Seth walked from the stable to the house in only the moonlight. Jim had been waiting for him and had taken care of Noir.
    It’d been a long ride, and both man and beast needed a rest.
    The galloping had been good for Seth. He’d needed the burst of energy. It was better than anger, more satisfying, more healthy. In truth, it gave him equilibrium.
    When he’d tiredly dismounted, he’d realized that Hazel might be manipulating the situation, but her manipulations were just that. If he so chose, he would forgo the ranch and find a place elsewhere. He didn’t need to be the cattle baroness’s puppet.
    But his frustration was caused by more than just Hazel. Kirsten frustrated him. He was nothing more than a means to an end for her.Granted, she’d made that clear from the beginning. Her mother was ill and needed care. But it infuriated him to know she viewed him no differently than had the rest of the bank-account gold diggers who’d been after him in the past. He wondered if he would ever find a woman who could see the man behind the money machine.
    But her less-than-sterling motives didn’t take away the fact that he had a wicked attraction to her.
    Perhaps he was drawn to her merely because she was good at hiding her true motives. If he hadn’t overheard her on the phone talking to her mother about their ship coming in, and if he hadn’t heard that old boyfriend of hers confess to what a climber she was, he suspected he’d have fallen for her, fallen hard. She seemed to be everything a man could want in a woman—she was smart, graceful, feminine. She had a come-hither look he’d first seen in the jet, and it was so well rehearsed that she seemed completely unconscious of how it had been manufactured to drive a man crazy. And more important, when they were alone and not under the guise of “work,” he felt somehow that she saw him. Him. The man, not the bank account.
    He pushed open the heavy pine front door tothe house, his cowboy boots softly clicking on the flagstone.
    Before him, in the great room, she lay on the couch asleep, as enticing as a fairy-tale princess.
    Her blond hair formed a halo around her face, the wheat color glistening with gold highlights from the fireplace flames and the rich background color of the burgundy sofa.
    She lay slouched back against the pillows, her frayed, raggedy pink flannel robe parted slightly, playing a sweet game of peekaboo with the lush, generous curves of her breasts.
    He stood stock-still for a long moment and just stared at the picture, unsure whether he should reprimand her or go to her and slip his hand deep inside the part in the robe.
    Slowly he walked up to her.
    She didn’t move. Her breathing was deep and even, her face an angel’s in repose.
    The whole thing was a setup. It was so obvious. Fall asleep in the ranch’s great room, and then when the seduction was through, make a great gesture of dismay at how he’d taken advantage of her.
    As he bent down to