Free The Devil's Own Desperado by Lynda J. Cox

the loose tendrils of her hair brushing her face. “It doesn’t matter how, it just matters that they are dead, and I have to raise Saul and Jenny.”
    “Did a gunman kill them? Is that why you’re so opposed to a gun in your house?”
    Amelia didn’t answer. Colt brushed several long, wispy tendrils of strawberry-blonde hair from her slender cheeks. “It’s not an easy job you have. Raising kids, especially a boy, can’t be easy.”
    She stilled under his light touch, and her eyes widened. Colt trailed his fingertips down the length of her neck, resting them for a moment in the hollow of her throat. Her pulse leaped under his fingers. She scarcely took a breath.
    Dear God, she was innocent as a newborn. Colt’s chest tightened and a heavy weight settled in his groin. He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger and tilted her face up to him. He bent his head to her. He doubted it would have been possible, but she stilled even more.
    Colt hesitated. “You’ve never been kissed, have you?”
    Her tongue darted out, skimming along her lips. Colt ground his teeth with the effort to keep from claiming her mouth at that instant.
    “Yes, I have.” Bright color splashed on her cheeks, matching the defensive tone of her voice.
    “Really kissed, or just a peck on the cheek by some sweaty-palmed boy behind the church?” He bent closer, his mouth nearly on hers. “Did some boy press his lips to yours for a second and tell you that you’d been kissed?”
    The bedroom door flew open and Saul raced in. “Amy, the cows got out again.”
    Amelia leaped back as if scalded. Colt smothered a groan when she slipped from his fingers and brushed past him. “I’ll help you catch them,” she said to Saul.
    Colt dropped his head to his chest, ruthlessly quelling the desire firing through him. The tormenting, faint scent of vanilla lingered in her wake.
    ****
    Amelia raced from the bedroom as if a pack of hell’s demons was dogging her heels. Her body tingled and her skin burned along the path his fingers had traced down her neck. Thank heavens Saul had intruded when he did.
    As she looped a rope around Buttercup’s horns and dragged her back to the small pasture next to the barn, Amelia wondered what the difference was between being kissed and really being kissed. A kiss was a kiss, wasn’t it? After securing the cow in the enclosure, Amelia leaned her elbows onto the fence and attempted to sort out her cascading emotions. She dropped her head to her hands, admitting in that instant Colt Evans had fully intended to kiss her.
    Somehow she knew kissing Colt Evans would not be like the quick, cool kiss Donnie Morris had stolen from her behind the Methodist Church a year ago. Being near Donnie Morris didn’t make her stomach fill with butterflies, or make her ache deep in her core. Donnie Morris certainly didn’t make her insides tremble when he touched her, and holding hands with him had been like holding a cold, dead trout.
    It wasn’t that she didn’t like Donnie. She’d known him ever since her parents had moved to the Wyoming Territory. He had been the only one brave—or foolish—enough to try to fulfill all the Reverend Phillip McCollister’s requirements to court his oldest daughter. Even then, it wasn’t until after her parents’ deaths that Donnie had actually announced he wanted to court her. Donnie was sweet on her, she knew that. And he was good-looking, in a boyish manner. But when she compared him to Colt Evans…that was unfair, and she knew it. Donnie Morris was a boy and Colt Evans wasn’t.
    Amelia laughed, embarrassed with the direction her thoughts were taking. Colt had asked if she considered a peck on the cheek by some sweaty-palmed boy a kiss. That was Donnie Morris, and Donnie’s kiss, and that honestly was the extent of her knowledge of kissing.
    Oh heavens, Colt had to leave. She didn’t need this added difficulty in her life.
    A horse trotting into the yard caused her to turn. She was