Free The Outlaw Bride by Kelly Boyce Page A

She didn’t want to look, didn’t want that image imprinted on her mind so that forever after, no matter what he had on, that would be how she envisioned him. But the only alternative was to look up into those damnable blue eyes, and that could be equally dangerous.
    “Are you hurt?”
    She forced a smile. “Does my pride count?”
    She had failed yet again at a job she was sure she could do well. Their breakfast, the one she planned to surprise Connor and Jenny with, lay smeared all over the floor.
    A quiet chuckle rumbled from his chest. “I reckon that type of injury heals much slower than others.”
    Connor’s smile transformed him, startling her. His eyes sparkled like a thousand tiny jewels kissed by sunlight and in that brief moment, the weight of the world slid off his shoulders. Katherine took in a breath to calm her rattled nerves. It did little good. He smelled of sleep, that warm, comforting scent that wrapped itself around a body nestled in the warmth beneath the covers. The image of crawling under the quilt with him shot unbidden and unwanted into her mind.
    Outside, the malevolent bird let out one last contemptuous squawk as if it had read her mind.
    “The rooster startled me,” she said, trying to put her thoughts to rights.
    Connor lifted his gaze to the small window over the counter, his hip lifting off hers just a little, enough to make her realize the full predicament she found herself in—pinned to the kitchen floor with the half-naked sheriff hovering over her. She tried not to look at the sun-bronzed skin stretched over ridged muscle. A thin line of hair meandered downward from the light smattering on his chest and disappeared beneath the open waistband.
    “He does that every morning.”
    She jerked her gaze away from him, from his body. “Good to know.”
    Connor looked down at her. Heat slowly pooled in her belly. Even with his hair mussed from sleep, flattened in some areas, sticking up and out in others, he was a good looking man. He seemed more relaxed than yesterday. Lighter somehow. Maybe home had that effect on a body. A real home. Not the sad, beaten-down shacks Rogan had stuck her in while he hid from the law, but a place with furniture, pictures and keepsakes accumulated over the span of years. And memories soaked into the walls and the floorboards so they reverberated through you with each step you took. What she wouldn’t give for a home like that.
    She waited for him to say something, anything to interrupt the silence growing between them. But he just stayed there, his body pressing intimately into hers while he stared at her, as if he could see into her soul. The effect rattled her.
    “I—I should clean this up,” she stammered, looking away, searching for anything that would lessen the pull he had on her. She’d known him less than two days. This was ridiculous. She’d known Rogan eight years and never once in that time had he ever looked at her and made her body tremble like it did now.
    Slowly, Connor rolled away from her, disengaging their tangled legs and pushing himself to his feet. He reached down and helped her up.
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to break the bowl. I wanted to fix breakfast before you had to leave. And then the rooster—”
    “It’s just a bowl.”
    “Still…I’ll fix this mess.” She wasn’t altogether sure which one she meant—the remnants of their breakfast scattered about the floor, or the disastrous disarray his closeness wreaked on her good sense.
    Connor peered down at her bare feet, then at the broken glass surrounding them. “Not without shoes on, you won’t. Last thing I need is you getting cut up.”
    Before Katherine could protest, he’d scooped her up in his arms.
    “Oh!” She looked down, then back at him.
    Mistake. His mouth was only inches from hers. One wrong move on either of their parts and their lips would touch.
    “I can walk,” she whispered.
    “Not without hurting yourself.” His breath brushed against her