Free Catching Calhoun by Tina Leonard

two beautiful sleeping children.
    She was falling! After warning herself over and over again about falling for a man, especially a charming cowboy who clearly knew his way around lots of women, she had practically begged him to seduce her! She was to blame for going after him and taunting him—and he was right. It was verbal foreplay she’d been offering, a path that could only end in her own disaster. Again. Hadn’t she burdened her father—her family—enough?
    The Jeffersons were not settling types, as evidenced by Calhoun’s younger brother Last, who rebelliously escaped his responsibilities. And Calhoun, painter of naked women, what would make him settle for just one? If Olivia ever fell for another man again, it would have to be someone serious, who would love Kenny and Minnie as much as a man could, in the role of father.
    Calhoun couldn’t.
    And there she was, practically begging him to make love to her.
    In fact, her body had told him everything he’d needed to know. She was his for the taking.
    It was only the gentleman in him that had kept him from doing more than whispering seduction in her ear.
    Olivia turned off the tiny night-light and curled up next to her children.
    From now on, she would watch herself closely. Thank God she’d realized the disastrous path she was on.
     
    B Y MORNING , C ALHOUN had a hangover but it wasn’t from the yellow genie. It was from sitting up all night thinking about the little barrel rider and her family. What was it about her that made him want to possess her so badly? Did he see himself in her and her disorganized gypsy band of a family?
    Heaven knew the Jeffersons were gypsylike. Whether it was the attics of their minds, the lay of the land or the hearts of women, the Jefferson men wandered.
    By God, Olivia made him want to make a pit stop.
    She was dangerous to his way of life. Or perhaps, his lack of a way of life. He had no way. He had the ranch and a load of paintings. He had artistic vision.
    He had a half-baked erection he couldn’t shake no matter how much he thought about cold things.
    Maybe a long swim in Barmaid’s Creek was what he needed. December’s chill on the water oughta knock the stiffness out of his drill.
    And it would clear his head. Keep him away from those treacherous children of Olivia’s. They were a huge part of the problem. They wanted him. They’d said so, and he could feel it, and it made him want them, too.
    “How dumb is that, huh?” he muttered, pulling on his plain, worn-down brown riding boots. “What you need, Calhoun, is to bring a few more children into this family for a while, because we don’t have enough men acting like kids. Yes, we need more responsibilities, because we’re managing so well with the ones we’ve got.”
    No wonder Mimi was selling her ranch. It wasn’t as if they’d exactly helped out their little neighbor in need. They’d tried, but Mimi needed a full-time man.
    And so did Olivia.
    “The Jefferson track record does suck,” he told a small cricket in the windowsill. He finished packing and left money on the bed for Delilah—she wouldn’t take it if he tried to give it to her in person. She’d given all the Jeffersons a key to the back door of her salon so they could go up the back stairs and stay whenever they were in town. A phone call was all she required, so she could make them breakfast.
    A favor given was a favor returned, Delilah Honeycutt said. Since the big storm had brought Delilah and her crew of Lonely Hearts Station stylists to the ranch, there’d been plenty of favors between them.
    “Goodbye little cricket. I’m going to do you a favor and put you outside where you can find a girlfriend,” he said. “Because all you’re going to find in this windowsill is smashed. And hey, I figure you, as an ugly critter only suited for swimming on the end of a fishing hook, have even less chance of getting love all figured out before you meet your cricket end than I do.”
    He carried his