Free Wish Upon a Cowboy by Maureen Child, Kathleen Kane

with soft green eyes and a curvy body wasn't helping anything. Pretty or not, she had to find out right now just who was the boss around here.
    "What the hell was that all about, anyway?" he demanded, his voice as tight as his body.
    She leaned in close and he caught a whiff of what smelled like lemons.
    "How can you even ask me that?"
    He pulled his head back to avoid breathing in her scent again. "It's not up to you to teach those men—or me –" he added, "manners."
    "Someone should –" she started, but didn't finish because he cut her off abruptly.
    "They work hard. We all do." Steeling himself, he met her gaze and still felt a slap of something hard and searing shake him to his boots. Damn it, he wasn't a kid anymore, stirred into a froth over a pretty face and sweet smell. Gritting his teeth, he went on determinedly. "We expect our meals to be plentiful and hot. We don't expect to get our hands smacked for not saying please and thank you."
    She was simmering. He didn't need to see the flash of indignation in her eyes. He sensed it pulsing around her body like a heartbeat. Anger fairly rippled off of her in waves. He wouldn't have been surprised to see sparks shooting from the ends of her hair.
    Well, she could be as mad as she wanted to be. It didn't matter a damn what she thought of him. Hell, it would probably be easier on them both if she couldn't stand the sight of him. Then at least she'd give up on that marrying nonsense for good and all. And maybe if she was shooting daggers at him all the time, his thoughts would quit straying to notions he had no business considering.
    "I worked hard, too," she told him shortly.
    Hell, he knew that. Breakfast was better than anything he'd had in longer than he cared to think about. Still he was boss around here and she'd better learn that now.
    Bracing his feet wide apart, he folded his arms across his chest and looked down at her. "A cook cooks," he said. "Nothing else."
    "That explains what happened to your house," she muttered.
    His teeth ground together until he thought his jaw might break. And despite the small part of him that enjoyed her not backing down, he stood his ground. "So," he said, squeezing the words past thinned lips, "do we understand each other?"
    Her mouth worked furiously as she drew several deep breaths. She clasped her hands together at her waist and squeezed until her knuckles whitened and paled against her dark green skirt.
    And still he waited.
    "I think so," she said at last, in no more than a strangled whisper. She dipped her head and looked up at him from beneath impossibly long, dark eyelashes. "You want plentiful, hot meals with no worrying about table manners."
    That had cost her. He could see it. And one part of him admired the hell out of her for it. Anybody who could rein in a temper like hers had strength. She had the look of a woman who didn't give in lightly, or often. As that thought occurred to him, he also thought that perhaps he ought to be worried by her surrender. But in the next instant, Jonas decided there was no point in looking for trouble when it came looking for him often enough.
    Nodding, he said. "That's right. Think you can do that?"
    "Oh," she told him, still giving him that shaded stare, "I think I'll be able to manage."
    "All right, then," he said with another nod. Frustration drained from him as he gave the sky another searching look. He smiled faintly. The once-threatening clouds had thinned into misty ribbons of darkness stretching haphazardly across the sun. Lowering his gaze to hers, he said. "Guess the storm's passed us by this time."
    "Perhaps," she said, starting for the house again, "but the clouds are still there, so it's too early to be sure."
    He watched her go and as his gaze drifted to the sway of her hips, he wondered idly if they'd been talking about the same storm.

Chapter Five
    Once astride his horse, Jonas put everything but work out of his mind. A cold mountain wind shot past him and he