Free The Cowboy by Joan Johnston Page A

cedar fence post. The girl hesitated a moment, then followed him. Callie looked around thebarn in agitation. Where was Lou Ann? She’d left Callie at the punch bowl over an hour ago and promised she’d be right back.
    Callie didn’t want to leave Luke alone with the Coburn girl, who’d apparently gone after him, because she didn’t trust her brother not to hurt the girl’s feelings. She considered abandoning the punch bowl. This late in the evening, it probably wouldn’t matter if some cowboy spiked the punch.
    “I believe this is my dance.”
    Callie froze, then turned to find Trace standing close enough that she could feel the heat of his body. Memories assaulted her. How it felt to run her hands over ridged muscle and bone. The softness of his hair against her breasts and belly. The sleek thrust of his tongue in her mouth. She felt her body clench with desire and forced herself to see the man who stood before her, not the memory.
    He wore a white, Western-cut shirt, open at the throat, the sleeves rolled up to bare sinewy forearms. His jeans looked old and butter soft and molded his body. His hat was pulled low on his forehead, leaving his eyes in shadow, revealing a strong chin stubbled with beard.
    If she were meeting him for the first time, she might have been a little frightened. He looked dark and dangerous. But this man was no stranger. She knew his body as well as she knew her own. And she wasn’t going to be intimidated into dancing with him.
    She cocked her head and said, “You’re a little late, aren’t you, cowboy?”
    “Did you think I wasn’t coming?” Trace replied, his lips curving in a winsome smile.
    She refused to be charmed. “The dance is over.”
    “Not quite,” Trace said, as the band began playing “Crazy,” a slow, sentimental Patsy Cline tune.
    “I have to watch the punch bowl.” Callie was appalled to realize that she was breathless and that her pulse was racing.
    “I’m here, Callie,” Lou Ann said with a smile, as she stepped up beside Callie. “Trace and Dusty and I were going over some figures in the house. Sorry I’m so late getting back to relieve you. Trace told me you’d promised him a dance.”
    Callie stared at Trace’s outstretched hand, looked up to catch the gleam in his eye and the arrogant arch of his brow, and realized how neatly she’d been trapped.
    It’s only a dance. One dance can’t matter.
    Callie set her hand in the one Trace held outstretched to her. It was warm and strong, the fingertips rough and callused. She shivered as the flat of his hand palmed the small of her back. She rested her hand on his shoulder, feeling the hard, too-familiar play of muscle and bone beneath her fingertips.
    This isn’t the same man you once loved
, she reminded herself. She looked for changes and found them.
    His nose had a bump on the bridge that hadn’t been there in college, and he had a new scar running through his left eyebrow. She realized she had no idea what he’d been doing during the long years he’d been gone from Texas, or even where he’d been. Except, whatever he’d been doing had kept him outside, because the sun and the wind had etched lines around his eyes and mouth. And his work had required physical labor, because his shouldersseemed broader and his body looked even leaner and harder than it had when he was a younger man.
    “Do you remember the last time we danced, Callie?” Trace asked as he moved her around the sawdusted wooden floor to the seductive country tune.
    Callie felt her heart skip a beat. She wondered if there was any significance to his question. The last time they had danced was in college, on Valentine’s Day. They had left the dance floor that night and driven out into the hill country to a spot along the Colorado River where they could be alone, with only the stars overhead and the cool grass beneath them.
    She remembered how much they’d laughed that night, how boyishly Trace had smiled at her in the moonlight,