Free Jodi Thomas by The Lone Texan Page A

soft hello kiss with a promise.
    For a moment she didn’t react. When she did, she pushed hard. “What do you think you are doing?”
    “Kissing you.” He frowned. “We’ve done it before. I thought you’d recognize it. It happens when two people touch lips.”
    She stomped halfway across the porch, then turned back to him. “There for a minute I forgot how infuriating you can be. It’s been almost four years since I’ve seen you, Drummond Roak, and, if you ask me, that’s not half long enough. I’m a widow in mourning. I’m older than you. I’m . . .” He was making her crazy. She couldn’t even think, but she knew the list was long. “Men don’t just go around kissing women when they feel like it.”
    “Sage, we need to talk about this . . .” He had no intention of stopping, so to his way of thinking, she might as well settle into the idea.
    “No. We need to talk about the boys, and that’s all. This . . .” She waved her hand at the space between them. “This, you and me that you seem to think exists has never been more than a boyish infatuation on your part.”
    “I’m not a boy.” He was getting real tired of having to remind her. He’d been a man since she left. “I’m man enough to be your man,” he said in a low tone.
    “No,” she answered. “Never, Drum.”
    He watched her walk back into the hotel without another word. He told himself the gun on his hip had more to do with why she didn’t want him than his age, but he couldn’t be sure. The night he’d first seen her, she’d been crying because her first love, a young Ranger, had been killed. She’d sworn then that she’d never marry a man who lived with a gun within arm’s length of him. She’d fallen for a preacher who proved to be an idiot before she married him, and she’d evidently fallen for a doctor who’d died on her right after the wedding.
    Drum figured she’d been unlucky in love enough to be marked as trouble by most, but that didn’t matter to him. In his mind, she was already his woman.
    If I had a heart, he thought, that woman would not only break it, she’d stomp on it and set it on fire. There must be something wrong with me, Drum decided as he followed her inside. Shooting his toes off one at a time couldn’t be any less painful than trying to court Sage McMurray.

CHAPTER 8
     

     
    D RUM MADE IT THREE STEPS INTO HER SITTING ROOM before Sage demanded, “What do you think you’re doing here?”
    He didn’t back down. “I’m doing what I swore I’d do. I’m making sure the boys are safe.” He almost added that he liked the way her gown clung to her, but he knew she wouldn’t appreciate his compliment.
    Bonnie walked out of the washroom with her hair in rag knots. Without her glasses, she had to squint to see him. “Evening, Mr. Roak. I left you an extra blanket in case it gets cold on the settee.”
    “Thank you kindly, but I think I’ll try the floor.” Drum smiled at the nurse. If possible, she was even plainer without her glasses than with them. “Sleeping on that thing is like trying to sleep in a four-foot canoe.”
    Bonnie giggled.
    Sage looked at her friend as if she’d lost her mind. She’d never heard Bonnie giggle, not once in two years. “Good night,” she managed as she turned back into her room. Let the man sleep out in the sitting room if he wanted to. She’d be sharing her bed with Bonnie so the boys could have the other room.
    The nurse followed her in and closed the door. “I feel so much safer knowing Mr. Roak is just outside.”
    “He’s not outside,” Sage corrected. “He’s inside, and if you think that is safer, remind me to introduce you to a few wild animals.”
    Bonnie didn’t get Sage’s point. “Why?”
    “Because that’s what he is: a wild animal. He may look like a man, but trust me, there’s the blood of a wolf in him.”
    Bonnie laughed. “I don’t think we have to worry about Mr. Roak biting anyone.”
    Sage crawled into bed and muttered,