Bartender's Beauty (Culpepper Cowboys Book 11) Read Online Free Page B

eyebrow. “I remember you once giggled hysterically at my reasoning on a math problem.”
    “Okay, so maybe I would laugh at you, but only if I was sorely provoked.”
    He wrinkled his nose at her. “By the way, you shouldn’t ever kiss me like that.”
    Her eyes grew wide, and she frowned. “Was it too forward?” She’d never made a move to kiss a man before. Even the teacher she’d dated when she was in Cheyenne. Six dates, and he’d only kissed her twice, and both times she’d been bored to tears.
    “That’s not it.”
    “Then what was wrong?”
    “I prefer to be kissed like this.” He lowered his head, slanting his mouth over hers. His hand went to the nape of her neck, under her ponytail, keeping her head still for his attentions.
    Dallas gasped with surprise, wrapping her arms around his neck and clinging as if her life depended on it. She rose up on her knees to flatten herself against him, not believing that she was being kissed by Austin. Her Austin.
    His hands roamed over her back for a moment, before he lifted his head, his eyes glazed as he looked down at her. “You pack a wallop, Miss Dallas.”
    She grinned, pulling his head back down for one more quick kiss. “I think all that wallop is coming from you, Austin, but I’d like to feel a little more of it whenever you’re ready to share it with me.”
    He grinned at her, his lips drawing her gaze. She touched one with the tip of her finger. “What’s that about?”
    She shrugged. “I just always thought you had really nice lips. Is that strange?”
    He laughed. “The only thing strange about that is you’ve never planted yours on them. If you liked them so much, you should have just grabbed me in the hall at school one day and kissed the stuffing out of me.”
    She sank back down on the quilt, moving away from him reluctantly. “We’d better eat so I can get back to my cell.”
    He dug into the basket, pulling out a sandwich for her. “What are the doctors saying? How much longer?”
    “They’ve already called in hospice, and they’ve come by. I don’t know how much you know about it, but once they call hospice in, the end is close. They’re all about pain management, but they’re not trying to keep him alive anymore. When hospice came out to the house for my friend’s mom, she lived another forty-eight hours. I was there the whole time.”
    He frowned. “So it’s really any day now.”
    She nodded. “It is. And I feel horrible because I just want it all to be over .” She rubbed the back of her neck. “I know I’m a bad person, because he’s my father, but I don’t feel any kind of emotional attachment. I’m here out of a sense of duty to him.”
    “You forget that our fathers were best friends. I watched him from the time we were eight or so. The only thing that ever really mattered to him was where his next drink came from. He was an angry drunk like my dad, wasn’t he?”
    She nodded. “There were so many times after Mom died that we’d be having a normal conversation, and the next thing I knew he’d hit me, and I’d have finger prints on my face. I’d have to go to the bathroom between classes to make sure the make-up never rubbed off.” She sighed. “It wasn’t quite as bad before Mom was gone, because she could talk him down. He would yell at her, but he never hit her. At least, I never saw it if he did.”
    He closed his eyes. “I wish I’d known it was that bad.”
    “Why? You were in the same situation. Our fathers practically shared a brain with the way they treated us.”
    He shook his head. “I’d have tried to help if I’d known it was happening to you too.”
    “I know you would have, and I appreciate it. You made school bearable for me.”
    He reached out and ran his hand down her arm comfortingly. “I know. I guess I knew how bad it was at school for you, but I tried to pretend it was better for you than it was at home.”
    She shrugged. “No one was hitting me at school.”
    “I…I