Cowboy Seeks Bride Read Online Free Page A

lady.”
    Dewar took a step closer to her. “Name is Dewar. Mr. O’Donnell is my granddad on my father’s side.”
    “Well, I don’t like Dew-Are so I’m going to call you Dewy. It sounds like someone is trying to ask for Scotch whiskey to me. Why would your mama name you after something that comes in a liquor bottle anyway?”
    “If you call me Dewy, there will be a war and, darlin’, I will win. My mama named me that because she’s real fond of Dewar’s White Label and it’s a good old Irish name,” he growled.
    “I wouldn’t call him that if I was you,” Rhett drawled.
    Haley turned her head slightly to look at him.
    “I heard about this guy who came on to him in a bar and called him Dewy Darlin’.” Rhett grinned.
    “That never happened. It’s just a rumor.” Dewar blushed.
    Haley turned back to Dewar. “Leave me alone about my middle name and I’ll call you Dewar and I’ll even say it right.”
    Dewar stuck out his hand. “Deal.”
    The effect of his bare skin touching hers sent shock waves through her body. It really was going to be a helluva long thirty days, and she was going to have to curb her imagination because that tingle was exactly what she imagined the heroine in Cheryl’s book feeling like when the hero touched her.

Chapter 2
    Dewar raised a gloved hand and called a halt to the ride as the sun drifted toward the treetops on the western horizon. The cattle and horses had free rein in a sixty-acre pasture split down the middle by Flat Creek. It was little more than a shallow gully filled with spring rainwater, but it would water the livestock and it wouldn’t be too tough to cross the next morning.
    Haley slid off the horse and untied the saddlebags.
    “Let m-m-me help you,” Buddy said.
    “Thank you.” Her voice sounded tired even in her own ears.
    Together, they removed the saddle and blanket from Apache’s back, brushed him well, and turned him out to graze with the cattle.
    When they finished she turned around to find that the cowboys had already staked out a claim for bedrolls and settled their saddles at one end to use as a pillow. She looked around at the circle they were making around the campfire. Coosie and Buddy were on the east side with the foot of their bedrolls toward the fire. The chuck wagon was on the south, and the O’Donnell cousins were lined up on the west. Dewar had rolled out his bed under a weeping willow at the edge of the gully on the north side of the camp.
    The aroma of whatever Coosie was cooking caught up in the evening breeze and floated right to Haley’s nose. According to what she’d overheard the guys talking about, they were only a couple of miles south of Ryan. She pushed her hat back and looked toward the west into the setting sun. Was it really the twenty-first century? She felt as if crawling up on Apache’s back had triggered a time lapse. She had settled into the saddle and in that instant, she was suddenly thrown backwards more than a hundred years. Should that be a tagline for the reality show? Can today’s people endure what their ancestors did right after the Civil War?
    She heard a rumbling off to the west and squinted into the setting sun. She didn’t see a single cloud, so where was the thunder coming from?
    “It’s not thunder. It’s the trains traveling north and south on the tracks parallel to Highway 81,” Dewar said.
    How had he known what she was thinking? Lord, if he could read her mind, she ought to put a hood over her head with only slits to see through.
    “Sounds like thunder,” she said.
    “Sure does. Made me check for lightning too.”
    Thank God! She wasn’t looking forward to a hood, and yet there was no way she could control her crazy thoughts.
    She nodded. Day one of thirty was finished. She wondered what the reality crew would do with that first day. Would they all be moaning and groaning about sore butt muscles and legs that didn’t want to straighten out? She tried to imagine the contestants going