Cowboy's Kiss Read Online Free Page A

it wasn’t yet another wrong turn she was taking with both their lives.
    But even as she worried about it and cursed Jackson Heller for making this as difficult as he possibly could, she also wondered why it was that her recalcitrant mind kept flashing a mental picture of the to-die-for handsome face of that very same man.
    With whom she now shared a home.

Chapter Two
    J ackson was in no better temper when he got up the next morning just before dawn than he had been when he had gone to bed the night before. In fact, after spending more hours mentally rehashing his argument with Ally Brooks than sleeping, he was madder still as he stood in the spray of a steamy shower.
    He had half a mind to post Lady, Go Home signs all through the house. His house. And Linc’s and Beth’s if they ever wanted to come back to live in it. But not some damn Denver woman’s house.
    About two in the morning he had conceded a couple of things. He believed she hadn’t been Shag’s lady friend, because his father just wasn’t the type to play footsy with a woman young enough to be his daughter.
    Which led to Jackson’s second concession—that he might have been out of line to accuse Ally Brooks—or anyone else—of sleeping their way into the old man’s will. Jackson of all people knew that Shag Heller had never in his life done a single thing he hadn’t wanted to do, regardless of what anyone else tried to maneuver or finagle, and no matter what the relationship.
    But it did sound like Shag to try to provide for the woman he’d been involved with for ten years, a woman he’d clearly had feelings for. And barring that, to leave what he had been determined to give her to her daughter.
    Jackson turned off the water, yanked his towel from where it was slung over the shower door and dried off with punishingly angry strokes, too aggravated to feel any pain. Then he threw his towel into the hamper with a vengeance and went into his pitch-dark bedroom, turning on the light near the closet that held his clean shirts.
    He hadn’t been lying when he’d told Ally Brooks he didn’t care that she’d inherited what she had—excluding the ranch. What Shag owned was Shag’s to do with as he pleased, and not Jackson, Linc or Beth had been financially hurt by that fourth piece of the pie being served outside of the family.
    But the ranch, that was something else again.
    It was Jackson’s whole life.
    Linc and Beth had grown to hate the place, probably because of old Shag’s harsh methods when it came to chores. To say he’d been a taskmaster was to soft-soap the reality of it. He’d worked all three of his children twice as hard as any of the ranch hands he was paying for the job, and often in the form of some pretty unreasonable punishments.
    But for some reason Jackson didn’t quite understand, the more he’d worked the place, the more he’d loved it.
    Linc said he had mile-deep roots here and his brother was right. Deeper roots even than old Shag had had.
    Their father had tired of the life. By the time he got Beth off to college, he’d been ready to wheel and deal and concentrate on the business end of things, so he’d turned the place over to Jackson.
    Jackson had been twenty-two then and more than willing to take the reins. And for the past fifteen years there hadn’t been a day he’d regretted it. Not a day he’d been sorry to rise with the sun, work in the heat or the cold, dirty his hands or break his back.
    Beth thought he loved the ranch like a man loved a woman, but he thought it was more the way a man loved his only child. He fed it. He groomed it. He tended to its every need. He put his blood and sweat into it. He sacrificed for it. And never once had he resented it.
    Not even when that sacrifice had nearly ripped his heart out....
    He pulled on his boots, pushing away old memories as he did.
    The point was, this place