Crazy For the Cowboy Read Online Free Page A

don’t start a quest at noon. Anybody knows that. You start at dawn.”
    Travis raised his beer bottle. “To the quest.”
    â€œTo the quest!” Vince leaned over and tapped Travis’s bottle with his. “Mac? You in?”
    Mac grimaced and raised his glass with a decided lack of enthusiasm. “To the quest.”
    From the direction of Georgie’s table came a snort of disgust. Well, let her be disgusted. He had the horses reserved and come morning, they’d head out. He couldn’t think of any way she could stop them.
    *   *   *
    The impromptu dance with Mac had flustered Georgie. She wasn’t used to being swirled into a dance without warning. Such a thing hadn’t happened to her in years, not since the Double J cowhands had left town.
    Her heart continued to race after Mac returned her to her seat and her half-finished meal. Mac didn’t interest her, either. None of them did. But she’d forgotten how lovely it was to be caught up in strong arms and whisked around the floor, even without the benefit of music.
    She’d forgotten how much she’d enjoyed the company of virile men, too. These three cowboys weren’t her cup of tea, not by a long shot, but they certainly were . . . male. Exceedingly so. She gulped her wine.
    What a fine mess she’d created for herself. By staying in Bickford and attempting to help save the town from total ruin, she’d suppressed hormonal urges that any typical twenty-eight-year-old woman would welcome. Doing that had been easy when no attractive, single men were in the vicinity.
    When the cowboys left town Sunday night, the number of single guys her age would drop to zero once again. She’d been so busy worrying about the store and the town that she hadn’t stopped to think that if things continued as they were, she could end up dateless for some time to come. She was willing to sacrifice a lot for the future of Bickford, but she hadn’t intended to sacrifice her sex life.
    Anastasia didn’t have anybody to date in Bickford, either, but she didn’t seem all that concerned about it. Georgie’s stepmother, Evelyn, wouldn’t want Anastasia to end up with someone from Bickford, anyway. She’d been trying to convince Anastasia to go live with Charmaine in Dallas so they could both find wealthy husbands, but Anastasia had resisted the plan.
    Despite her art school training, she seemed content to help out at the store. Unfortunately she was such a dreamer that Georgie hesitated to leave her alone there. She’d once flooded the back room when she’d forgotten about the water running in the sink, and another time she’d almost burned the place down with a scented candle she’d set under a hand towel.
    Georgie had finished her dinner and was about to leave when Clyde Abbott, the eightysomething mayor of Bickford and a dear friend, walked into the saloon. If she’d been paying attention to the time, she would have expected him. He was always the first to arrive for the nightly poker game.
    Short and plump, he’d been married to his wife, Inez, for sixty years. She was thin and a good six inches taller than Clyde. They adored each other and attributed their happy marriage to giving each other plenty of space. Clyde played poker with his cronies every night and Inez watched crime drama on TV.
    Clyde surveyed the three men sitting at the bar before making his way over to Georgie’s table and pulling out a chair. “Those boys look familiar,” he said in a low voice. “Did they work at the Double J?”
    Georgie nodded and quietly gave him a rundown. Clyde was the only member of the council besides her who wasn’t partially deaf. That allowed them to talk about the newcomers without being heard. She filled him in on the cowboys’ plan to round up the Ghost and Ike’s belief that they’d be too hungover to manage it.
    Clyde