Somebody Like You Read Online Free Page B

won’t be able to rat me out.”
    Sophie laughed. “Or save myself with the information.”
    “Wouldn’t matter.” Annelise chuckled. “You know they always kill the informant even if she talks.”
    “There’s a cheerful thought,” Sophie said. “Be careful.”
    “I will,” Annelise agreed. “Love you.” With that, she snapped her phone shut, removed its battery, and walked downstairs to drop both in the battered trash can on the curb ready for pickup. Then, resolute, she walked up the outside stairs to her new home. Drab and ugly.
    Almost as ugly as Cash’s dog. No pure breed there. Staubach had long, mud-brown hair, one white ear, one brown, a long muzzle, and slightly crossed eyes. She loved him.
    And she loved this town.
    Shocked, she dropped onto the top step and leaned against the railing. A couple of houses down, she heard the excited laugh of a young child mixed with the exuberant yapping of a small dog.
    Who’d have guessed she’d fall in love with either Cash’s clumsy mutt or this quirky town?
    Not her.
    The thing was, nobody recognized her. She was free to be herself, to be judged on who she was deep down inside. Money would have nothing to do with her relationships with the people of Maverick Junction. She was simply another person, not someone to make-nice to because of what she might be able to do for them. They’d either like her or they wouldn’t. But there’d be no phony pretenses.
    Traveling cross-country incognito in her motorcycle helmet, sunglasses, and leathers, no one had given her a second look. She grinned. Well, maybe a few guys, but not because she was a billionaire tycoon’s granddaughter. Their looks had read ‘hot chick’ rather than ‘dollar signs.’
    She’d sat at an outside table and drank a McDonald’s milk shake in Pennsylvania, rode a Ferris wheel at some little county fair in Tennessee, and the paparazzi hadn’t captured a single moment of it. By taking this trip, she’d stumbled on a chance to find herself without a telephoto lens recording her, and she meant to make the most of it.
    She walked into her new eight-by-ten living room and flopped onto the butt-ugly couch to stare up at the dingy, used-to-be-white ceiling. Cripes. Ugly dog, ugly apartment, ugly couch. Was everything in Maverick Junction ugly?
    Cash popped into her head. Cash, with those emerald green eyes fringed with the longest, blackest lashes, that sun-kissed brown hair, a body honed by hard work, and she had her answer.
    No.
    That simple.
    Some things in this blip on the map were flat-out gorgeous.
    And wouldn’t the macho Texas cowboy hate to have that adjective applied to him? She grinned.
    Oh, yeah. But…if the proverbial shoe fit…

Chapter Three
    B oth the shoe and the horse were giving Cash fits. Sweating like a sinner in church under the heavy, protective leather apron, horseshoe nails clamped between his teeth, he bent at the waist. The misty-gray stallion’s front leg braced between his own, he rested the gray’s hoof on his knee. The two-year-old had been sorely neglected by a rancher north of Dallas, and Cash had rescued the rascal.
    This was Shadow’s first shoeing…and might very well be his last, damn it, at least here on Whispering Pines Ranch. He could go barefoot.
    As bad-tempered as Shadow was, though, Cash doubted he’d ever seen a finer piece of horseflesh. He ran a calming hand over the horse’s gleaming flank, then snarled and jerked back as the gray swiveled his head, teeth bared, intent on taking a chunk out of him.
    “You’re gonna be dog food, you do that again,” he mumbled around the nails.
    “Trouble?”
    His stomach did a free fall clear to his toes. That voice, sexy as all get-out, made promises, conjured up thoughts of all sorts of naughty nighttime pastimes. He spit the nails into his hand and forced himself to take a steadying breath before he turned to face his new ranch hand.
    Then he took another as he drank her in. Her dark cloud of hair had