Taming Rafe Read Online Free Page A

suite and into the elevator, she felt the effects of the painkiller start to hit, the bludgeoning in her brain subside. With it came a surreal calm, the sense that she wasn’t really connected to this moment but was somewhere else. Maybe on Grandfather’s yacht, smelling the briny surf. Or better yet, that place in her childhood dreams where she found herself more and more lately—lost in Montana, riding horseback, the wind at her back, the smell of wildflowers beckoning her to freedom.
    But that serene life was about as likely to happen as a longhorn steer charging through the lobby of the Breckenridge Hotel and taking a bath in the center fountain.
    The picture made her smile.
    Please, Lord, make this night successful. For Eva. For kids like Carlos.
    The elevator doors opened, and she inclined her head to the applause that greeted her from her assembled guests in the lobby. Bradley stepped forward and took her hand, and she grasped it, grateful. Possibly even happy. Definitely happy. Bradley looked resplendent in his tuxedo as he tucked her hand in the crook of his arm.
    Yes, tonight had the makings of the perfect evening.

    John Kincaid stared at the blinking light of his answering machine and knew that in two weeks life as he knew it would end. He pushed Play. The voice detailed the time and place everything would change, and a cold sweat trickled down his spine.
    He’d always anticipated this day. Especially with the string of good fortune he’d experienced over the past few years. However, with the good came the compromises, the secrets.
    John sat down in his leather chair and drummed his fingers on the glass-topped desk, staring at the picture of his father, the late John Senior.
    “You’ll always be a rancher, Son. Get that through your head.”
    But John refused to end up like his father.
    He smiled and slowly lowered the picture facedown. Then he opened the desk drawer and pulled out a small velvet box. Opening it, he stared a long time at the simple brilliant-cut solitaire diamond in a white gold setting. He’d had it for years, just tucked away in the drawer, waiting for the right words. For a man whose life revolved around words, the task seemed idiotically impossible. Will you marry me ? Simple enough, but the first and only time he’d asked, Lolly had shaken her head and run off crying.
    If that didn’t scream a big no, he didn’t know what did. Since then, she hadn’t breathed a clue as to why. Being a Montana man, a rancher, and patient at heart, John didn’t push. Obviously, he’d have to find a different set of words if he hoped for a yes.
    John took out the ring and slipped it over his pinkie, holding it in the light and imagining what it might look like on Lolly’s long, elegant ring finger. He closed his eyes and let her image fill his thoughts—her playful smile, the way her dishwater blonde hair spilled over her shoulders, the twinkle in her hazel eyes. For all Lolly’s charm and flirtation, she still seemed a mystery to him. As if her life had started the day she arrived in Phillips, a twenty-year-old wanderer.
    He’d watched her that day from his pickup in the feed store parking lot, the wind catching her hair, dust kicking up around her blue jeans, her hands in her back pockets as she stared at the vacant lot on the corner. Right then, something happened insidehis chest. Not a lightning bolt zinging him with love at first sight but a soft and breathtaking peace that someday, if he bided his time, she’d be his wife.
    Maybe this time when he asked, she’d say yes. Please, God.
    John swallowed back the rush of too many emotions and closed the box. It felt small and soft in his work-worn hand. Sort of like his dreams.
    But the blinking light on the machine told him that some dreams came true. And when they did, nothing would ever be the same again.

    Sitting in his pickup, staring at himself—all twenty feet of glowing hot neon in the center of Times Square—Rafe Noble realized