Billion Dollar Cowboy Read Online Free

her.
    She leaned across the seat and looked at the chart. “Know what? It’s what I always order. Don’t they have those flavors?”
    “I heard the lady, and for you?” the teenager asked from the other side of the window.
    “The same,” he said.
    “You are kidding, right?” Laura said.
    “I swear it’s what I always get. Cherry on one side, grape on the other, and a thin strip of banana in the middle.”
    He was onto her and she wouldn’t get away with it. She and her sister had cooked up something and dragged poor old Andy into the middle of it. There was no better way to get suckered into a first-class con than inviting it to come live in the house.
    “So where to now?” he asked.
    “To the school yard to eat them while we swing,” she said.
    Yes, sir, that girl had done her homework.
    Laura was cute as a bug’s ear and as unimposing as a child with those thick glasses and her big blue eyes, but there was no way that it was coincidence that she ate the same flavor snow cone as he did or that she liked to sit on the school yard swings while she did.
    He drove to the elementary school and parked in the lot beside the playground, got out of the truck, and was rounding the backside of it when she opened her own door. She slurped up a mouthful of cherry syrup from the side of the cone-shaped paper cup and headed toward the swings.
    Her lips and tongue were stained bright red from the cherry syrup. Colton kept stealing glances toward her full mouth after they’d sat down on the swings. Would they be warm and inviting or cold as the snow cone?
    “I love rainbow snow cones even better than ice cream, and I really, really love homemade banana ice cream,” she said.
    “Aha, and I didn’t even ask what your favorite dessert is.”
    “That’s not my favorite dessert. It’s just something I like.”
    “I’d ask you the question, but then you’d want to ask one, right?”
    She nodded. “Tit for tat.”
    “So you worked on a ranch, did you?”
    “I lived on one until I was eighteen,” she answered. “Now I get to ask one. Why are you asking?”
    “Just thought that when Andy gets caught up that you might drive a tractor or whatever else needs done. There’s always room for extra help during the summer and after this month the computer business slows down a little,” he said.
    He waited for her reaction, expecting her to stutter and stammer her way around the fact that she didn’t know a blessed thing about real ranch work. Sure, Andy said that she’d lived on a ranch with her great-aunt, but that didn’t mean she’d done any work there.
    “Sure. I’ll do whatever needs to be done until I can get Andy paid,” she said. “It’s just like riding a bicycle. It all comes back to a person. I kind of like getting outside to work.” Her tongue was turning purple now that she was working on the grape side.
    “I’ll talk to Andy. He’s been a lifesaver even when the women started hounding me. Guess a billionaire sounds better to gold diggers than a plain old millionaire.” Using the straw/spoon combination, he shoveled a bite of pure banana into his mouth. “I just want to go to the feed store without worrying about a paternity suit. He said that he was working on a plan to help me out, but he didn’t want to tell me the details just yet. I just hope he’s not sending off to Russia to buy me a wife from one of those places you hear about on the Internet.”
    She smiled. “Is it really that bad?”
    “Worse.”
    She giggled. “What would you do if he did?”
    “Fire his sorry ass. That’s where I draw the line. You don’t buy people and I sure don’t want a woman that I didn’t pick out or one that I can’t understand.” He laughed with her.
    She looked so danged cute with a purple tongue and cherry red lips.
    “Andy wouldn’t do that for real anyway. I was just joking,” Colton said.
    “You must feel better,” she said.
    She pushed out of the swing and carried her empty paper cone