The Ultimate Texas Bachelor. Cathy Gillen Thacker

he shot back. “We would have gotten around to it eventually.”

      She smirked, not about to let him get away with that whopper. “How long have you been living out here?” she asked.

      He stepped toward her. “We closed on the property two weeks ago.”

      She felt a completely uncalled-for fluttering in her middle. “And continued to live in this chaos?”

      He poked the brim of his cowboy hat up with maddening nonchalance. “Why not? Doesn’t bother me any more than armadillos, field mice, snakes and porcupines do.” He lifted a brow. “Course if you’re not comfortable coming face-to-face with wild animals, you could always head on back to Dallas.”

      That sounded like a dare. Lainey stepped toward him this time, not caring that her move left them mere inches apart. “Excuse me?” She angled her head up at him.

      “This is a ranch, you know.” He leaned toward her ear and whispered conspiratorially, “Animals of all sorts are supposed to be all over the place.”

      It was the stalking males that worried Lainey.

      “I know where I am, thank you very much!” Not that she would ever let herself fall prey to someone as demonstrably fickle as Brad McCabe. Even if she had always wondered just how ardently he could kiss….

      “Good.” He paused, gave her a self-assured, faintly baiting look. “’Cause for a moment there, you bein’ so surprised and all, I was beginning to wonder just how much you remembered about life out in rural Texas.”

      “Enough,” she replied sweetly, “to know a great big pile of horse bucky when I see or hear it.”

      “Excuse me?” He mocked her earlier reprimand to a tee.

      Finally, for Lainey, everything fell into place. “I know what you’ve done here, Brad McCabe. And I am not amused,” she told him heatedly. “Not in the least!”

      Chapter Three

      Well, that was good, Brad thought with no small trace of irony, because he sure as heck didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

      “You planted those armadillos in here to chase me away!” Lainey declared with an indignant toss of her head.

      “Now why would I go and do a darn fool thing like that?” he demanded right back, furious at being once again erroneously suspected of being the bad guy, and at the same time amused because she was so far off track in her assumption.

      Lainey ran a hand through her tousled blond hair, pushing it off her face. “You made it abundantly clear yesterday afternoon that you did not want me here!”

      Brad adapted a no-nonsense stance, legs braced apart, arms folded in front of him. He figured he would let her make a fool of herself first, then set her straight. “So?”

      Lainey’s green eyes glimmered hotly. “So I accepted Lewis’s job offer anyway.”

      Brad released an exasperated breath. “An action I am sure you will quickly come to regret, if you haven’t done so already.”

      “Well, these silly little hijinks of yours are not going to work!” She stomped closer yet.

      Brad hooked his thumbs through the belt loops on either side of his fly and rocked back on his heels. “Sure about that?”

      “I have just as much right to work on this ranch as anyone else.”

      “Maybe so. But can you handle it?” Brad stepped closer, purposefully invading her space, not stopping until he had backed her against the sideboard in the center of the room. “Can you handle me?” Not sure why he had started this, except somebody had to set her straight, Brad flattened a hand on either side of her, caging her between his arms, and leaned in close. “You know my rep.” He let his glance drift lazily over her softly parted lips before returning, ever so deliberately, to her eyes. “I’m bad news with all the ladies.”

      To Brad’s surprise and grudging respect, Lainey inhaled deeply and stoically stood her ground. “A fact that makes no difference whatsoever to me, since I am a widow.”

      And thereby off the market—perhaps forever—in her estimation. Not in Brad’s. Lainey may well have felt she had already been there, done that, but he hadn’t. And being around Lainey, even for a short period of time, had him thinking all sorts of crazy things. Like what it would be like to have her in his bed. Or his life. And not as a thorn in his side. But as a lover, confidante, friend.

      Not that this was even a possibility, he reminded himself sternly.

      He was in the business of getting her out of here as soon as possible. Before he got in over his head and she got hurt.

      “Well, yee-haw.”

      She lifted a brow in wordless inquiry, her cheeks turning an even deeper pink.

      He smirked in a way meant to infuriate. “If memory serves, a lot of young widows I’ve come across in this town have been hot to trot.” And he was reputed to be randy as could be. If that combination didn’t send her running…and get her safely and quickly off the Lazy M Ranch…he wasn’t sure what would.

      Unfortunately, Lainey wasn’t taking his hint.

      She lifted her chin, ice in her smile. “I am not in the least bit sex-starved, I assure you, Brad McCabe.”

      He felt a stab of jealousy as unexpected as it was intense. He hadn’t heard anything about Lainey having a boyfriend. Nor had she mentioned that as a potential problem yesterday when Lewis had been talking to her about moving to the ranch for a couple of weeks—or longer. Surely if there was a man in Lainey’s life important enough for her to bed, she would have wanted to run the possibility of her moving out here with “the most loathed bachelor in America” with her beloved, if only as a courtesy. Or, at the very least, asked Lewis if it would be all right if she had “visitors”—meaning a territory-staking male friend—at the ranch to see her while she was here. Instead, the only person she had seemed concerned enough about to mention was her eight-year-old son. Who was, coincidentally, also the person in her life most likely to prevent her from kicking up her heels and having a little fun.

      Somehow, looking at the stiff way in which she was holding herself, and the defenses that were in high gear, Brad didn’t think Lainey had been kissed in a good long while. Too long, actually.

      “Yeah?” He leaned in even closer and lowered his mouth to hers, prepared to have a little fun. “Well, let’s just put that declaration to the test.”

      Lainey hadn’t thought Brad was really going to kiss her. She’d thought he was only trying to scare her off the ranch, and out of his way, by pretending to put the moves on her. But there was nothing feigned about the feel of his lips pressing against hers. Nothing fabricated about her reaction to the imprint of his tall, strong body pressed warmly against hers.

      She hadn’t felt this alive, this much a woman, since…well, she couldn’t remember when. And though she repeatedly told herself she really had to stop this now, with every shift in pressure of his warm wonderful lips, every stroke and thrust and parry of his tongue, she felt herself sliding deeper and deeper into the mystery that was him. And heaven only knows what might have happened next, had she not heard a discreet feminine exclamation of dismay, and a throat clearing—loudly—behind them.

      Lainey and Brad broke apart at the same time, and turned in the direction of the sound. Right away, Lainey recognized Brad’s uncle, Travis McCabe, and his wife, Annie. The handsome couple had both owned ranches before they married some fifteen years ago—since then, the Rocking M Cattle Ranch and the Triple Diamond had been combined.

      “Lainey! I don’t know if you remember me,” Annie Pierce McCabe said, stepping forward, looking much younger than her forty-five years.

      They had never been friends—there was too much of an age difference—but Lainey had admired the moxie