4e5-59d0-b5d6-61234b29d3b5">
He promised he’d stay away…but he can’t resist keeping her close
Setting rules and following them to the letter is part of cowboy Nick Haskins’s code. It keeps life uncomplicated, and his heart intact. The love he had for his high school sweetheart is ashes in the wind, but he’s not counting on her twin, Lindsay Gavin, to show up on his ranch—or in his dreams.
Lindsay’s got a code of her own: hands off her sister’s guy. But now that Nick is free to share his bunkhouse and his bed, she can’t help but take what he’s offering. There’s no harm in satisfying years worth of curiosity. There’s no shame in indulging in the sexiest fun of her life. Only, when Nick and Lindsay let desire set fire to the rules, will they both end up getting burned?
USA TODAY bestselling author DELORES FOSSEN has had more than seventy-five novels published, with millions of copies of her books in print worldwide. She’s received the Booksellers’ Best Award and the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Award, and was a finalist for the prestigious RITA® Award. In addition, she’s had nearly a hundred short stories and articles published in national magazines. Married to an air force colonel, Delores is the mother of four children and has lived in England and all over the United States. She’s had a variety of careers and jobs: an air force captain, a special-ed teacher and a rehab counselor. None was as fun or challenging as the time she spent as a stay-at-home mom. You can get updates about Delores’s books or contact her through her website at www.deloresfossen.com.
Cowboy Blues
Delores Fossen
ISBN: 978-1-474-08326-3
COWBOY BLUES
© 2018 Delores Fossen
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
Contents
NICK HASKINS HEARD the sounds in the bunkhouse the moment he stepped from the shower. Sounds of footsteps and somebody moving around on the creaky hardwood floor in the adjacent room.
Hell’s bells.
He checked the time, a little past 10:00 p.m., and he scowled. No one else should be here now that the other hands had moved to the new bunkhouse on the west side of the Granger Ranch. And if a straggler had returned for any reason, Nick darn sure wasn’t in the mood for company or an interruption of any sort.
Man, he hurt.
He had a bruise on his ribs where a temperamental gelding that he’d been training had thrown him, and it was throbbing. Almost as bad, his head was trying to compete for the award of the body part with the most pain. Nick figured both his head and side were in a dead heat for that award, because they caused him to wince and grunt every time he moved.
Doing more of that wincing/grunting, Nick wrapped the towel around himself and came out of the bathroom so he could make quick work of getting rid of whoever was clomping around in the other room. But he froze in the doorway when he looked in the bunkroom and saw the butt. Not one of the hands or even one of his bosses—they were all men.
This butt belonged to a woman.
She was facing away from him, leaning down over one of the beds, which meant all he could see of her was her back, butt and legs. She was wearing jeans that framed the part of her body that had grabbed on to his attention and was holding it hostage. Of course, anyone would have gotten his attention at this point, because no one should have been in there.
With annoyance sliding through him, Nick cleared his throat to get her attention. And he got it all right. She turned, not a whirling motion of someone who’d just been startled, but slow and easy movements as if she’d expected the throat clearing.
And expected him.
Nick got an instant jolt of recognition. He knew that face, and for just a split second he thought it was Carol Ann Gavin, his old high school girlfriend. However, when she cocked her head