HOT WESTMORELAND NIGHTS
BRENDA JACKSON
SCANDALISING THE CEO
KATHERINE GARBERA
MILLS & BOON
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HOT WESTMORELAND NIGHTS
BRENDA JACKSON
“When I get around to kissing you, I’ll feel better knowing your mouth doesn’t belong to any other man. Legally or otherwise.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she opened her mouth, probably to tell him just where he could take his own mouth—legally or otherwise—but instead of saying anything right then, she just clamped her lips together.
He chuckled. “Tightening those lips shut won’t keep me from a kiss, if that’s what I want to do, Chloe.”
Chloe folded her arms across her chest. “Is there a reason for this madness?”
“Is that what this is? Madness?” he asked.
She lifted her chin and glared at him. “You got another name for it?”
“What about hunger?“
About the Author
BRENDA JACKSON is a die “heart” romantic who married her childhood sweetheart and still proudly wears the “going steady” ring he gave her when she was fifteen. Because she’s always believed in the power of love, Brenda’s stories always have happy endings. In her reallife love story, Brenda and her husband of thirty-six years live in Jacksonville, Florida, and have two sons.
A New York Times bestselling author of more than fifty romance titles, Brenda is a recent retiree who worked thirty-seven years in management at a major insurance company. She divides her time between family, writing and traveling with Gerald. You may write to Brenda at PO Box 28267, Jacksonville, Florida 32226, USA, by e-mail at [email protected] or visit her website at www.brendajackson.net.
To the love of my life, Gerald Jackson, Sr.
To all the members of the Brenda Jackson Book Club. You are a very special group and I appreciate each and every one of you!
To Val Manning of Rancho Terre Norte in Colorado for assisting my research on sheep ranching. You were simply wonderful.
“Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.”
—Proverbs 16:24
Dear Reader,
Family is important to me and I love writing about the love and escapades that go on within a family structure. Can you imagine being in your middle twenties and helping a cousin barely a year older than you to raise your other young family members—all thirteen of them?
You’ve met Dillon Westmoreland in Westmoreland’s Way. The second oldest of the Denver clan is Ramsey, a man who doesn’t have marriage or love on his mind. Ramsey’s only ambition is to make his sheep-ranching business a success. At least that was his only ambition until he met Chloe Burton. Now he’s faced with something he thought could not happen to him, and that was the possibility of falling in love.
And Chloe has her own agenda, which doesn’t include a serious involvement with Ramsey. She’s done the serious thing with a man and it left her deciding it wasn’t worth the trouble. Ramsey becomes a challenge to her peace of mind.
I hope that you find Ramsey and Chloe’s story a very special one, and in the coming months I look forward to venturing into the lives of those other Westmorelands, as well.
Happy reading!
Brenda Jackson
Prologue
Chloe Burton pressed her face to the windowpane as she watched the man sprint across the street. Her heart began pounding in her chest. He had to be, without a doubt, the most handsome man she’d ever seen.
She stared as he stopped to talk to another man in front of a feed store. He was tall, dark and every inch of sexy from the Stetson he wore on his head to the well-worn leather boots on his feet. And from the way his jeans and western shirt fit his body, it was quite obvious he possessed powerful legs, strong arms, taut abs, tight buns and broad muscular shoulders. He had everything it took to separate the men from the boys.
And when he pushed back his hat, she saw dark eyes and a medium skin tone. Then she looked at his mouth and she couldn’t help licking her lips at the sight of his. His lips were full, firm and luscious. She could imagine those lips and his mouth doing other things.
Just looking at him was enough to corrupt a woman’s mind, she thought. Even from this distance, her body felt flushed, hot and unsettled. Nothing like this had ever happened to her while ogling a man in all her twenty-eight years.
Actually, over the past year the only male who had gotten her time and attention had been her e-mail. And that was mainly because her last relationship with Daren Fulbright had been totally unsatisfying, a complete waste of the year she’d put into it, and she was in no hurry to get into another. No doubt there were some who thought she’d given up on love much too quickly, and perhaps that was true since these days she much preferred curling up with a good book during her free time than with someone of the opposite sex. And now, here she was practically drooling at just the sight of a man. He might be major eye candy, but the man was a complete stranger to her. Even so, the way he was standing with both hands in his jeans pockets, legs braced apart, was a pose she would carry to her dreams.
And he was smiling, evidently enjoying his conversation. He had dimples, incredibly sexy dimples in not one but both cheeks.
“What are you staring at, Clo?”
Chloe nearly jumped. She’d forgotten she had a lunch date. In fact she had forgotten everything once her sights had landed on the sexy man across the street. She glanced over the table at her best friend from college, Lucia Conyers.
“Take a look at that man across the street in the blue shirt, Lucia, and tell me what you see. Would he not be perfect for Denver’s first issue of Simply Irresistible or what?” Chloe asked with so much excitement in her voice she almost couldn’t stand it.
Chloe was the owner of Simply Irresistible, a magazine for today’s up-and-coming woman. The magazine had started out as a regional publication in the southeast, but had expanded to a national audience during the past few years. By far the magazine’s most popular edition was the annual “Irresistible Man” issue. The feature included a cover shoot and an in-depth