Her Rodeo Rancher by M. K. Stelmack

Author:M. K. Stelmack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-03-11T22:23:06+00:00

* * *

THE CRACKS OF thunder barely registered above the music from the band. Will would check the rain gauge outside the house before going to sleep tonight. Every quarter inch would help the hay, though it wouldn’t help the odds of the ride happening. Already rained out for this evening, it wasn’t likely to happen tomorrow, the last day of the rodeo.

Krista might get her way yet. She was tucked against his side, his arm around her waist, studying the dance moves of a white-haired couple. Will recognized them. They lived and breathed the rodeos, and probably spent the winters practicing their dance moves. Krista was shuffling through the steps. She’d disappeared after they’d kissed, then reappeared for the dance in a full rodeo getup of skirt and boots but with a flowered shirt and a fake flower in her hair. She looked half Hawaiian, half cowboy. On her, it worked.

“Do you want to dance?” He nearly yelled in her ear, the throb of the two-step rising up from the floorboards into his boots.

She shook her head, her curled hair grazing her bare shoulders. His fingers itched to tug a curl and see if it would spring back into place. “Not unless you’re in for major embarrassment. Those two should run a studio.”

He decided to grow up a bit, and dragged his attention off her hair. “They are pretty serious. They have their own YouTube channel.”

“Really? Wait. You know them?”

“Their names. And we’ve spoken. They’re rodeo regulars. You register faces first and then put names to the faces. It’s a circuit for a reason.”

Krista surveyed the room and said, her breath stroking his ear, “So, how many people do you know here?”

“I’d say a good third. Not all by name necessarily but enough to say hello to.”

“In that case,” she said directly to his face, close enough for him to read her lips, “why haven’t you done the rounds with me?”

Because he didn’t want to share Krista with anybody, not when they’d only become a couple about five hours ago. They were still in this gray zone, where to the outside world they were supposed to be pretending to be a couple but in the private world really were together. The public and private were theoretically the same, but Will still felt not quite right about it all, like a gate latch that hadn’t fully hooked into place.

Until then—he tightened his arm around Krista’s waist—he wanted to keep her to himself as much as possible. “I thought you’d prefer not to have to go through the motions with people you don’t know.”

Her lips grazed his ear this time when she spoke and he felt it right down to his boots. She could find a way to tickle his toes without touching them. “Those are exactly the kind of people I want to meet. A stranger today, a client tomorrow.”

She had a right to push her business, but there ought to be a limit. It was ten at night.

He was about to suggest she close up shop when she tilted her face up to his.

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