The Calamity Janes: Cassie & Karen: Do You Take This Rebel?\Courting the Enemy by Sherryl Woods

Author:Sherryl Woods
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIRA Books
Published: 2015-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

2

Grady hadn’t expected Karen Hanson to be as stubborn or as foolish as her husband. After the funeral he’d made a few calls to test the waters, but he had deliberately waited six months before going to see her. He’d wanted to give her time to see just how difficult her life was going to be. He’d guessed that by now she would be eager to get rid of a ranch that was clearly draining whatever reserves of cash she had. Obviously he’d misjudged her. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

More disconcerting than the discovery that she wasn’t going to be a pushover was the realization that she got to him. Those big blue eyes of hers had been swimming with tears when she’d opened the door. Her flushed cheeks had been streaked with them. Her lips had looked soft...and disturbingly kissable. He’d had an almost irresistible urge to gather her in his arms and offer comfort. For a hard man with little sympathy for anyone, it had been an uncharacteristic reaction that made him uneasy.

He grinned as he imagined her reaction to that. If he’d even tried to touch her, no matter how innocently, she probably would have grabbed an umbrella from the stand by the door and clobbered him with it.

Even so, he hadn’t been able to shake that image of lost vulnerability. A lot of women who worked ranches side by side with their husbands grew hard, their muscles well formed, their skin burnished bronze by the sun. By contrast, Karen Hanson’s body was soft and feminine, her skin as pale as milk. The thought of that changing because she had to struggle to keep her ranch afloat bothered him for reasons that went beyond her refusal to give in and sell out to him.

He couldn’t help wondering what drove a woman like Karen Hanson. Well...loyalty to her husband, for one thing. There was no question about that. Pride. Stubbornness. He sighed. He was back to that again. It was hard to fight with someone who’d dug in her heels in defiance of logic.

But what did she long for beyond the travel that those brochures implied? In his experience most women wanted love, a family, the things he hadn’t had time for in his own life. Some wanted a meal ticket. Some had a mile-wide independent streak, needing little more than the occasional companionship of a man to make them content. Those were the ones who appealed to Grady. He had so many family obligations to the past, he didn’t have time to think about the future.

He tried to fit Karen Hanson into a tidy little niche, but she wouldn’t stay put. She was independent, no doubt about it, but her determination to fight her husband’s old battles said a lot about how she felt about family. Ironically, that very loyalty, every bit as strong as his own commitment to his ancestors, was likely to stand in his way.

He had derided himself on the trip home for trying to analyze the woman based on a half-hour meeting that had been rife with tension.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.