Joan Johnston - Texas Brides - The Rancher and the Runaway Bride & The Bluest Eyes in Texas

“What do you mean, old man?”

“Knew you had too tight a rein on that little filly. Figured she had too much spirit to stay in them fences you set up to hold her in.”

“It was for her own good!”

Charlie shook his head. “Did it as much for yourself as for her. Knowin’ your ma like you did, it’s no wonder you’d want to keep your sister close. Prob’ly fearful she’d take after your ma, steppin’ out on your pa like she did and—”

“Leave Mother out of this. What she did has nothing to do with the way I’ve treated Tate.”

Charlie tightened the beaded rawhide thong that held one of his long braids, but said nothing.

Garth scowled. “I can see there’s no sense arguing with a stone wall. I’m going after Tate, and I’m going to bring her back. This time she’ll stay put!”

Garth and Faron searched canyons and mesas, ridges and gullies on their northwest Texas ranch, but not a sign did they find of their sister on Hawk’s Way.

It was Charlie One Horse who discovered that the old ’51 Chevy pickup, the one with the rusty radiator and the skipping carburetor, was missing from the barn where it was stored.

Another check of Tate’s room revealed that her underwear drawer was empty, that her brush and comb and toothpaste were gone, and that several of her favorite T-shirts and jeans had also been packed.

By sunset, the truth could not be denied. At the age of twenty-three, Tate Whitelaw had run away from home.

ADAM PHILIPS NORMALLY DIDN’T stop to pick up hitchhikers. But there was no way he could drive past the woman sitting on the front fender of a ’51 Chevy pickup, its hood raised and its radiator steaming, her thumb outstretched to bum a ride. He pulled his late-model truck up behind her and put on his Stetson as he stepped out into the heat of a south Texas midsummer afternoon.

She was wearing form-fitting jeans and an off-the-shoulder peasant blouse that exposed a lush female figure. But the heart-shaped face, with its huge hazel eyes and wide mouth framed by breeze-ruffled, short-cropped black hair, was innocence itself. He was stunned by her beauty and appalled at her youth. What was this female doing all alone on an isolated stretch of southwest Texas highway in an old rattletrap truck?

She beamed a trusting smile at him, and he felt his heart do a flipflop. She slipped off the rusty fender and lazily sauntered toward him. He felt his groin tighten with desire and scowled. She stopped in her tracks. About time she thought to be wary! Adam was all too conscious of the dangers a stranger presented to a young woman alone. Grim-lipped, he strode the short distance between the two vehicles.

Tate had been so relieved to see someone show up on the deserted rural route that the danger of the situation didn’t immediately occur to her. She got only a glimpse of wavy blond hair and striking blue eyes before her rescuer had slipped on a Stetson that put his face in shadow.

He was broad-shouldered and lean-hipped, with a stride that ate up the distance between the two trucks. It was a fair assumption, from his dusty boots, worn jeans and sweat-stained Western shirt, that he was a working cowboy. Tate saw no reason to suspect he meant her any harm.

But instead of a pleasant “May I help you?” the first words out of his mouth were, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Tate was alarmed by the animosity in the stranger’s voice and frightened by the intensity of his stare. But his attitude was so similar to what she had recently gone through with her brothers that she lifted her chin and retorted, “Hitching a ride back to the nearest gas station. In case you hadn’t noticed, my truck’s broken down.”

The scowl deepened but he said, “Get in my pickup.”

Tate had only taken two steps when the tall cowboy grabbed her arm and pulled her up short.

“Aren’t you going to ask anything about me? Don’t you want to know who I am?”

By now Tate was more irritated than frightened. “A Good Samaritan with a bad temper!” she retorted. “Do I need to know more?”

Adam opened his mouth to make a retort, took one look at the mutinous expression on the young woman’s face, and shut it again. Instead he dragged her unceremoniously to the passenger’s side of his long-bed pickup, opened the door, shoved her inside, and slammed it closed after her.

“My bag! It’s in the back end of the Chevy,” Tate yelped.

Adam stalked back to the rattletrap Chevy, snagged the duffel bag from the rusted-out truck bed and slung it into the back of his pickup.

Woman was too damned trusting for her own good! he thought. Her acid tongue wouldn’t have been much help to her if he had been the kind of villain who preyed on stranded women. Which he wasn’t. Lucky for her!

Tate didn’t consider herself at all lucky. She recognized the flat-lipped expression on her Good Samaritan’s face. He might have rescued her, all right, but he wasn’t happy about it. The deep crevices formed around his mouth by his frown and the webbed lines at the edges of his eyes had her guessing his age at thirty-five or thirty-six—the same as her eldest brother Garth. The last thing she needed was another keeper!

She sat back with her arms crossed and stared out the window as they drove past rolling prairie. She thought back to the night two weeks ago when she had decided to leave Hawk’s Way.

Her escape from her brothers, while apparently sudden, hadn’t been completely without direction. She had taken several ranch journals containing advertisements from outfits all over Texas looking for expert help and headed south. However, Tate soon discovered that not one rancher was interested in hiring a woman, especially one without references, as either foreman or ranch manager.

To confound her problems, the ancient pickup she had taken from the barn was in worse shape than she had thought. It had left her stranded miles from the Lazy S—the last ranch on her list and her last hope for a job in ranch management.

“Do you know where the Lazy S is?” she asked.

Adam started at the sound of her voice. “I expect I could find it. Why?”

“I understand they’re looking for a ranch manager. I intend to apply for the job.”

“You’re just a kid!”

The cowboy could have said nothing more likely to raise Tate’s neck hairs. “For your information, I’m twenty-three and a fully grown woman!”

Adam couldn’t argue with that. He had a pretty good view of the creamy rise of her breasts at the frilly gathered edge of her blouse. “What do you know about ranching?” he asked.

“I was raised on a ranch, Hawk’s Way, and—” She stopped abruptly, realizing that she had revealed more than she had intended to this stranger. Tate hadn’t used her own last name to apply for any jobs, knowing that if she did her brothers would be able to hunt her down and drag her back home. “I hope you’ll keep that to yourself,” she said.

Adam raised an inquiring brow that met such a gamine smile that his heart did that disturbing flipflop again.

“You see,” Tate said, “the truth is, I’ve run away from home.”

Adam snorted. “Aren’t you a little old for that?”

Tate’s lips curled ruefully. “I suppose so. But my brothers just wouldn’t let me live! I mean, they watched every breath in and out of my body.”

Adam found the thought rather intriguing himself.

“My brothers are a little overprotective, you see. I had to run away if I was ever going to meet the right man and fall in love and have children.”

“Sounds like you could do that better at home than traipsing around the countryside,” Adam observed.

“You don’t know my older brothers! They want to wrap me in cotton batting and keep me safe. Safe, ha! What they mean is, they want to keep me a virgin forever.”