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

“Why not, Adam? Is it because I’m not attractive to you?”

“Lord, no! Of course you’re a beautiful woman, but—” Adam groaned as he realized what he had just admitted.

“I am?”

What had those brothers of hers been telling her, Adam wondered, to make her doubt herself like this?

“Is it because I don’t dress like a lady?”

His only objection to the clothes she wore was his reaction to her in them. “Contrary to what you might have heard, clothes don’t make the man—or the woman.”

“Then it must be the fact that I’m a virgin,” she said.

Adam felt himself flushing. “Tate, you just don’t go around talking about things like that.”

“Not even with you?”

“Especially not with me!”

“Why not?”

They were back to that again. He turned her so he had an arm around her shoulder, and began ushering her across the courtyard to her bedroom. “I think it’s time you got out of those wet clothes.”

Tate’s impish smile reappeared. “Would you like to help me?”

“Not on your life!” He opened the sliding glass door and gave her a nudge inside. “I’ll meet you in the office in fifteen minutes and you can show me whatever bookkeeping wonders you’ve accomplished today.” He turned and marched across the courtyard, fighting the urge to look back.

Once she was alone in her room, Tate let the towel drop. She stared at herself in the standing oval mirror in the corner and groaned. She looked like something the cat had dragged in! No wonder Adam hadn’t been interested!

Tate sat down on a wooden chair to pull off her wet boots, then yanked her T-shirt off and struggled with the wet zipper of her jeans. She peeled her silk panties down and quickly began replacing her clothing with an identical wardrobe. All except the wet boots, for which she substituted a pair of beaded Indian moccasins Charlie One Horse had given her for Christmas.

While Tate dressed, she reviewed the events of the past three weeks since she had arrived at the Lazy S. Teasing Adam had begun as a way of making him admit the sexual attraction—and something more—that existed between them. But she had discovered that kidding some folks was like teasing a loaded polecat. The satisfaction was short-lived.

Tate hadn’t been enjoying the game much these days, mainly because she had begun to suffer from the sexually charged situations as much as Adam. The problem was, on her side at least, her heart followed where her hormones led.

She would give anything if Adam was as interested in her as Buck seemed to be. The lean-hipped cowboy had been asking her every day for a week if she would go out with him on Saturday night. Well, maybe she should. Maybe if Adam saw that somebody else found her worth pursuing, he would get the same idea.

Tate had a cheerful smile on her face by the time she joined Adam in his office. He already had the computer on and was perusing the statistics she had input there.

“So what do you think?” she asked, perching herself on the arm of the large swivel chair in which he was sitting.

“It looks good.” Of course his office wasn’t as neat as it had once been. There were half-filled coffee cups amidst the clutter on the desk, and a collection of magazines and a dirty T-shirt decorated the floor. A bridle and several other pieces of tack Tate was fixing were strewn around the room.

But he couldn’t argue with what she had accomplished. Tate had set up a program to handle data on each head of stock, providing a record that would be invaluable in making buying and selling decisions. “You didn’t tell me you knew so much about computers.”

Tate grinned and said, “You didn’t ask.” She leaned across him and began earnestly discussing other ideas she had regarding possible uses of the computer in his business.

He started automatically cleaning the debris from his desk.

“Don’t worry about those,” Tate said, taking a handful of pebbles from him. “Aren’t they pretty? I found them down by the creek.” She scattered them back onto the desk. “I play with them while I’m thinking, sort of like worry beads, you know?”

“Uh-huh.”

Adam forced himself to concentrate on what she was saying, rather than the way her breast was pressed up against his arm. By the time she was done talking about the projects she had in mind, she had shifted position four times. He knew because she had managed to brush some part of his anatomy with some part of hers each time she moved.

Tate was totally oblivious to Adam’s difficulty, because she was having her own problems concentrating on the matters at hand. She was busy planning how she could make Adam sit up and take notice of her by accepting Buck’s invitation to go out tomorrow evening. She just had to make sure that Adam saw her leaving on the date with the auburn-haired cowboy.

Her thoughts must have conjured Buck, because he suddenly appeared at the door to Adam’s office.

“Need you to take a look at that irrigation system to see whether you want it repaired or replaced,” Buck said.

“I’ll be right there,” Adam replied.

Buck had already turned to leave when Tate realized she had the perfect opportunity to let Adam know she was going out with another man. “Oh, Buck.”

Buck turned and the hat came off his head in the same motion. “Yes, ma’am?”

“I’ve decided to take you up on your offer to go dancing tomorrow night.”

Buck’s face split with an engaging grin. “Yes, ma’am! I’ll pick you up at seven o’clock if that’s all right, and we can have some dinner first.”

The thunderous look on Adam’s face was everything Tate could have wished for. “I’ll see you at seven,” she promised.

Buck slipped his hat back on his head and said, “You coming, Boss?”

“In a minute. I’ll catch up to you.”

Adam’s fists landed on his hips as he turned to confront Tate. “What was that all about?”

“Buck asked me to go dancing at Knippa on Saturday night, and I thought it might be fun.”

Adam couldn’t very well forbid her going. As Tate had so pointedly noted, he wasn’t related to her in the least. But he couldn’t help having misgivings, either. There was no telling what Buck Magnesson’s reaction would be if Tate subjected him to the same teasing sensuality that Adam had endured for the past three weeks. If Tate said “Please” Buck was damned likely to say “Thank you” and take what she offered.

Adam suddenly heard himself forbidding his sister Melanie from going out on a date with a boy he had thought a little wild. Heard himself telling Melanie that he knew better than she what was best for her. And remembered the awful consequences of his high-handedness. Adam didn’t have to like the fact that Tate had decided to go out with Buck Magnesson. But if he didn’t want to repeat the mistakes he had made with his younger sister, he had to put up with it.

“Have a good time with Buck tomorrow night,” he said. Then he turned and walked out the door.

Tate frowned at Adam’s back. That wasn’t exactly the reaction she had been hoping for. Where was the jealousy? Where was the demand that she spend her time with him instead? Suddenly Tate wished she had thought things through a little more carefully. Agreeing to date Buck simply to make Adam realize what he was missing wasn’t turning out at all as she had hoped.

She felt a little guilty that she had even considered using Buck to make Adam jealous. But since her plan had failed—quite miserably—she could at least enjoy the evening with Buck with a clear conscience.

Tate had gotten the broken water hose fixed on her ’51 Chevy, and she used the pickup to drive the ninety miles east to San Antonio that afternoon to go shopping. She could have worn jeans to go dancing, but had decided that she owed it to Buck to show up for their date looking her best.