Dawn Atkins - Still Irresistible

Deck pulled Callie close and kissed her. Heat and relief surged through him. It was the same and different at once. Familiar and new. Just as strong, but more certain.

How the hell had this happened? Deck was foggy on exactly what had led to him holding Callie in his arms, taking her soft mouth, but he wasn’t sorry. He’d started it. He knew that. Something about seeing her again, the past so fresh between them.

He’d meant to comfort her, but had lost control, and now her breasts were pressed against his chest, his cock was hard against her belly, and her sweet tongue was in hot pursuit of his own.

He took her ass in both hands, yanking her tight against him. She moaned, trembling as she had all those years ago, but she wrapped her legs around his waist, telling him what she wanted. He felt the hot drive to be inside her, making her come, coming himself.

“Deck,” she said, pulling back. “What are we doing?”

He tried to halt the free fall. “You want to stop?”

“Maybe we should.” She bit her lip, shivered. “But I don’t want to.”

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Dear Reader,

This book means a lot to me. It’s about the healing power of love. Like Callie, I lost my mother at too young an age. Also like her, I tend to run from emotion, instead of facing it head-on. And, as Callie’s high school counselor wisely noted, what you resist, persists.

When she comes home to rescue her father’s guest ranch, Callie faces her fear that she’s guarded her heart so well she no longer has the capacity for deep love. With Deck’s help, she works through that and emerges more open and loving because of it.

Though Deck stayed in town, he, too, put his emotions on hold. Callie helps him open up and risk his heart for a great and healing love.

This book is also about coming home. A city girl who moved a lot, I’ve wondered what it would be like to return to the same small town you grew up in to see people who’ve known you forever. That could be as comforting as a warm fire in winter or as suffocating as a down pillow over the face. Callie feels a little of both.

I like the way Callie and Deck work their lives out in the story. I hope you do, too.

All my best,

Dawn

P.S. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Write me at dawn@dawnatkins.com. For news, visit www.dawnatkins.com.

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

This is award-winning Harlequin Blaze author Dawn Atkins’s twenty-third published romance novel. Known for her funny, spicy romances with a touch of mystery, she’s won a Golden Quill Award for Best Sexy Romance and has been a several-times Romantic Times BOOKreviews Reviewers’ Choice Award finalist for Best Blaze, as well as a finalist for a Romantic Times BOOKreviews Career Achievement Award for Best Love and Laughter. With her husband and son she lives in Arizona, where—like Callie Cummings, the heroine of this book—she loves the desert. Unlike Callie, she gets ve-r-r-ry nervous around horses.

HARLEQUIN BLAZE

93—FRIENDLY PERSUASION

155—VERY TRULY SEXY

176—GOING TO EXTREMES

205—SIMPLY SEX

214—TEASE ME

253—DON’T TEMPT ME

306—AT HER BECK AND CALL

318—AT HIS FINGERTIPS

348—SWEPT AWAY

391—NO STOPPING NOW

To my grandfather, who never wanted his illness

to keep me from my “book work,” and to the

Valley of the Sun Hospice, true angels, who

made his passing heaven.

Eternal gratitude to Joe Collins, paramedic, firefighter and all-around answer man, and to ranch woman and author Susan Yarina, who saved my writerly life. Any factual or procedural errors in their areas of expertise are completely my own.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

AN IRRITATED WHINNY DREW Callie Cummings’s gaze to the barn, where a cowboy was backing a reluctant horse into the corral with a tight grip on its halter.

Callie caught her breath. It was Deck. She would have recognized that butt blindfolded.

Providing she could touch it.

Touch it. An automatic ping of lust passed through her. And why not? What woman with blood in her veins wouldn’t respond to Declan O’Neill and his fabulous behind?

But she wasn’t here to appreciate Deck’s backside. Or his front side, for that matter, which also delivered. She was here to turn her father’s failing dude ranch into a desert spa.

A daunting task for a Manhattan event planner, but Callie was determined to succeed.

She had no choice. Her father was counting on her. When he’d said he was afraid he’d have to sell, he’d sounded so heartbroken it had been like losing her mother all over again.

Callie stood poised on the bottom porch step with her bag. Eleven years hadn’t reduced the tension between her and Deck. By unspoken agreement, they avoided each other during her frequent trips home. She could pretend she hadn’t seen him and go in, but Deck was ranch foreman and they had to work together. Better to get the first awkward conversation over with.

Plunge into the hard part, that was Callie’s way.

Dropping her bag, Callie took a steadying breath and marched toward the corral, her heart as jumpy as the horse Deck was wrangling, her feet wobbly in the kitten heels perfect for travel, but dangerously flimsy for the rocky desert ground.

You’re not in Manhattan anymore.

For better or worse, she was home. The Arizona sun, warm enough that January was high season, toasted Callie’s scalp and arms. The familiar smells—horse and creosote, hay and wood—made her both homesick and miserable. She missed the place and she dreaded it, too. Mixed memories. Always.

Reaching the corral, she leaned on the fence, trying to look casual, taking Deck in. Tall and lanky with broad shoulders and long legs, he had an animal grace that used to make her melt just watching him walk.

He had all the good-cowboy traits—honor, loyalty, strength, stoicism, skill—and none of the bad. He didn’t chew tobacco or drink or cheat or gamble or act crudely or have bad hygiene. He smelled of Irish Spring and leather and cedar and sunshine. And the only thing ratty about him was his ancient Stetson, but that looked classy.

That was old news. Eleven years old.

Bound by the shared tragedy of losing a parent, they’d fallen into each other’s arms for six incredible weeks their senior year.