Tina Leonard - Branded by a Callahan

“Just letting you know I’m back.”

Ana thought about proffering a sexy invitation, decided if he was interested he would have figured out a way to share the shower with her. “Thanks.”

He opened the door a sliver. Laid something on the counter. She peeked around the cloth shower curtain at the pile of clothes he’d placed there. “What’s that?”

“A dress Mrs. Adams thinks will fit you, and some girl stuff she’d just picked up for her daughter. She says the dress is her daughter’s, and should be a close fit. If you hurry and send her your clothes, she’ll wash them for you. For us,” he amended. “She seemed concerned that we’d been walking and didn’t have what she called the basics of life.”

He was thinking of basics and she was thinking about his body. “Thank you, Dante.”

“No problem. Mrs. Adams is really nice. She sent us a tray of salad and cold chicken. You hungry?”

For him, yes. “I could stand to eat.” She shut off the water, got out, toweled off. Glancing over the clothes, she wasn’t crazy about the idea of a dress, but she held it up to her. Actually, the dress wasn’t bad. It was a soft cotton with short sleeves, not stylish, but a cute turquoise blue. Comfy for traveling. Wouldn’t look entirely horrible with the moccasins Dante had bought her. “Mrs. Adams’s daughter must be young?”

“About your age,” Dante said cheerfully. “Mrs. Adams said that if you ever decide to kick me to the curb, I’m to come back and let her introduce me to her daughter, Suz. Apparently, Suz is a helluva cook.”

“That’s just nice,” Ana muttered, slipping on the dress. She rinsed out her under things and laid them out to dry. “I’m taking a shower thinking about you, you ape, and you’re out trolling for girls.”

“Did you say something, cupcake?” he asked through the door.

“No, stud muffin,” she replied, ever so sweetly.

He cracked open the door, looked in at her with a big grin. “I thought I heard you say something about a stud muffin. I think that’s girl talk for hot, sexy guy, and the only one of those around is me.”

“Really.” She had no idea how to puncture his oversized ego. “Zip me, please?”

“Glad to help.” He reached to zip the dress, came to a complete halt.

“Something wrong?” she asked, her voice concerned and innocent—but since her panties were drying on the counter and the zipper just crested the top of her bare fanny, she had a pretty good idea what had him stuck.

“Uh...no. Nothing at all.”

She watched him surreptitiously in the bathroom mirror. He swallowed, then suddenly reached out, zipped her up fast. Jumped out of the bathroom as though he was attached to a rocket. Clapped his Stetson on his head.

“You ready to eat?” Dante asked.

“Sure am,” she said cheerily, knowing he’d have to try to eat dinner with her wearing nothing under a soft, pretty dress. She smiled, and he looked cornered, and Ana almost took pity on him.

But, no. If he wanted to play reluctant prince, she could play unattainable princess. Naked-under-this-blue-dress princess. She walked past him, enjoyed his hangdog face of absolute suffering. “Are you all right, Dante?”

“I’m fine. Thanks. At least I think so.”

He looked stricken. Cast a fast glance over her body, tried to act as if he wasn’t thinking about what he’d just seen. Ana held her breath, enjoying ruffling that famous Callahan ego just a bit.

Maybe tonight this cowboy would overcome his resistance and fall into her arms.

Chapter Four

Ana was going to kill him. Plain and simple, and hardly lifting a finger to do it, Ana St. John was going to give Dante cardiac arrest at the ripe old age of nearly twenty-eight.

Either she was deliberately trying to seduce him, or he just couldn’t think about anything but sex around her. Yet it wasn’t just sex, though he wished it was. He was crazy about this woman, had been for months.

She talked about wanting his child, but he knew she just had baby overload. Ana had spent too much time around Sloan and Kendall’s adorable twins, and naturally—quite naturally, in his opinion—she had decided that a baby was what she wanted, too. A child of her own.

The thing was, she’d settled on him—and granted, he was stocked full of testosterone-charged, baby-making potential—but he really wasn’t in a position to simply scatter his seed to the wind and then have his little baby mama disappear.

No. He needed some commitment, a relationship, yes, a marriage, before any of his swimmers could be set free to do their wondrous thing. Yet he was not a marrying man...at least, he’d never thought much about it. Hadn’t thought about it at all. Ever. Dante sat in the back of Ash’s truck, and Ana sat up front, chatting away with his sister, who’d come to their rescue after he’d finally surrendered and realized he had to call for backup.

He’d had no other option, though he believed it would be safer for his family if he and Ana stayed undercover for a while longer. But he could not spend a night in a bed with Ana and not fall into hot, sweet temptation. He was only so much man where she was concerned, and he had to draw a line between him and her that he wouldn’t cross.

“Don’t you think, Dante?”

His sister’s voice jerked him from studying the slope of Ana’s shoulder as she sat in the passenger seat, blissfully unaware of his heated admiration of her. Ashlyn’s gaze settled on his in the rearview mirror, and he was pretty certain his sister was laughing at him.

“Think what?” he demanded a bit crossly.

“Think that this is all related. Those troublemakers that grabbed you guys are the same ones who did this before. It has to be linked.”

He nodded. “Stands to reason.”

“Then we go find your uncle Wolf and tell him that enough is enough,” Ana said. “No doubt Dante will enjoy beating him to a pulp.”

“Uh—” Dante blinked, considered how macho he needed to appear. “We actually don’t believe in beating our uncle to a pulp. Well, actually, we might, but Running Bear says no.”

“Oh. So you’re using your wits instead of weapons. I admire that.” Ana turned around to look at him, and he felt himself appreciating for the thousandth time her sexy green eyes. Kind of an emerald tone, a bright forest green overlaid with honey, and he—

“Dante,” Ashlyn said, interrupting his heated thoughts, and Ana turned back around. “When’s the last time you heard from Tighe?”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t figure he’d thought much about his twin since he’d been in Ana’s radius. “We’re not joined at the hip.”

“That’s news to me,” Ash said.

“Old news,” Dante said. “Tighe’s like a cat. He’ll come home when he’s ready.”

“But it’s not like him not to check in,” Ashlyn pressed, and Dante finally caught his sister’s underlying message.

“You think something’s happened to him?”

“We don’t know what to think. Tighe can be hardheaded, and with you not traveling with him to be the communicator—”

He scowled at his sister’s reflection. “Tighe has a mouth that works perfectly fine. I wasn’t always the communicator.”

“Yes, you were,” Ashlyn insisted. “It was always you who kept in touch with the family. We always called Tighe The Silent One. In fact, Galen calls him Silent-but-deadly, and he swears it’s because of his work in the military, but it’s still rude and I let him know it.”

Dante could hear Ana giggling in the front seat. “So was I Not-silent-and-not-deadly?”

“We just called you Oprah,” Ash said cheerfully. “We could always count on you to have something to talk about.”

Well, wasn’t it just nice for his sister to air all his dirty laundry in front of the woman he was dying to impress? The woman who now knew that not only was he not a fighter, a tough guy, but he was considered a hen by his family? “Thanks, I think,” he said, and Ana and Ash dissolved in giggles.