Joan Johnston: A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing

By now she was violently shaking her head. A shiny tear streaked one cheek.

He pushed himself up out of his chair. He braced one callused palm on the table and leaned across to cup her jaw in his other hand and lift her chin. He looked into her eyes, and it took every bit of determination he had not to succumb to the plea he saw there. “I can’t teach you to run this ranch. I have a business of my own that needs tending. You can’t make it on your own, Harry-et. Sell your land to me.”

“No.”

“I’ll give you a fair—a generous—price. Then you can go home where you belong.”

She was out of his grasp and gone before he had time to stop her. She didn’t go far, just to the sink, where she stood in front of the stack of dirty dishes and stared out the dirt-clouded window at the ramshackle sheep pens and the derelict barn. “I will succeed. With or without your help.”

She sounded so sure of herself, despite the fact that she was doomed to fail. Nathan refused to admire her. He chose to be furious with her instead. In three angry strides he was beside her. “You’re as stubborn as every other hard-nosed, ornery Alistair who ever lived on this land!” He snorted in disgust. “I can sure as hell see now why Hazards have been feuding with Alistairs for a hundred years.”

She whirled to confront him. “And I can see why Alistairs chose to feud with Hazards,” she retorted. “How dare you pretend to be a friend!” She poked him in the chest with a stiff finger. “How dare you sneak in under my guard and pretend to help—”

“I wasn’t pretending,” he said heatedly, grabbing her wrist to keep her from poking him again. “I did help. Admit it.”

“Sure. So I’d be grateful. All the time you only wanted to buy my land right out from under me. You are the lowest, meanest—”

He wasn’t about to listen to any insults from a greenhorn female. A moment later her arm was twisted up behind her and he had pulled her flush against him. She opened her mouth to lambaste him again and he shut her up the quickest, easiest way he knew. He covered her mouth with his.

Nathan was angry, and he wasn’t gentle. That is, until he felt her lips soften under his. It felt like he’d been wanting her for a long time. His mouth moved slowly over hers while his hand cupped her head and kept her still so he could take what he needed. She struggled against his hold, her breasts brushing against his chest, her hips hard against his. That only made him want her more. It was when he felt her trembling that he came to his senses, mortified at the uncivilized way he’d treated her.

He abruptly released the hand he had twisted behind her back. But instead of coming up to slap him, as he’d expected, her palm reached up to caress his cheek. Her fingertips followed the shape of his cheekbone upward to his temple, where she threaded her fingers into his hair and slowly pulled his head back down.

And she kissed him back.

That was when he realized she was trembling with desire. Not fear. Desire. With both hands free he cupped her buttocks and pulled her hard against him. For every thrust he made, she countered. He was as full and hard as he’d ever been in his life. His tongue ravaged her mouth, and she responded with an ardor that made him hungry for her. He spread urgent kisses across her face and neck, but they didn’t satisfy as much as the taste of her, so he sought her mouth again. His tongue found the space between her teeth. And the inside of her lip. And the roof of her mouth. When he mimicked the thrust and parry of lovers, she held his tongue and sucked it until he thought his head was going to explode.

When he slipped his hand over her buttocks and between her legs, she moaned, a sound that came from deep in her throat and spoke of an agony of unappeased passion.

And the lamb in the corner bleated.

Nathan lifted his head and stared at the woman in his arms. Her brown eyes were half-veiled by her lids, and her pupils were dilated. She was breathing as heavily as he was, her lips parted to gasp air. Her knees had already buckled, and his grasp on her was all that kept them both off the floor.

Are you out of your mind?

He tried to step away, but her hand still clutched his hair. He reached up and drew her hand away. She suddenly seemed to realize he had changed his mind and backed up abruptly. Nathan refused to look at her face. He already felt bad enough. He had come within a lamb’s tail of making love to Harry-et Alistair. He had made a narrow escape, for which he knew he would later, when his body wasn’t so painfully objecting, be glad for.

“I think it’s time you left, Mr. Hazard,” Harry said in a rigidly controlled voice.

He couldn’t leave without trying once more to accomplish what he’d come to do. “Are you sure you won’t—”

The change in her demeanor was so sudden that it took him by surprise. Her expression was fierce, determined. “I will not sell this land,” she said through clenched teeth. “Now get out of here before—”

“Good-bye, Harry-et. If you have a change of heart, John Wilkinson at the bank knows how to get in touch with me.”

He settled his hat on his head and pulled it down with a tug. Then he shrugged broad shoulders into his sheepskin-lined coat. Before he was even out the kitchen door Harry Alistair had already started heating a bottle of formula for the lamb she had snuggled in her arms. It was the first time he’d ever envied one of the fleecy orphans.

The last thing Nathan Hazard wanted to do was leave that room. But he turned resolutely and marched out the door. As he gunned the engine of his truck, he admitted his encounter with Harry-et Alistair had been a very close call.

Not the woman for you, he reminded himself. Definitely not the woman for you.

Are there bachelors in them thar hills?

Answer: Yep.

Once the lamb had been fed and settled back on its pallet, Harry sank into a kitchen chair, put her elbows on the table and let her head drop into her hands. What on earth had she been thinking to let Nathan Hazard kiss her like that! And worse, why had she kissed him back in such a wanton manner? It was perfectly clear now that she hadn’t been thinking at all; she’d been feeling, and the feelings had been so overwhelming that they hadn’t allowed for any kind of rational consideration.

Harry had felt an affinity to the rancher from the instant she’d laid eyes on him. His broad shoulders, his narrow hips, the dusting of fine blond hair on his powerful forearms all appealed to her. His eyes were framed by crow’s-feet that gave character to a sharp-boned, perfectly chiseled face. That pair of sapphire-blue eyes, alternately curious and concerned, had stolen her heart.

Harry wasn’t surprised that she was attracted to someone more handsome than any man had a right to be. What amazed her was that having known Nathan Hazard for only a matter of hours she would readily have trusted him with her life. That simply wasn’t logical. Although, Harry supposed in retrospect, she had probably seen in Nathan Hazard exactly what she wanted to see. She had needed a legendary, bigger-than-life western hero, someone tall, rugged and handsome to come along and rescue her. And he had obligingly arrived.

And he had been stunning in his splendor, though that had consisted merely of a pair of butter-soft jeans molded to his long legs, western boots, a dark blue wool shirt topped by a sheepskin-lined denim jacket, and a Stetson he had pulled down so that it left his features shadowed. The shaggy, silver-blond hair that fell a full inch over his collar had made him look untamed, perhaps untamable. Harry remembered wondering what such fine blond hair might feel like. His lower lip was full, and he had a wide, easy smile that pulled one side of his mouth up a little higher than the other. She had also wondered, she realized with chagrin, what it would be like to kiss that mouth. Unbelievably she had actually indulged her fantasies.