Ruth Langan - Jade

She glared at him, but before she could protest he said crisply, “Maybe you enjoy tempting fate, to see if your…guardian angel will save you again.”

“Instead,” she said with a frown, “I have only you.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.” He turned his back on her and studied the broken wheel. “I’m afraid I don’t have the tools to repair this. But I can take you to your ranch….”

She brightened.

“As long as you don’t mind a few stops along the way,” he finished.

She sighed. Her plans for the rest of the day would have to be postponed. But at least she wasn’t stuck unhitching the team and riding bareback to the ranch. She managed a smile. “Thank you, Reverend. I’d be grateful for the ride.”

He unhitched her team and led them to a shady knoll with grass and water, then tied them to a rope stretched between two trees. Assured that the horses were secured, he swung into the saddle, then reached down and pulled Jade up behind him.

The slit on both sides of her silk skirt allowed her to straddle the horse’s back without tearing the fabric. It also exposed a great deal of her flesh, from ankle to knee.

Jade was surprised by the flare of feelings when her arms encircled his waist. As the horse broke into a run she was forced to hold on tightly. With her cheek pressed to his shoulder, she clung to him as the horse’s hooves ate up the miles of Texas landscape.

While he guided his mount, Wade fought a battle of his own. He was achingly aware of the breasts flattened against his back, of the thighs pressed to his, of the small, delicate hands holding firmly to him. The wind caught Jade’s hair, swirling it like silk around him. He inhaled the exotic scent of her perfume and found himself thinking things he had no right to. Things that quickened his heartbeat and made his blood run hot.

The direction of his thoughts threatened to distract him and make the rest of his day completely unsettled.

“It was good of you to come, Reverend.” The widow Purdy lay in the big bed her husband had made for her more than fifty years earlier. “And what a lovely surprise to find Miss Jewel with you.”

“You two know each other?” Wade had thought the widow, living in such isolation, would have no knowledge of this newcomer to the territory.

“Diamond had her wranglers slaughter a cow and deliver it to my place to see me through the winter. When she couldn’t accompany them, Jade came in her place.”

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