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Автор Browning Pamela
Bethany heard a whimper coming from inside the wicker basket.
To her utter amazement, a small pink fist flailed in the air. The whimper swelled to a cry, and when Bethany bent over to look, she saw a tiny baby wrapped in a print blanket.
It was crying, its face screwed up and its legs kicking emphatically under the blanket. Bethany dissolved into total bewilderment, half thinking this must be some practical joke, yet knowing in her heart that it couldn’t be.
Bethany reached down and unpinned an envelope from the baby’s blanket. The outside of the envelope was blank, so she opened it and unfolded the note inside.
COLT, it said in printed block letters. PLEASE TAKE CARE OF ALYSSA FOR ME. I’LL BE BACK.
It seemed that her new ranch hand, Colt McClure, had some explaining to do.
Cowboy with a Secret
Pamela Browning
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Pamela Browning spent a lot of years living and rearing a family in a charming South Carolina town that was nothing like Yewville. No one in this book bears any resemblance whatever to persons living, dead or comatose, except for Muffin the cat, who will never reveal her real name. Never. If she wants her catnip mouse refilled on a regular basis.
This book is dedicated to the memory
of my brother-in-law, Bob Grier,
who loved to demonstrate in rip-roaring fashion
the wonders of the Grier Ranch.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
COLT MCCLURE PEGGED THE gal at the Banner-B Ranch for a babe as soon as he spotted her.
But it was the promise of the ice-cold beer he’d insulated and stowed in his saddlebag that made him urge his horse into a hellzapoppin’ gallop down the long curving driveway.The hot Texas wind flung a handful of grit into the five days’ growth of beard bristling from his face, but Colt didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything now except finding a place to work and a place to live. Oh, yeah—and that beer.
Instantly alert at the hammer of hoofbeats on parched earth, the gal lifted one hand to shade narrowed eyes against the orange sun sinking its way toward the horizon. The other hand rested on a neatly rounded hipbone.
He reined his horse to a stop at the edge of a patch of dry dusty grass in front of the two-story house. As he swung down from his mount, he realized that the woman’s eyes were a cool aquamarine, the shade of the sea where there was no bottom. Or at least what he thought the sea would look like—he’d never seen the ocean. And he never wanted to after having a gander at those eyes. He could drown in them if he’d let himself.
The air shimmered with heat in the space between them. “Bethany Burke?” he said.
Long golden hair fell in loose curls around her face and tumbled over her shoulders. The way she nodded her head in confirmation and the resulting ripple of that incredible hair jolted Colt with the kind of emotion he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
