City Girl Read Free Page A

she spent practicing that little trick in front of a mirror?
    “Oh, for the love of Mike!” he roared. “Where the hell do you think you are, city girl? Letters don’t arrive in an hour or two out here as if they were sent by a courier on a bike! A letter mailed in the city on Monday won’t show up here before Friday at the earliest, and Tuesday was the last day I had time to drive into town to pick up mail. What do you think I’m running here, a nine-to-five operation? I’ve been beating myself into the ground trying to get feed out to my cows before this storm hit. And why the hell were you driving in these conditions anyway? You should have holed up in a motel at the first warning!”
    Hands on her hips, she yelled right back at him, “What warning?”
    “On the radio, of course. Doesn’t that fancy Blazer you and Lester Brown picked out have a radio in it?”
    Liss blinked rapidly, stung by the acidity of his tone. “Are you objecting to the car we chose? Lester said you specifically stipulated a four-wheel-drive vehicle, so that’s what we got. And it’s not all that fancy! It’s used, after all. Besides, it’s not mine any more than it’s yours. It belongs to the ranch, so what’s your problem?”
    “My ‘problem,’ as you so sweetly put it, is that you risked your and your children’s lives by failing to exercise common sense. The weather advisory has frequent updates. What I want to know is why weren’t you listening?”
    She stared up into his furious gray eyes. And to think she’d once thought he was attractive! To think that during the half-hour drive to the lawyer’s office, before any of them knew they were going to have to live together, he’d made her stomach quiver with nothing more than a smile. Now, as during the reading of the will, he was glaring at her as if everything were her fault. Instead of making her stomach quiver, he was making it churn.
    “I was playing my CDs,” she said through clenched teeth. “I hadn’t heard any of them for ages because I had to sell my CD player months ago, and I was enjoying them. Why would I want to listen to some yackety-yacking deejay when I don’t have to?”
    He rolled his eyes and shook his head in disgust. “Because that deejay might have told you to get the hell off the road if you didn’t have a damned good reason to be there. So, I’m telling you, city girl, from her on you listen to the radio at least once every hour while winter lasts. Failing that, open your eyes and pay attention to the warnings all around you. The minute it started snowing, you should have started looking for a motel. “
    “Look for a motel because of a few snowflakes? Would you?”
    “Damn right I would, if I was driving into unknown territory and unused to the conditions.”
    “How could I know how bad it was going to get? And it was pretty at first. Then—then all of a sudden the road disappeared.” She paused to draw in a deep breath, trying to steady her voice. “And so did all the towns and lights, and all I could do was keep coming until I saw the ranch sign and when I got here there was nothing but that horrible animal out there w-with his teeth bared to keep me away and . . .” She felt a choking sensation in her throat and turned her head away. “And I thought you’d be here.” It was hardly more than a whisper.
    Kirk nearly groaned aloud. Having her hide her tears was worse than letting him see them. Worse, and sneakier, and far more manipulative. He steeled himself. “I have a ranch to run. I couldn’t sit around waiting for you to show up so I could say welcome, especially when you’re not.”
    She looked at him then, and there were no tears, no quivering chin, just a deep, abiding weariness and an ineffable sadness in her face. “I know I’m not,” she said. “But I couldn’t let that matter, you see. I had to come anyway. For the kids.”
    Before he could stop her, she slipped around him and snatched up the suitcase she’d