Cody Read Free Page A

tonight was all about. Since she hadn’t exploded with the few safe, boring men in her past, she’d decided to go for forbidden and exciting.
    Problem solved.
    Unless the problem wasn’t the men.
    She was the common denominator. The one constant in each lukewarm encounter. What if she simply wasn’t capable of an orgasm?
    Her gaze collided with his and he saw the instant spark of lust. A surprising reaction because he hadn’t sent any seductive thoughts her way. He hadn’t enticed or mesmerized, or anything. She was attracted to him of her own accord.
    Heat rolled through his body like a swig of whiskey and sucker punched him right in the gut.
    He stiffened. While she might be attracted to him, the last thing he needed was to waste his time on a what if . He needed to turn around and walk the other way no matter how lush her body or how full her mouth or how desperate he was to taste her.
    He needed a sure thing.
    He started to turn away. But then she smiled and his hunger stirred, and he couldn’t help himself.
    Cody Braddock had been a slave to his impulses far too long to stop now.

Chapter Two
    H E WAS THE SEXIEST COWBOY she’d ever seen.
    Which said a lot because Miranda Rivers had become quite the expert over the years.
    Thanks entirely to her mother—part-time B is for Beautiful independent makeup consultant and full-time buckle bunny—Miranda had witnessed hundreds of Stetsons bobbing through the front door of the single wide trailer where she’d grown up. A parade that had continued as her two older sisters had matured and carried on their mother’s weakness for men with tight Wranglers, starched shirts and a wild and reckless charm.
    It was a weakness that had eventually killed Chastity Rivers.
    She’d fallen too hard, too fast, for a man who’d rejected her. She’d been so devastated that she’d killed herself and left her daughters to finish raising themselves.
    Miranda had been fourteen at the time.
    Lucy and Robin had been older, sixteen and nineteen, but it had been Miranda who’d stepped up to take the lead in the family. She’d cleaned the house and cooked dinner while her sisters had strutted their stuff, stayed out all night and stirred up as much gossip as possible.
    Time had changed little. Lucy worked at a nearby bar and partied away her earnings while Robin played groupie to a local country band.
    They were still the baddest girls in town.
    They always had been, and Miranda had been guilty by association.
    The entire school had started calling her Restroom Randy back during her sophomore year. A nickname she’d been given when Ray McGuire—junior calf roper and the first cowboy to ever catch her eye—had started a running list on the boy’s bathroom wall of all the places Miranda Rivers had gotten down and dirty.
    Restroom Randy’s Hottest Sex Spots .
    All lies, of course. He’d been pissed because she’d turned him down in the backseat of his Daddy’s Chevy and he’d wanted to get back at her. He’d started the list, claiming they’d gone all the way not only in the Chevy, but in the front loader of his John Deere, the back alley behind the Piggly Wiggly, the gazebo in the middle of town square, the men’s restroom at the local drive-in, beneath the bleachers at the football stadium, smack dab in the middle of the local rodeo arena and the front porch of his family’s home.
    Miranda had seen the list only once. She’d been sixteen and desperate to know why the entire school was snickering behind her back. A quick duck into the boy’s john and she’d found out. The various locations written in red marker had branded themselves into her brain. She’d been mortified and determined to lose the Restroom Randy image.
    She’d hated being one of those girls. Trashy. Nogood. An outsider. She’d wanted to fit in. To feel accepted. To feel safe.
    She’d never had any security growing up. Nothing that she could count on. Sometimes she’d had lunch at school. Sometimes she