LOVE OF A RODEO MAN (MODERN DAY COWBOYS) Read Free Page A

shape perfectly balanced by curving hips and slender waist. Her arms and legs were long, and she moved gracefully.
    This was one lovely lady. His heavy eyebrows came together in a frown.
    “Who’s waiting for you, Sara?”
    There was a peculiar intensity to the query that puzzled her. “Why, Mom and my stepfather, Dave, probably, and Gram Adeline for sure, back at Bitterroot,” she supplied. She smiled and shook her head fondly. “Gram always insists I eat a full-scale meal at the end of the day, and she usually stands over me like a watchdog to see that I do. She has this theory about—” Sara beetled her eyebrows together and made her voice reedy and querulous.
    “—dern fool diets and foolish women who starve themselves.’ Gram’s eighty-two, so I guess she’s entitled to her pet theories.”
    Mitch nodded, his frown gone. “I’ll get Mom to give her a call, then, and tell her you’re having a good dinner here and that we’ll make sure yo u eat your carrots so your eyesight stays healthy.”
    “But, I, your father, that is...”
    Sara hated babbling like this, but she didn’t fancy choking down dinner under the sour surveillance of Wilson Carter, either.
    “Pop’s bark is worse than his bite. He’s not bad, once you get to know him.” His impetuous invitation began to seem more and more a good idea. “And my mom is probably like your grandma. Her idea of a real good time is feeding people.”
    It was true. Ruth had always loved to cook for him and his brother Bob and their friends. But that was long ago. Before. Nowadays there were never guests at the round oak table, and meals alone with his parents were one more of the numerous things Mitch found increasingly difficult since he’d come home. Besides, he simply wanted to spend more time around this Sara.
    His insistence didn’t annoy her, the way another man’s might have done. She tilted her head and gave him an appraising look.
    He flashed his one-sided grin and raised his eyebrows questioningly, and she smiled too and gave in. “Okay, but make sure it’s not a problem for your mother. And I’ll call Bitterroot myself as soon as I shower.”
    Fourteen minutes later, she rubbed dry with one of the oversized towels she’d found stacked neatly on a wooden shelf in the utilitarian washroom at one end of the huge, clean-smelling barn. She hurriedly pulled on clean underwear and the fresh denims and bright pink T-shirt she’d brought from the truck and used her brush as best she could on her wet, waving mass of hair.
    When she opened the door and stepped outside, Mitch squinted up at her and nodded approval.
    He was propped on his heels against the wooden wall of the building, a glowing cigarette held in his right hand between index finger and thumb, half cupped inside his palm. His hat was carefully brushed clean of mud and firmly in place, and she noted that his boots were, too. He rose to his feet in one effortless motion as Sara hesitantly walked toward him.
    “Mom’s whipping up biscuits in your ho nor. She gave me what for because I made you use the shower down here instead of sending you up to the house.”
    “This one was great. You’re sure it’s all right about supper?” Sara felt shy all of a sudden, and once again that unsettling awareness that had overcome her earlier was back. He had a way of giving her his undivided attention, eyes meeting and holding her own, seeming to convey quite different messages than the words they exchanged out loud.
    “You must drive your mom crazy, asking people to eat at the last moment like this,” she went on, using conversation to fill in what could be a n awkwardness, an admission between them of... what? Stop being a fool, Sara. This is your first exposure to a real, honest-to-goodness Montana cowboy, and you’re reacting like a fourteen-year-old from a parochial school.
    “It’s good for her,” he said shortly. “I’ll be up as soon as I shower.”
    He moved past Sara to the door,