Never Love a Cowboy Read Free

watched as she shared a moment with her father, smiling at him as they spoke. He couldn’t recall ever smiling at his father—or his father smiling at him.
    She affectionately patted her father’s slightly stooped shoulder before striding through a door that led to what he knew was a back room. She’d return with a bucket of water to clean the place until it shone. His favorite moments of the night came when she got on her knees to scrub some mess. Her hips followed the circular motion of her hand, and all he could think about was how much he’d like to be beneath her.
    Countless times she’d rejected that proposition. She’d told him that she wasn’t one of those women, but he doubted her claims, for he had yet to meet a serving wench who wasn’t.
    Her father’s movements caught his attention as the wiry fellow trudged across the saloon. Tufts of hair, a lighter shade of red than his daughter’s, stood at various angles of attention over his head. His green eyes carried a hardened glint. “I need a word with you.”
    Harrison waved a hand toward the chair Kit had vacated. “By all means, then, please sit.”
    Jonah Kane dropped his small body into the chair. “I gotta be honest here. I ain’t in favor of Jessye goin’ on this venture with you fellas.”
    “Neither am I, but she seems to have a stubborn streak in her.”
    Jonah chuckled and scratched his bristly chin. “She calls it independence. Tells me that since she’s twenty-one, she’s all growed up. She don’t realize that a father’s daughter never grows up.”
    Harrison felt as though he’d been slapped. “She’s only twenty-one?”
    Jonah narrowed his rheumy eyes. “How old did you think she was?”
    “A bit older.” He’d never questioned her age, had always considered her closer to his own age of twenty-eight. He’d figured her to be a woman of experience, working in a saloon, surrounded by men all night, but if she were only twenty-one…good God, could her claims be true? Might she still be innocent? Perhaps her refusals had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with her purity.
    “She’s young, but she don’t like to admit it,” Jonah said.
    Harrison was surprised to see tears shimmer in the old man’s eyes before he leaned forward with a steely glare. “She’s been hurt. Had her heart sliced up and tossed out as buzzard bait. I don’t want to see her hurt again.”
    “We have no intention of harming her. She is our investor in this undertaking and will have our utmost respect and consideration.”
    Jonah narrowed his eyes. “There’s a lot of long nights on a cattle drive. If she comes back with the smallest of bruises on her heart, I’ll cut off your cojones and feed ’em to you.”
    Harrison cleared his throat. These Texans so oftenthrew in Spanish words that he sometimes found it difficult to follow their conversations, but he had a gist of the meaning. “Will this action render me incapable of siring an heir?”
    “You’d better damn well know it.”
    “Then I’ll keep your threat foremost in my mind as we journey.”
    “I don’t care what you do with it, just don’t forget it.” Jonah stood and began stacking chairs onto tables.
    Harrison rubbed his fingers over his thick beard, wondering why, of all the things Jonah had just revealed, hearing that someone had broken Jessye’s heart bothered him more than the thought of being turned into a eunuch.
    He’d never suspected that her tough attitude was an act designed to shield herself. A pity. He had no interest in mending hearts that had once been broken. A shattered heart would forever be a mosaic of cracked pieces, more delicate and prone to break again with less force applied to it.
    Experience had taught him that lamentable truth.
     
    Jessye Kane stood outside her father’s saloon and inhaled deeply, allowing the coolness of the autumn breeze to blow the stench of spilled liquor and lingering tobacco smoke away from her. She gazed at the