Not That Kind of Girl Read Free Page B

attention.
    But he moved closer and … dammit ! There it was again, that weird vibration she’d felt the very first time she’d met him, right here at the ranch, the day of Josie and Rick’s wedding. She would never forget the instant she noticed him. He was leaning against the stone wall between the garden and the lawn, one knee bent, the heel of one cowboy boot propped against the wall and the toe of the other tapping in the dirt. He’d pushed that stupid black hat back on his blond curls and bit down on the inside of his mouth, as if he were trying to keep from laughing. He’d focused his intense green eyes right on her.
    Oh, damn, he’d been gorgeous. Big and muscular in his suit. Sun-browned skin. Sensual lips. Graceful hands.
    Roxanne didn’t want to think about what happened next, but she couldn’t stop herself from remembering. The truth was, Eli Gallagher’s intense gaze had sliced through her flesh, raced through her blood, and landed with a hot thud right between her legs.
    The moment had made such an impression because, embarrassingly enough, that had been the only thing that had landed with a hot thud between her legs in a very long while. And that encounter with Eli had taken place more than nine months ago ! And there’d certainly been no thudding since. She absolutely refused to do the bigger-picture math.
    “I owe you an apology, Roxanne.”
    “Nope. You don’t.” She kept her eyes on the vineyards.
    “An explanation, then.”
    “You don’t owe me anything.” She waited. She strained to hear him let go with an exasperated sigh, or a groan of frustration, or a bitter laugh—anything that would indicate she’d gotten the better of him.
    “You are one tough cookie, Ms. Bloom,” is what he said.
    For just a second, she shut her eyes. She summoned her strength. She knew exactly what she’d see when she turned around—an extremely handsome man, somewhere in his early thirties, with loose blond curls, dusky green eyes accented by smile lines, a set of full lips, an elegant chin, and a tall and fit body tucked inside a pair of worn jeans.
    A man that spectacular could have any woman he wanted. And, as he’d made painfully clear a while back, he didn’t want her .
    It was for the best. Roxanne knew she was too much for him to handle. She was too much for any man to handle. That concept was introduced to her in childhood, with her own father. It was a pattern that would repeat itself through high school, college, then after college, and, most recently, with Raymond Sandberg—the one man she’d convinced herself was mature enough to appreciate everything she brought to the table.
    Whoops . She’d been wrong on that one, hadn’t she? But it would be the last time she’d ever be wrong about a man, because she understood now. There was no man for her. There never would be. And it didn’t matter if two of her best friends had recently been sucked into the vortex of love. She would have to be okay with that. She would have to find her own peace. She was a strong woman, and if anyone could do it, Roxie could.
    She shook her hair back over her shoulder, then slowly turned to face him. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Look, Ian—that is your name, right? Did I remember it correctly?”
    He offered her a small smile. There wasn’t even the slightest flicker of hurt in his green eyes. Her insult seemed to bounce right off him.
    “Elias Jedidiah Gallagher,” he said. With dramatic flair, he swept up his hand to pluck his big black cowboy hat off his head. He placed it on his heart and bent at the waist. “At your service,” he added.
    He was such an ass. Roxanne wanted to grab that ridiculous hat and whack him upside the head with it.
    The Appaloosa whinnied loudly in Roxie’s ear.
    “But you know that, of course,” he added, his voice teasing and pleasant. “We talked for a long while at Rick and Josie’s wedding, and there was a strong attraction between us. We both felt it. And