Valentine's Cowboy Read Free Page A

before.
    She forced the image away. Clearly she wasn’t trying hard enough to get in the right frame of mind. She’d spent too many years believing she was attracted only to men. It was a habit that was all. A person could break habits. She would. Men had given her nothing but disappointments for as long as she could remember. She was moving on!
     
    * * *
     
    Sam stood on his third floor balcony nursing one of the beers his sister had thoughtfully provided him in the condo’s refrigerator. She had tried to get him to come down to the mai tai party at poolside, but he’d begged off. It was all he could do to stand here for a few minutes and take in the view. Back home he never seemed to have time to notice the sunsets or the sunrises. They just happened. He worked from before sunrise to after sunset. He felt guilty for being here and leaving the ranch duties to his foreman. But Jake was more than just the foreman; he was Sam’s friend. A friend who seemed to love the ranch more than Sam did.
    He took another swig of the cold brew and listened to the sounds of waves rolling into the shoreline. It was loud, much louder than the quiet of the Kansas flint hills he was used to. Yet he found it soothing. He figured he would get some good sleep tonight and he needed it.
    Then his hearing picked up on the music being played by a trio with a guitar, an odd drum, and a keyboard. Definitely not country music, but it didn’t grate on his nerves. Along with the music a woman was announcing something about it being time for hula lessons. That had him noting a dozen women of various ages, including his sister, heading for poolside where the lessons would evidently take place.
    He smiled in amusement, and then yawned. Maybe he ought to pass on watching this and go catch some serious zzzzs.
    Before he could move away, his sister waved to a woman at the cabana bar and called her over to the lessons. Curious, he watched until the woman stepped out of the shadows and he muttered, “Well, hot damn!” Blond, beautiful, and built. The three Bs he was so fond of.
    The woman nearly tripped coming down the steps from the cabana, but caught herself on the railing and laughed. Even with all the noise of the ocean rolling in and the sounds from the party, he managed to hear the very feminine laugh. It warmed him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed, or the last time he and his previous girlfriend had laughed together. There’d been a time when laughter came easily to him. Before his parents had been killed in the auto accident. Before he’d taken on more responsibilities than a young man should have to. He cradled the sweet, carefree sound to him, and decided he wanted to hear more of it from closer.
     
    By the time he strolled through the gate at poolside the hula demonstration was in full lesson. Each of the young women had donned fake grass skirts that hung to mid-calf. Most of them sported either skin-tight T-shirts that stopped inches above the navel or bikini tops. He frowned for a second as he noted Shelby wore one of the bikini tops. He didn’t like seeing so much of her exposed to one and all. His gut reaction had him wanting to toast her butt, but then he had no say in the matter any more. She was grown up now. A fact that had him feeling sad and empty. Must be the empty nest syndrome he’d heard that mothers sometimes went through. ‘Course he wasn’t her mother, but he had raised her from age six on.
    That soft, sensual laugh he’d heard before curled around him as the blond who’d caught his attention accidentally bumped hips with Shelby. Shelby bumped her back, giggling. The shapely blond sported a hot pink bikini top and full breasts that had his mouth watering. Those enticing breasts bounced rhythmically as she attempted to get back into the hula motion. He’d be dreaming about this for days, maybe longer.
    He joined a group of men standing around the fence admiring the gyrating hips of the nearby