Read Online The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby by Carolyn Brown - Free Book Online

impression that she was a pistol.”
    “Oh, honey,” Lucas looked across the table and locked gazes with her, “Hazel ain’t
     a pistol. She’s a big-assed double-barreled shotgun.”
    The energy between them sizzled so loudly that she wondered if Jack and Grady could
     hear it too. It had that strange eerie feeling that came five minutes before a tornado
     hit. Noise was all around them, but they were in a vacuum with no sounds but the flutter
     of their hearts. His eyes bored into hers and she could hear the storm coming closer
     and closer. She’d never had a man strip her totally naked just by looking into her
     eyes.
    She blinked and looked at Joshua. When she chanced a look back at Lucas, he was loading
     his plate with roast and potatoes.

Chapter 4
    The hardwood floor in the hallway was cold enough to make Natalie wish she’d dug a
     pair of socks out of her suitcase. She reached for the old-fashioned glass knob on
     the bathroom door, but it was locked. She whipped around to do a fast tiptoe back
     to her room and the door flew open.
    “Next,” Lucas drawled.
    She stopped and looked over her shoulder. The scent of men’s soap, musky shaving lotion,
     and minty toothpaste all combined and again created that crazy feeling of a storm
     on the way. Moist, warm air flowed out of the room, but it did little to warm her
     chilled feet. She had to remember to drag out the fuzzy house shoes or at least put
     on socks in the morning.
    “Good mornin’,” she said. “I’ll only be a minute.”
    “Doesn’t matter how long you take. Dad’s already been in here and he’s out with Grady
     doing some early morning chores. So it’s all yours.”
    She shoved her hand into her pocket. Touching the baby monitor should have grounded
     her back into reality and taken her mind off that dark red towel slung low around
     his waist and what was beneath it. She should be thinking of Joshua and not wondering
     what it would be like to run her hands over that acre of bulging muscles on his chest.
    He propped an arm against the doorjamb and looked at her. “Did you sleep well?”
    Her hair probably looked like it had been combed with a hay rake. She hadn’t brushed
     her teeth yet and her nightshirt was five years old and faded. Was he truly being
     nice or was he telling her that she looked like hell?
    “Joshua was only up once through the night, so it was a good one,” she answered.
    “That’s good,” he said.
    Holy shit! She was blocking the door and the hallway. He probably felt like a bull
     penned up in a cattle trailer. She stood to the side to let him pass and his shoulder
     brushed against her breasts. A flannel nightshirt separated soft skin from hard muscles,
     but the air in the hallway still crackled and fizzled around them like embers in a
     red-hot fireplace.
    Mother Nature was a bitch.
    It wasn’t fair for her to turn all the pheromones on the whole planet of Venus loose
     in the small confines of a hallway in a ranch house in Savoy, Texas. Or that Mother
     Nature had dropped a man with all the testosterone of Mars right there in the same
     place. There was sure to be a war of the planets. Would the house be standing when
     it was finished, or would the bed sheets be on fire?
    It was only four weeks and she could get through the days by reminding herself that
     when Christmas came, he was going to owe her one helluva paycheck.
    His back was to her when she took the next step into the bathroom. Her cold foot got
     tangled up in a throw rug in front of the vanity. One second she was thinking about
     what it would be like to kiss him, the next she hoped that the fall didn’t break her
     nose when she hit the edge of the claw-foot tub as she fell forward.
    Shit! Momma will kill me if I die in this place. She doesn’t even know about Lucas!
    She was suddenly jerked to an upright position. She hit his chest with a force that
     reminded her of the first time she shot her dad’s thirty-caliber Argentine