Read Online Hard Luck Ranch by Nan Comargue - Free Book Online

and his voice, just as deep as Dex’s, but slightly more raspy, sent shivers down her spine. It was a voice made for lovemaking.
    “Who said I was against marriage?” Isabel demanded, annoyed by the fact that her words quivered.
    “Why else would you be shacked up with that city man for the last year?” was the cool reply.
    “Eight months,” she corrected. “And don’t call it shacking up. Everyone does it nowadays.”
    A glimmer of silver flashed at her in the rear-view mirror. “Maybe in the city they do, but not in Riding.”
    “Not in Riding,” Isabel mimicked savagely, feeling once again like a little girl lashing out at the grown-ups and knowing that both men in the front of the truck would see her as exactly that.
    Who cared? She’d spent most of her childhood hearing about what they didn’t do in Riding—anything fun, really—and she was heartily tired of it. The question was, what did they do in Riding, besides work, drive around in pickups listening to country music, and breed more of their own?
    Speaking of which, why hadn’t these men made any progress on the last score? The Armstrong brothers had always been the most eligible bachelors in town, yet after four years there was still nary a gold band on either of their left hands. Becky McIntyre may have landed Jeff Willson, but she had always had an eye for Cary. As if she’d stood a chance. No woman in Riding had—except for Yvonne. And Yvonne wasn’t someone you talked about at the Double-A, at least not in Cary’s hearing.
    “Time you thought about settling down,” Cary told her, as if she hadn’t spoken. “There aren’t any old maids in our family.”
    It didn’t seem to occur to him that all of the last few generations of Armstrongs were males, eliminating the possibility of old maids completely.
    “I’m not a member of your family,” Isabel said stonily. “Remember? I’m a Morgan, not an Armstrong.”
    “Your mother was an Armstrong.”
    “Only because she married your father! Big mistake.”
    “Was it?” Cary’s voice was suddenly soft. It was a dangerous sound.
    Dex shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Isabel saw him give his older brother a light tap on his arm. “Let it go,” he whispered.
    “Let what go?” Cary asked, his voice still quiet. His silvery-grey eyes sought out Isabel’s big brown ones in the mirror. “Maybe she needs reminding of the fact that we’re down here bailing her ass out of trouble, just like our dad bailed out her ma.”
    “My mom didn’t need bailing out,” Isabel protested from the back seat.
    “Sure. Single mother, alone by herself in the big bad city of Houston. She later told our dad that she was just a few weeks away from being homeless. Dad offered her a job on the ranch and the rest, as they say, is history.”
    She’d known it was the truth from the moment the words left his mouth. Cary didn’t lie. That was one of the many mantras around the ranch.
    But knowing it was the truth didn’t take the sting out of it.
    “So marrying my mother was an act of charity from your father?”
    “I didn’t say that. He loved her all right.”
    “Everyone did,” Dex added.
    Thinking about her mother, who was lying under the stone monument next to Carter Armstrong senior, made Isabel blink again behind her sunglasses. This time, she didn’t even have the sun as an excuse.
    It was her mother’s death that had precipitated her leaving Riding. After a long battle with cancer, a battle Isabel had seen her through, to the detriment of her college acceptance and future prospects, her mother had succumbed to the disease on the eve of Isabel’s twentieth birthday. The day after the funeral, she’d telephoned the college to cancel the deferment she’d requested more than two years earlier and told them that she’d see them for the winter semester. The day after that, she’d packed up her possessions and left at daybreak.
    Cary and Dex had come after her, of course, ready to cajole, bribe