Read Online Looking for Trouble by Victoria Dahl - Free Book Online

was okay. Her dad was fine. With her help, he could keep this place going for another decade if he wanted to. He didn’t seem to want to sell, and she wasn’t going to try to talk him into it. As hardscrabble as it was, this place was his life.
    “Before I forget,” her dad said, his voice just behind her in the doorway, “your mail is in the bedroom.”
    “Thanks.”
    “You should really change your address.”
    “I’m not going to stay in Uncle Orville’s house forever, Dad. I don’t want to bother changing my address just to have to change everything back again.”
    “It’s been a year, Sophie. I think you’re plenty settled into town now. Why in the world would you want to come back out here?”
    Because this was her home. Because he was her family. Because she took care of things for him and she always would.
    But living in town did have its advantages. Privacy, namely. Granted, on those occasions when she met a man who seemed to push her buttons, she preferred going back to his hotel room. It was less conspicuous that way. No neighbors to notice and comment. No lifelong acquaintances to realize who Sophie really was. Only tourists and seasonal men. Just the way she wanted it.
    Sophie opened the credit-card bill and noticed that her brother had been making a lot of ebook purchases again. It felt strange to resent the way he spent money on books. She was a librarian, after all. But it wasn’t that her brother was overspending on books, it was that he spent his time getting obsessed with learning some new skill he was convinced would make him successful. Gaming online auctions or selling Western crap on websites or starting his own sales lead business for web courses or a hundred other things that he’d purchased books about and then lost interest in. God knew what it was this time. Two years ago, he’d decided to sell mail-order tumbleweeds for people in the East throwing cowboy-themed parties. Then he’d realized he’d actually have to go out in the heat or cold and search for tumbleweeds. They were never around when you wanted them.
    “Where’s David?” she asked, thinking if he was around she’d at least ask what he was up to.
    She glanced back to see her dad’s mouth flatten. “Sleeping.”
    Still asleep at 10:00 a.m. That was practically blasphemy on a ranch. But even their dad was starting to realize that David was never going to take over the ranch. It was hard for him to accept that the remaining land would be sold someday, but there it was. David could do all the work, but he didn’t love the land. Sophie loved the place and she could stumble along well enough, but she was too indoorsy for ranching. Dresses and kitten heels had no place in a corral. Not unless a big, rough man had her pinned up against a fence and—
    Damn. Alex was going to haunt her for a long time.
    “You want me to wake him?” her dad grumbled.
    Sophie flashed him a smile. “Only if you want an excuse to get his butt out of bed.”
    He laughed. “I need his help later with the yearlings. I’d better let him get his beauty sleep or he’ll be grouching around here all day.” He leaned a hip against the counter and sipped his coffee.
    “You know, you don’t have to keep me company. I’m not a guest.”
    He shrugged one lean shoulder, and Sophie wondered if he was getting thinner. “It’s nice to talk to you. Gets a little lonely out here these days.”
    “I’m off today. Why don’t I stay and make a big lunch?”
    Her dad huffed. “That’s not what I meant. Go shopping. Go have lunch with your girlfriends. Don’t spend your day off with an old man, Sophie.”
    “I like being here.”
    “Well, I’m afraid I’ve got a busy day later. I can’t hang around all day for lunch.”
    She narrowed her eyes and watched him for a long while, trying to read his face. Was he lying just to stop her from staying around? But he gave away nothing. He just looked back at her with those pale blue eyes framed by