played dumb. “Of what?”
“Cowboy McCade.”
Dream-worthy.
“It’s hard to know. Our conversation was limited to the price of cheesecake.”
Ellen shot her a pitying look. “Honey, it’s not his conversational skills or lack of that interests us.”
Shannon thought about the dark and fascinating bad boys she’d dated in her twenties. Men who’d been big on sex and small on conversation. “Oh, I don’t know. I like a man who can hold up his end of a discussion.”
The other women laughed as if she were missing something fundamental.
“Wait until rodeo season,” Ellen said. “Once you see Beau McCade in chaps, you’ll want to ride him as much as every other woman in town.”
And going on the way Beau had expertly disengaged himself from those women, she assumed most of them had.
Chapter 5
K atrina stuck her carpenter’s pencil behind her ear before releasing the tape measure. It shot back into its casing, and Boy raised his head at the accompanying thwack. “We’re getting there, buddy. Only two doors left.”
Boy’s tail thumped against the carpet.
She’d been at the cottage since one o’clock, and her aim was to have all the doors fitted, the curls of wood shavings vacuumed, and be long gone before Josh even thought about leaving the clinic or the hospital for the day. That was what a good landlord did; fixed problems while the tenant was out so as not to get in the way of their enjoyment of the property.
Don’t kid yourself. You’re so avoiding him.
And she was. She’d come to Bear Paw to save herself from making yet another disastrous mistake, and she’d been very confident of holding true to that course right up until Josh had flirted with her at the diner. The flutters of delight that had eddied what had been a still pool of desire since Brent’s bombshell really scared her.
Weeks ago she’d vowed to herself she was never getting involved with a doctor again, and the raw and painful memories of Brent and to a lesser degree of Andrew should have been enough to make Josh totally resistible and absolutely undesirable. When she added in his pragmatism at being in Bear Paw for utterly selfish reasons rather than altruistic ones,
that
should have deadened any sexual reaction to him at all.
It didn’t with Brent.
It would have if I’d known.
This time she knew up front, but for some unfathomable reason, she couldn’t squash the attraction. It bothered her a lot.
It had taken her almost eight years, but with the culmination of a series of hard-earned lessons capped off with the disaster that was Brent, she’d finally acknowledged that her body had a radar for being aroused by totally inappropriate men. Men who caused her pain and anguish. Men she allowed to draw her into their world only to find that no matter what she did they decided she didn’t fit. Men she should have avoided from the get-go.
Call her a slow learner, but she was officially done making any more stupid mistakes. This time, she wasn’t giving her body a chance to pump heady, exhilarating and addictive shivers through her that made her tumble into bed first and think second. No, this time she was being mature and sensible, and as a result, she was strategizing. It made perfect sense to her that if she was never alone with Josh then she was safe from doing anything dumb that she’d regret. On top of that plan, and to totally safeguard herself from temptation, she’d buy a whizz-bang vibrator that did double duty. An orgasm was an orgasm, right? Surely regular pleasuring of herself would diminish her reaction to Josh.
Masturbating in your childhood room with only thin walls between you and your family? Yeah, like that’s gonna totally work.
The thought curdled her stomach. How had she let her life come to this? It was so far removed from the hopeful vision she’d had at twenty-two when she’d left Bear Paw that it was unrecognizable. As she vigorously gored a rectangle into the wood of the doorjamb with
“Cowboy McCade.”
Dream-worthy.
“It’s hard to know. Our conversation was limited to the price of cheesecake.”
Ellen shot her a pitying look. “Honey, it’s not his conversational skills or lack of that interests us.”
Shannon thought about the dark and fascinating bad boys she’d dated in her twenties. Men who’d been big on sex and small on conversation. “Oh, I don’t know. I like a man who can hold up his end of a discussion.”
The other women laughed as if she were missing something fundamental.
“Wait until rodeo season,” Ellen said. “Once you see Beau McCade in chaps, you’ll want to ride him as much as every other woman in town.”
And going on the way Beau had expertly disengaged himself from those women, she assumed most of them had.
Chapter 5
K atrina stuck her carpenter’s pencil behind her ear before releasing the tape measure. It shot back into its casing, and Boy raised his head at the accompanying thwack. “We’re getting there, buddy. Only two doors left.”
Boy’s tail thumped against the carpet.
She’d been at the cottage since one o’clock, and her aim was to have all the doors fitted, the curls of wood shavings vacuumed, and be long gone before Josh even thought about leaving the clinic or the hospital for the day. That was what a good landlord did; fixed problems while the tenant was out so as not to get in the way of their enjoyment of the property.
Don’t kid yourself. You’re so avoiding him.
And she was. She’d come to Bear Paw to save herself from making yet another disastrous mistake, and she’d been very confident of holding true to that course right up until Josh had flirted with her at the diner. The flutters of delight that had eddied what had been a still pool of desire since Brent’s bombshell really scared her.
Weeks ago she’d vowed to herself she was never getting involved with a doctor again, and the raw and painful memories of Brent and to a lesser degree of Andrew should have been enough to make Josh totally resistible and absolutely undesirable. When she added in his pragmatism at being in Bear Paw for utterly selfish reasons rather than altruistic ones,
that
should have deadened any sexual reaction to him at all.
It didn’t with Brent.
It would have if I’d known.
This time she knew up front, but for some unfathomable reason, she couldn’t squash the attraction. It bothered her a lot.
It had taken her almost eight years, but with the culmination of a series of hard-earned lessons capped off with the disaster that was Brent, she’d finally acknowledged that her body had a radar for being aroused by totally inappropriate men. Men who caused her pain and anguish. Men she allowed to draw her into their world only to find that no matter what she did they decided she didn’t fit. Men she should have avoided from the get-go.
Call her a slow learner, but she was officially done making any more stupid mistakes. This time, she wasn’t giving her body a chance to pump heady, exhilarating and addictive shivers through her that made her tumble into bed first and think second. No, this time she was being mature and sensible, and as a result, she was strategizing. It made perfect sense to her that if she was never alone with Josh then she was safe from doing anything dumb that she’d regret. On top of that plan, and to totally safeguard herself from temptation, she’d buy a whizz-bang vibrator that did double duty. An orgasm was an orgasm, right? Surely regular pleasuring of herself would diminish her reaction to Josh.
Masturbating in your childhood room with only thin walls between you and your family? Yeah, like that’s gonna totally work.
The thought curdled her stomach. How had she let her life come to this? It was so far removed from the hopeful vision she’d had at twenty-two when she’d left Bear Paw that it was unrecognizable. As she vigorously gored a rectangle into the wood of the doorjamb with
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