Read Online Only Hers by Francis Ray - Free Book Online Page B

on the answer, he couldn’t have named one item inside.
    “I just knew something was wrong. She wouldn’t have left without saying good-bye,” Octavia reasoned. “So I called every motel in the vicinity until I located her at one I wouldn’t let my dog stay in. That decent, caring woman I talked to this morning wouldn’t go near such a place unless she had no choice.”
    “Have you talked to her?”
    “The phone wasn’t working in her room, so they couldn’t connect me. But I know I’m right.”
    “I see.” Absently, he moved a jar of jelly to one side. “Shannon didn’t look like the type of woman to let herself get into a financial pinch.”
    “Looks can be deceiving.” Octavia came around to the front of the refrigerator door and spoke to Matt’s unyielding profile. “That young woman is here because your uncle left her Taggart property. That makes her partially your responsibility. You know what kind of place the Paradise is. What if some no-good man sees her and doesn’t understand the word no?”
    Matt’s long fingers gripped the corner of the refrigerator tighter, but otherwise he didn’t move. Shannon might have suckered his uncle and Octavia, but she wasn’t adding his name to her list.
    “Besides,” the housekeeper continued, “since she has a claim on the meadow, it seems to me it would be in your best interest to keep an eye on her rather than letting her do God knows what with the property.”
    Finally, she had said something that got Matt’sattention. He gave up all pretense of searching for something to eat and faced the housekeeper. Lines furrowed her forehead and crinkled the corners of her eyes. Obviously she was worried, and now he was, too. Not about Shannon, but about her future plans for the land.
    That afternoon when he had seen Shannon near the cabin, he had been too angry to approach her. The thought that she had legal claim to the meadow and that he might have to pay her to get it back burned his insides like acid. After all these years, this woman was going to make him break a promise he’d made to himself because of another woman’s deceit.
    “She isn’t going anyplace until she signs over all rights to the meadow to me.” Slamming the refrigerator door closed, he headed for the front door.
    “Now you’re talking,” Octavia encouraged, a pleased smile on her ebony face.
    A mile from the motel Matt saw Shannon’s car on the shoulder of the road. Since the car appeared undamaged, he reasoned it must be a mechanical problem. Recalling the last time he had seen her, how her miniskirt displayed her long, elegant legs, how her thick hair swirled wildly around her beautiful face, a face that sadness only made more compelling, he didn’t imagine it was long before some man had stopped.
    And now she was registered at the Paradise.
    His grip on the steering wheel tightened. Her name might be the only one registered, but that didn’t mean she was alone. The rage that splintered through him caught him off guard.
    Loyalty and fidelity were two things he didn’t expect from beautiful women like Shannon. His wife’s had lasted only as long as he finished in the top money roping calves in the rodeo. But the more they argued over her spending habits and her refusal to travel with him on the circuit, the worse his concentration became, the more he lost.
    By the time their nine-month marriage was over, hehad gone from being ranked tenth in the country with a good chance at winning the National Calf Roping title to being unranked. At twenty-four he was a has-been and he owed it all to his stupidity and a greedy, unscrupulous woman. He had confused lust with love and paid the price.
    So why did the confirmation that Shannon was exactly the same way anger him? He didn’t look for an answer, he simply pressed his booted foot on the accelerator. The speedometer needle rocked to the right.
    The purple-and-green neon-lit palm tree over the name Paradise winked on and off in subtle