Read Online Reckless Territory by Kate Watterson - Free Book Online Page A

him. He hadn’t ever really thought about whether he’d be jealous of sharing a woman, because he’d never cared enough about one single female to worry about it. Jace and Robert were both good men; the three of them very different, but like brothers. Though Cole was from an unconventional background himself, he thought he understood that first taste of true freedom she was experiencing.
    To go from critical eyes dissecting your every move to the oblivion of wide open spaces and complete lack of censure…surely if you were young, beautiful and passionate, a person might embrace the change in every way possible.
    He wouldn’t want her to be any other way.
    “Burden doesn’t apply,” Robert said gruffly for him.
    “Let me rephrase, then.” Victoria paused delicately and then said, “I want to belong with you all at Crescent Moon Ranch.”
    Cole gazed at her with such intensity he was sure the fire flared. “Sweetheart, you already do.”
    She hesitated. “One woman living with three men is unconventional.”
    “An English lady with three outlaws is even more out of place,” Robert said in his reasonable, calm way. “You don’t owe us anything.”
    What they had experienced earlier by the river hadn’t seemed like she was paying a debt, Cole thought, but more as if she had been a bird with clipped wings that could now fly free. Jace had been just plain born wild but both he and Robert had come from civilized backgrounds, and he understood that first intoxicating taste of liberation. He’d left Boston without a backward glance, but then again, he was born half Lakota. The spirits had called him and he had answered.
    They had also delivered Lady Victoria Mead to him under a bush in the Kansas wilderness. It meant something, for the spirits never acted without reason, or so his grandmother had told him, and at the moment he believed her.
    A prairie wind made their fire flicker. “ This is meant to be ,” the keening breeze whispered.
    “I owe you my life,” she said quietly, the light playing over her delicate face. “But that isn’t what I mean.”
    As they watched, she rose and went to where her bedroll had been laid out by the side of the camp protected by the closest copse of trees, and lay down, tugging the blanket up over her slender form.

Chapter Seven
    The arc of the valley below was lushly green, the glitter of a stream bordering one side, cottonwoods in ranks along the banks, the rest of it open meadow that climbed eventually in the far distance to the foothills, and beyond that, magnificent in the background, rose the mountains.
    She’d never seen anything like it in her life.
    Victoria reined in her horse at the top of the ridge they had just crested and sat there, in awe of the view, moved enough that tears stung her eyes and her throat tightened. This would be her new home. The ranch house was a tiny dot in the distance, the corrals and barns more significant than the house itself, the cluster of trees near the buildings indicating a source of water.
    “We own about as far as you can see,” Jace told her in a matter-of-fact drawl. “In the winter the pass closes up and it’s pretty isolated here. Nothing like what you’re used to.”
    “Good,” she said, and meant it, nudging her horse with her heel to head down the trail.
    He grinned and urged his mount, a sleek bay, alongside hers. “I’m revising my opinion of foreign bluebloods thanks to you, darlin’.”
    “For the better, I hope.” Her voice was dry.
    “Oh yeah.” Under the brim of his hat, his blue eyes were intent, his gaze steady. “I know what happened with you and Cole, but…” He hesitated, and then said quickly, “But I don’t care. I’m that damn in love with you.”
    Robbed of speech, Victoria could only stare at him, their horses side by side on the faint path through the scrub brush.
    Softly, he went on. “I don’t see any need to keep it to myself. It isn’t like Robert and Cole don’t know how I