The lady and the loner

He was an outlaw. A rebel. A man she’d sworn to avoid. A drifter more comfortable roaming the range—alone—than taking a wife and building a family. But from the moment he became her protector, Jennifer Horn felt a connection and an irrepressible urge to make him her own.

Corey Rainwater was running. From himself. From his past. Especially from the look in Jennifer’s eyes. He could never be the husband she needed, or the father her precocious daughter so desperately desired. Because dreams weren’t made for me like him. At least, that was what he’d always believed.

1998 HOLT Medallion

Silhouetee IM | ISBN 0373077807 | April 1997 | BUY IT HERE

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READ AN EXCERPT

The sound of the running water brought her thoughts back to the present and she looked up and stopped dead in her tracks. Corey was using the outside hose to cool off. He was rinsing off the worse of the day’s grit, she thought distractedly.
He faced her, the water sluicing through his hair and over his smooth chest. Her eyes dropped down his powerful body, heat curling in the pit of her stomach. The water was soaking into the waistband of his jeans. His unsnapped and low slung jeans. He was like a statue that had come to life. A major piece of male beauty that had a way of damming the air in her lungs–even dirty, sweaty and wet.

As if he felt her presence, he stiffened and his head came forward, his eyes opening. His jawline tightened and his wonderful eyes flashed with the innate stubbornness that she had come to know so well.

“Damn. I thought you were down at the north pasture.” He’d had every intention of being gone when she returned to the barn.

“I. . .was. . .I came. . .finished. . .with. . .the. . .sheriff. . .” She just trailed off, unable to pull her eyes away from him. She sounded like an imbecile and she felt like an idiot.

“What happened?” he gritted out, the concern in his voice softened her features and he wanted to swear again.

She couldn’t draw her eyes from his chest if her life depended on it. “I had to put down Happy-Go-lucky.”

“I’m sorry, Jennifer.” True sadness in his words. He could see what it had done to her. “Do you think it was Butler? Just give me a reason, darlin’ and I’ll take care of him.”

“Yes, I think it was Jay, but I have no proof and violence only begets more violence, Corey.”

“I know that, but Jennifer, it’s the only thing he understands.” He would move heaven and earth to help this woman. Her dazed eyes travelled lower and she licked her lips slowly. He took a deep breath and guessed that if he turned the hose on himself now the water would probably sizzle and dance on his overheated skin. “Jennifer. Turn around and get the hell out of here. For God’s sake, for my own sanity, stop looking at me like that.”

With an embarrassed groan, she wrenched her eyes away from his magnificence and turned her back, but she didn’t move. She couldn’t seem to get her legs to move.

Corey swore again and slammed the hose down with a vengeance. Damn the woman. Why did she have to look at him like that? Like she could devour him in small, aching bites. His jeans were instantaneously uncomfortable.

She heard him approach and her throat went dry. She could hear his raspy breathing and the sexy jingle of his spurs. She closed her eyes tightly. The sun had set and the darkness was complete except for the wan light from the barn and the quarter moon. She could feel his presence behind her, engulfing her, protecting her. His hands were like red hot brands when they dropped to her waist, and without any urging, she dropped her tack and turned in his arms.

“Jennifer. Didn’t we agree that we weren’t going to complicate matters?” His voice was a tortured rasp that sent heat and sensation skittering across her skin.

Her skin felt hot all over and her face throbbed with defiant chagrin. “No. You gave me an ultimatum. I don’t take threats well and I can’t forget the way you made me feel. I don’t want to forget the most wonderful night of my life.” Her eyes focused on his lips and to save her soul she couldn’t look away.

The stark look of pain flashed across his tanned face and for a moment she felt as if the ground had been wrenched from beneath her feet. “Jen,” he breathed, “you’re driving me crazy, nuts. I couldn’t sleep last night. I need you. I’m hurting so bad.”

She couldn’t help herself, her finger came up and touched his mouth and he took it inside suckling her with delicious sweeps of his warm, moist tongue. Closing her eyes against the powerful sensation of his wet velvet tongue against her skin, she groaned when his mouth left her finger and came down on her lips hard, demanding, masterful. It was like being hit by lightening; a living electric current running rampant through her body. Jennifer made a low sound, surrendering to the urgency clamoring in her, her mouth softening beneath his seeking lips.

With a moan deep in his chest, he pressed her body against the wet heat of his. Her clothes soaked up the moisture on his skin. An urgent stirring sizzled in her blood, pumping through her body when he roughly clasped her hips and pulled her against his hardness. Another low ardent moan was driven from her, and Corey’s hand moved up her body cupping the back of her head, deepening the kiss, his mouth frenzied and wet.

With a force that knocked the breath from her lungs he backed her right against the warm heated wood of the barn. Abruptly the kiss ended, and unable to let her go, he commanded hoarsely, “Run.”

“Corey,” she managed between thoroughly kissed lips. But her words stopped when she saw the look in his eyes. She could push him into it. She saw that he was hanging by a thread, but suddenly she couldn’t do it. The power she held over him would be corrupted if she forced him to break a promise. She could see that she was forcing him. His jaw was clenched, his eyes hard with something besides passion, and his body tense with his need and his inability to help himself.

A man at war with himself. It was breathtaking.

He closed his eyes as if in agony. “I don’t want to break my word, but if you don’t go now I’m going to lose it and take you right here in the dust and the mud. Run. Now!”

From the book: Jennifer’s Outlaw
By: Karen Anders
Imprint and Series: Silhouette Intimate Moments
Publication Date: 04/97
ISBN: 0-373-07780-7
Copyright ©: 1997
By Karen Alarie

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The edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S. A.
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