Read Big Sky Rancher for Free Online Page B

marriage?”
    She tilted her chin up and shook her head, her eyes wide with what looked like fright. And well they might. She was pinned beneath a man almost twice her size, lying in the depths of a feather tick in his bedroom, the sun going down outside the windows, and no notion of what he intended. Yet she did not flinch from him, her body forming to his, softening against him, even as tears blinded her vision.
    â€œHell and damnation,” he blurted, rolling from the bed, watching as her head fell to the pillow as he rose to his feet. “I can’t find it in me to force myself on a woman, no matter how horny I am. Even if that woman is my legal wife.”
    Jennifer sat up in the bed, which he knew was no easy task,given the soft contours of the feather tick beneath her. “Do you mean that?” she asked, wiping at the moisture on her cheeks.
    â€œI told you before, I don’t say anything I don’t mean,” he pointed out, his barely concealed anger emphasizing each word.
    â€œWell, in that case, I’ll just go down to the kitchen and make you something to eat,” she said, relief apparent in her voice as she pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose. “Just tell me where you keep the food and you can go about your chores while I put something together for supper.”
    He nodded as she clambered out of bed. “Leave the jacket off,” he said. “You’re home now. You don’t need to be formal here. In fact, there’s an apron of my mother’s you can put on over your clothes if you want to.”
    â€œYour mother’s apron?” Her eyes were shiny with fresh tears as she faced him and he felt more than a twinge of guilt that he’d put so much pressure on her. She was young and inexperienced at any number of things, it seemed. Yet, her youthful body pled silently for his touch, for he’d felt her breasts firm up beneath his hands, had noted the way she’d curled against him on the bed.
    â€œIt was packed away in her things,” he replied. “I’ll get it for you and locate something for you to cook.”
    â€œI’m not very good at such things,” she warned him. “Things like cooking and such, I mean. My mother had a lady who kept our house and made all the meals.”
    â€œYour mother didn’t teach you to cook?” he asked, stunned by her revelation.
    â€œI never needed to.” Her eyes were frantic now, seeking the bedroom door, as if she might flee down the stairs and onto the back porch, given half a chance.
    â€œWell, you’re about to learn the hard way, ma’am.”
    He turned her around and escorted her from the room, then down the stairs to where he kept his food in a large pantry just off the kitchen. A curtain hung over the doorway, a limp bit of a rag. When he pushed it aside to allow them entry, it fell from the nails that held it in place, falling in a dusty heap on the floor.
    â€œIn here,” he said, waving at the shelves, where cans and crocks held his supplies.
    Jennifer lent a dubious look to the collection, then stepped inside the small room and peered beneath the plate that covered a crock of pickles. “I don’t think you’ll want these for supper,” she murmured.
    A can of beef caught her eye and she snatched it up, then peeked carefully into a wide crockery bowl that held his supply of eggs. “How about fried eggs and sliced beef?” she asked.
    â€œAnything you fix will be just fine,” he told her, hoping to encourage her efforts.
    She caught sight of the calico apron then, hanging from a hook on the wall and lifted it from its resting place, placing the loop over her neck, allowing the apron to hang from her bosom to cover most of her dress.
    Luc turned her around, tied the strings in a credible bow and backed from the pantry. He’d given her enough of a shock for one day, he decided. Hanging around while she found