Read The Cowboy and the Princess for Free Online Page A

finger to stroke her arm.
    Annie struggled to suppress a shudder. She didn’t want him to know how scared she was.
    “We were just getting to know each other. C’mon, I’ll give you a lift. Where you headed?” He grabbed for the satchel.
    Lady Astor poked her head from the bag and sank her sharp little teeth into his index finger.
    “Son of a whore!” he exploded. “That hairy rat bit me!”
    Annie cringed, drooped against the wall, praying hard that someone would come out of the restaurant or pull into the parking lot. She opened her mouth to scream, but before she could get a sound out, he clamped a palm over her mouth, yanked her up tight against him.
    “C’mon girlie, no lot lizard is turning her nose up at me. I got cash and I’m taking what I want.”
    R elief rippled the tension from Brady’s muscles. Tonight, he might have broken his five unbreakable rules for leading an uncomplicated life, but it wasn’t too late to undo his mistakes.
    Well, except for the chili. It was too late to uneat the chili, but so far his stomach hadn’t kicked up a protest. Maybe that rule could be safely bent.
    The other rules he’d cobbled back together. He ditched the hitchhiker, simultaneously turning his back on a dangerous damsel in distress. He trusted his gut when it urged him to flee and he had told Annie the truth.
    He was free and clear.
    The road lay open. The simple path beckoned. After letting Trampas out to do his business, he put the dog back into the trailer, climbed into the cab of his one-ton dually pickup truck, shook the rain off his clothes and pulled around to the front of Toad’s. He had a straight shot onto the highway. No oncoming vehicles. All he had to do was drive.
    But then he made the mistake of glancing into his rearview mirror.
    There was Annie, satchel clutched close to her chest, shivering underneath the awning outside the restaurant.
    And she wasn’t alone. A mangy-looking cowboy had hold of her elbow and was dragging her away from the entrance and toward the shadows.
    Annie struggled, fighting to get away from the guy. Even in the darkness, Brady could see alarm in her eyes.
    She’s not your problem.
    Maybe not, but he couldn’t sit here and watch some guy accost her.
    How do you know he’s accosting her? He could be her old man, dragging her back home. You know better than to get involved in a domestic dispute. You’ll be the one losing your teeth over it.
    Annie opened her mouth to holler, but her outcry was lost in the noise of the storm. She dropped her satchel. Lady Astor was in there. Brady’s gut lurched and it wasn’t from the chili.
    The cowboy had his arm around Annie’s waist now. He had lifted her up off the ground and was dragging her toward a dilapidated old truck with Bondo doors. She was fighting him hard, kicking with the fury of a wild mustang, slapping at his head, knocking off his hat, but she was no match for the much larger man.
    Anger bulleted Brady from the cab and he hit the ground running.
    “Hey!” he shouted, but the wind snatched his voice up and threw it toward the stormy sky.
    The mangy cowboy almost had her to his truck. Brady ran full throttle. Good thing he took a three-mile jog every morning. Otherwise he might not have made it to them before the guy got her inside his pickup.
    As it was, Brady reached the truck just as Cowboy Mange got the passenger side door open. He’d been so busy struggling with Annie that he apparently hadn’t heard Brady’s boots slapping against the wet pavement. Brady seized the seedy cowpoke by the shoulder and spun him around.
    Letting go of Annie, the cowboy doubled up his fists.
    In the momentum shift, Annie lost her balance and stumbled to the ground. The man let out a growl and started swinging. He’d been drinking. Brady could smell whiskey on his breath.
    Brady was a lover, not a fighter. It wasn’t that he didn’t know how to fight or that he backed down from one. He’d been raised in a nest of brothers.