“So, are you going to see if you can get yourself some of that regular…exercise?” Mac said, watching Rafe watching Elena. “Not sure Elena there is quite your type, though.”
“What makes you think I’d be interested in her? And what about her isn’t my type?”
Mac adopted a casually interested tone, not sure if he pulled it off or not. “She spends a lot of time mucking out stalls. You?” He reached out and plucked a piece of straw off Rafe’s elbow. “Let’s just say, I don’t see you as the roll-in-the-hay type.”
“I earned my high-thread-count sheets, bro. I make no apologies for wanting to sleep in comfort or dress in style.”
“Nor should you. I was just saying, is all.”
“Yeah. Just saying. You’d be right, too. She’s not my type.”
The leggy brunette looked over at them just then. Mac nodded to her, she nodded back. Rafe, on the other hand, chose that moment to wander off. As if he hadn’t noticed.
“Catch you later,” he said to Mac, then took off toward the main house and the Trinity offices. “Got some case files to go over.”
“Sure. I’ll be up in a while.”
“Right. Say hi to the little woman for me.”
Mac smiled. Maybe he wouldn’t need to talk to Finn after all. Rafe was already on the case. How long his friend fought that fact remained to be seen.
Mac pushed away from the rails and wandered in the general direction of the small outbuilding he’d constructed next to his and Kate’s bungalow. She’d be in her office right about now. Hair pulled up in a messy knot, Bagel asleep at her feet. Probably dressed in something soft…and easily removed.
He snagged the picnic basket he’d packed earlier from the shed at the end of the barns, smiling when he saw someone had stuck a clean blanket in with the basket. So maybe she’d come to expect their Wednesday outings as much as he’d enjoyed planning them these past few weeks, now that the sun was out and warming the countryside. Maybe she’d decided they just might need a better cushion than his jacket…or her sundress.
He did like the way his Kate thought.
Smiling, he hefted the blanket and struck off toward home.
Love Donna Kauffman? Try all her books!
Next in the Black Sheep series is
THE BLACK SHEEP AND THE HIDDEN BEAUTY…
They’re back—the boys you go out looking for precisely because your mother warned you not to—the bad boys every good girl needs at least once, if not twice…
Raphael “Rafe” Santiago may have left the streets years ago, but the street has never left him. A rough childhood in the Bronx taught him never to let his guard down, to keep everything in order, and always to trust that little voice in his gut that tells him when someone’s got something to hide. Horse trainer Elena Caulfield, is definitely hiding something, and Rafe intends to find out what it is and take care of it—his way.
But his way wasn’t supposed to include feeling an intense attraction to the tomboyish Elena. With her mud-caked boots, quiet strength, and gentle manner, she’s nothing like the flashy, seductive, overtly feminine women Rafe usually beds. The closer he gets to her, the harder it is to control that fiery passion he’s worked hard to keep cooled, the kind that can catch a man off guard and leave him open to danger—because whatever secret Elena’s protecting, it’s big…and worth killing for. Because when you’re from the Bronx, you take care of what you love—or die trying…
Then there’s
THE BLACK SHEEP AND THE ENGLISH ROSE…
Finn Dalton is the black sheep of his privileged family—because he’s always trying to do the right thing. But do good guys let bad girls go free? Ask British heiress Felicity Trent. Finn should have called the cops when he caught Felicity with a fortune in stolen jewels. But after the hot night they’d shared, betraying her meant he’d never have her again. Two years later, he discovers Felicity scantily clad and handcuffed to a bed in a posh Manhattan hotel room. Finn has three choices. Turn Felicity in. Turn her loose. Or turn her on…
Finn Dalton is bad boy personified. Felicity Trent should know; she’s a bad girl herself. But for Felicity, life as a jewel thief is almost as seductive as Finn is—and that’s dangerous. Because for a girl like her one night is all she needs to get what she wants, anything more means trouble. Now, with both of them after the same thing—the rarest of treasures—who gets there first might be the last thing they want…
LET ME IN
He’s bringing anything but peace and quiet…
Tate Winslow is done with all the guns, the adventures, the brushes with death. All she wants is to be left alone. So when her enigmatic ex-boss shows up on her doorstep barely alive, she really tries not to care. He’s all alpha male, the baddest of the bad—and a threat to her hard-won peace in more ways than one.
Tate is the only lead Derek Cole has on a case that could blow the intelligence world apart—if it doesn’t kill him before he can figure it out. She was his best agent, but she’s in hiding and he’s gone rogue, and he’s starting to think of her in a very nonprofessional way. In fact, he wants Tate like he wants his next breath, but he’s already risking his life and his career…does he need to put his heart in danger too?
A GREAT KISSER
Buckle up. Enjoy the view.
Jake McKenna fixes planes, not people. Compared to an engine, humans are high-maintenance and unpredictable—which is why Jake has zero interest in indulging his sister’s request that he play tour guide and rent-a-date to her boss’s visiting stepdaughter. Still, Lauren Matthews is nothing like the uptight, reed-skinny workaholic he expected. She’s curvy—deliciously so. Funny. Open. And convinced that there’s more to her mother’s hasty marriage to the local mayor than meets the eye.
Leaving her fast-track Washington career is the most impulsive thing Lauren has ever done—right until the moment she arrives in Cedar Springs, Colorado. Everything about sexy, enigmatic pilot Jake tempts Lauren to unleash her inner bad girl and let him take her places she’s never been…even as her snooping around town provokes some extremely hostile reactions. At this altitude, losing your head is easy. Trusting your heart can cost you everything…
And here’s a sneak peek at Donna’s newest book,
HERE COMES TROUBLE,
coming next month from Brava…
The hot, steamy shower felt like heaven on earth as it pounded his back and neck. He should have done this earlier. It was almost better than sleep. Almost. He’d realized after Kirby had left that he’d probably only grabbed a few hours after arriving, and he’d fully expected to be out the instant his head hit the pillow again. But that hadn’t been the case. This time it hadn’t been because he was worried about Jake, or Vanetta, or anyone else back home, or even wondering what in the hell he thought he was doing this far from the desert. In New England, for God’s sake. During the winter. Although it didn’t appear to be much of one out there.
No, that blame lay right on the lovely, slender shoulders of Kirby Farrell, innkeeper, and rescuer of trapped kittens. Granted, after the adrenaline rush of finding her hanging more than twenty feet off the ground by her fingertips, it shouldn’t be surprising that sleep eluded him, but that wasn’t entirely the cause. She was just…interesting to him. He wasn’t even entirely sure why. She was attractive enough, if you liked refined and cultured. Her personality wasn’t really either of those things, not overtly anyway, which he liked about her. Maybe he’d simply spent too long around women who were generally over-processed, over-enhanced, and overly made up, so that meeting a regular, everyday ordinary woman seemed to stand out more.
It was a safe theory, anyway.
And yet, only a few hours under her roof, and he’d already become a foster dad to a wild kitten and had spent far more time thinking about said kitten’s savior than he had his own host of problems. Which were certainly more dire and requiring of immediate thought and attention.
Maybe it was simply easier to think about someone else’s problems.
Which would explain why he was wondering about things like whether or not Kirby was making a go of things with her new enterprise here, what with the complete lack of winter weather they were having. And what her story was before opening the inn? Was this place a lifelong dream? For all he knew, she was some New England trust fund baby just playing at running her own place. Except that didn’t jibe with what he’d seen of her so far.
He’d been so lost in his thoughts while enjoying the rejuvenation of the hot shower, that he clearly hadn’t heard his foster child’s entrance into the bathroom. Which was why he almost had a heart attack when he turned around to find the little demon hanging from the outside of the clear shower curtain by it’s tiny, sharp nails, eyes wide in panic.
After his heart resumed a steady pace, he bent down to look at her, eye-to-wild-eye. “You keep climbing things you shouldn’t and one day there will be no one to rescue you.”
He was sure the responding hiss was meant to be ferocious and intimidating, but given the pink nosed–tiny–whiskered face it came out of, not so much. She hissed again when he just grinned, and started grappling with the curtain when he outright laughed, mangling it in the process.
He swore under his breath. “So, I’m already down one sweater, a shower curtain, and God knows what else you’ve dragged under the bed. I should just let you hang there all tangled up. At least I know where you are.”
However, given that the tiny thing had already had one pretty big fright that day, he sighed, shut off the hot, life-giving spray, and very carefully reached out for a towel. After a quick rubdown, he wrapped the towel around his hips, eased out from the other end of the shower, and grabbed a hand towel. “We’ll probably be adding this to my tab, as well.” He doubted Kirby’s guests would appreciate using a bath towel that had doubled as a kitty straightjacket.
“Come on,” he said, doing pretty much the same thing he’d done when the kitten had been attached to the front of Kirby. “I know you’re not happy about it,” he told the now squalling cat. “I’m not all that amped up, either.” He looked at the shredded curtain once he’d de-pronged the demon from the front of it, and shuddered to think of just how much damage it had done to the front of Kirby.
“Question is…what do I do with you now?”
Just then a light tap came on the door. “Mr. Hennessey?”
“Brett,” he called back.
“I…Brett. Right. I called. But there was no answer, so—”
“Oh, shower. Sorry.” He walked over to the door, juggled the kitty bundle and cracked the door open.
Her gaze fixed on his chest, then scooted down to the squirming towel bundle, right back up to his chest, briefly to his face, then away all together. “I’m—sorry. I just, you said…and dinner is—anyway—” She frowned. “You didn’t take the cat, you know, into—” She nodded toward the room behind him. “Did something happen?”
“I was in the shower. Shredder here decided to climb the curtain because apparently she’s not happy unless she’s trying to find new ways to terrify people.”
He glanced from the kitten to Kirby’s face in time to see her almost laugh, then compose herself. “I’m sorry, really. I shouldn’t have let you keep her in the first place. I mean, not that you can’t, but you obviously didn’t come here to rescue a kitten. I should—we should—just leave you alone.” She reached out to take the squirmy bundle from him.
“Does that mean I don’t get dinner?”
“What?” She looked up, got caught somewhere about chest height, then finally looked at his face. “I mean, no, no, not at all. I just—I hope you didn’t have your heart set on pot roast. There were a few…kitchen issues. Minor, really, but—”
“I’m not picky,” he reassured her. What he was, he realized, was starving. And not just for dinner. If she kept looking at him like that…well, it was making him want to feed an entirely different kind of appetite. In fact…He shut that mental path down. His life, such as it was, didn’t have room for further complications. And she’d be one. Hell, she already was. “I shouldn’t have gotten you to cook anyway. You’ve had quite a day, and given what The Claw here did to your—my—shower curtain—I’ll pay for a new one—I can only imagine that you must need more medical attention than I realized.”
“Don’t worry about that, I’m fine. Here,” she said, reaching out for the wriggling towel bundle. “Why don’t I go ahead and take her off your hands. I can put her out on the back porch for a bit, let you get, uh, dressed.”
Really, she had to stop looking at him like that. Like he was a…a pot roast or something. With gravy. And potatoes. Damn he was really hungry. Voraciously so. Did she have any idea how long he’d been on the road? With only himself and the sound of the wind for company? Actually, it had been far longer than that, but he really didn’t need to acknowledge that right about now.
Then she was reaching for him, and he was right at that point where he was going to say the hell with it and drag her into the room and the hell with dinner, too…only she wasn’t reaching for him. She was reaching for the damn kitten. He sort of shoved it into her hands, then shifted so a little more of the door was between them…and a little less of a view of the front of his towel. Which was in a rather revealing situation at the moment.
“Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate it. I’ll go down—be down—in just a few minutes.” He really needed to shut this door. Before he made her nervous. Or worse. Because sure, she was looking at him like he was her last supper, but that didn’t mean she was open to being ogled in return by a paying guest. Especially when he was the only paying guest in residence. Even if that did mean they had the house to themselves. And privacy. Lots and lots of privacy. “Five minutes,” he blurted out, and all but slammed the door in her face.
BRAVA BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2007 by Donna Kauffman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Brava and the B logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-0-7582-5585-3
The Black Sheep and the Princess Page 33
