Cowboy Delirium

Joanna currently resides in a small community forty miles north of Houston, Texas, with her husband. Though she still has many family and emotional ties to Louisiana, she loves living in the Lone Star State. You may write to Joanna at PO Box 265, Montgomery, Texas 77356.

“I promise you’ll rue the day you kidnapped me.”

Jaime jerked free of Rio’s grasp and stumbled away from him, bracing herself to fight him off.

The physical advances didn’t come. Instead he stood against the closed bedroom door. “I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I said I’d like to keep you safe.”

She studied the man she’d first considered a hunk. In any other situation, she would have found him attractive in a rugged, risky sort of way. His jaw line was craggy, his physique muscular. His short, thick hair was blue-black, like midnight on a moonless night.

But it was his eyes, piercing yet shadowed with mysterious incongruities, that got to her the most. They tempted her to believe there really might be more than evil lurking behind those burning depths.

But could she afford to find out?

COWBOY DELIRIUM

JOANNA WAYNE

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is dedicated to all my loyal readers who couldn’t get enough of the Collingsworth family and asked repeatedly when Jaime would get her man. Also to America’s brave law enforcement officers and military personnel who sacrifice so much to keep us safe. And to my hubby for cooking dinner for me when I get so busy writing I forget to do it for him.

“Surely you can’t be cruel enough to send me away without so much as a nightcap?”

Jaime Collingsworth found that difficult to believe herself. Afull moon, a gorgeous, fascinating man who was hot for her, and she was going to dismiss him with a kiss at her door. But duty called—and had left two messages.

“We’ve been out late every night this week,” she reminded him.

“I know,” he said, slipping his arm along the back of the car seat to massage her shoulder. “But I have this serious problem. I simply can’t get enough of you.”

“Slow down, tiger. No need to rush the romance. And I absolutely have to get up in time tomorrow to make it to Jack’s Bluff for Sunday brunch. I haven’t been to the ranch in four weeks, and my mother is on my case big time.”

Actually Jaime missed her mother as well. Her family was huge and could be overwhelming, but still, she was looking forward to visiting with all of them, especially her young nieces and nephews. Her new Houston townhouse was great, but Jack’s Bluff Ranch was home.

“You could take me with you,” Buerto said. “I’d love to meet your family, especially that cantankerous grandpa you keep talking about.”

“So you keep saying, but I hate those meet-the-family occasions. They are far too stressful.”

“You sound as if you’ve had a lot of them.”

“Not so many.” But enough that she hated to go through the ordeal when she didn’t have to. “It could be fun, though,” she teased. “You’d be sized up more thoroughly than a new bull being introduced to the herd.”

“Four protective cowboy brothers checking me out and one of them an armed law enforcement officer,” Buerto said. “Why does that not amuse me the way it does you?”

“They all have guns,” Jaime said. “But it’s my mother you’d really have to worry about.”

Buerto waited for the gate to her townhouse complex to open and then drove inside. He slowed as they passed the sparkling fountain, English gardens and finally the privacy border of thick shrubbery.

He stopped in front of her three-story townhouse. “I’ll assure your mother that my intentions are honorable.”

“It won’t help. She knows mine never are.”

That wasn’t exactly true, but it was close enough. Jaime liked guys. She just never fell in love, at least not the way her sister, Becky, and her brothers had.

For her, men were more like a new pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes or a Roberto Cavalli gown. They were intoxicatingly seductive when first acquired, but lost their glamour and excitement when the newness wore off.

There was an outside chance it could be different with Buerto—which was reason enough not to throw him to the wolves this early in the relationship.

She shifted in her seat, letting the short skirt of her sky-blue dress inch up to mid-thigh for Buerto’s benefit as she reached for the door handle.