When a rebellious rancher meets the pastorâs daughter, itâs a match made in...Copper Ridge! From New York Times bestselling author Maisey Yates!
Sheltered from her own desires for so long, Hayley Thompson wants to experience life. A new job at Gray Bear Construction is a start. The work she can handle. Itâs her bossâreclusive, sexy Jonathan Bearâwhoâs scrambling her mind and her hormones...
No matter how successful he becomes, Jonathanâs reputation will always precede him. And his type of woman is usually nothing like prim, innocent Hayley. Yet he canât resist unleashing the fire beneath her pent-up facadeâeven if seduction means losing his heart...
âYou canât play these kinds of games. You donât know the rules.â
âI donât know what your problem is. You donât want me, so what do you care if they do?â
âHayley, honey, I donât want to want you, but that is not the same thing as not wanting you. It is not even close. What I want is something you canât handle.â
She tilted her head to the side, her hair falling over her shoulder like a glossy curtain. âMaybe I want to be shocked. Maybe I want something Iâm not quite ready for.â
âNo,â he said, his tone emphatic now. âYouâre on a big kick to have experiences. But there are much nicer men you can have experiences with.â
She bared her teeth. âI was trying! You just scared them off.â
âYouâre not having experiences with those clowns. They wouldnât know how to handle a woman if she came with an instruction manual. And let me tell you, women do not come with an instruction manual. You just have to know what to do.â
âAnd you know what to do?â
âDamn straight,â he returned.
âSo,â she said, tilting her chin up, looking stubborn. âShow me.â
* * *
Seduce Me, Cowboy is part of New York Times bestselling author Maisey Yatesâs Copper Ridge series.
MAISEY YATES is a New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty romance novels. She has a coffee habit she has no interest in kicking and a slight Pinterest addiction. She lives with her husband and children in the Pacific Northwest. When Maisey isnât writing, she can be found singing in the grocery store, shopping for shoes online and probably not doing dishes. Check out her website, www.maiseyyates.com.
To the whole Harlequin team.
This is the best job ever. Thank you for letting me do it.
One
Hayley Thompson was a good girl. In all the ways that phrase applied. The kind of girl every mother wished her son would bring home for Sunday dinner.
Of course, the mothers of Copper Ridge were much more enthusiastic about Hayley than their sons were, but that had never been a problem. She had never really tried dating, anyway. Dates were the least of her problems.
She was more worried about the constant feeling that she was under a microscope. That she was a trained seal, sitting behind the desk in the church office exactly as one might expect from a small-town pastorâs daughterâwho also happened to be the church secretary.
And what did she have to show for being so good? Absolutely nothing.
Meanwhile, her older brother had gone out into the world and done whatever he wanted. Heâd broken every rule. Run away from home. Gotten married, gotten divorced. Come back home and opened a bar in the same town where his father preached sermons. All while Hayley had stayed and behaved herself. Done everything that was expected of her.
Ace was the prodigal son. He hadnât just received forgiveness for his transgressions. Heâd been rewarded. He had so many things well-behaved Hayley wanted and didnât have.
Heâd found love again in his wife, Sierra. They had children. The doting attention of Hayleyâs parentsâa side effect of being the first to supply grandchildren, she feltâwhile Hayley had...
Well, nothing.
Nothing but a future as a very well-behaved spinster.
That was why she was here now. Clutching a newspaper in her hand until it was wrinkled tight. She hadnât even known people still put ads in the paper for job listings, but while sheâd been sitting in The Grind yesterday on Copper Ridgeâs main street, watching people go by and feeling a strange sense of being untethered, sheâd grabbed the local paper.
That had led her to the job listings. And seeing as she was unemployed for the first time since she was sixteen years old, sheâd read them.
Every single one of them had been submitted by people she knew. Businesses sheâd grown up patronizing, or businesses owned by people she knew from her dadâs congregation. And if she got a job somewhere like that, she might as well have stayed on at the church.
Except for one listing. Assistant to Jonathan Bear, owner of Gray Bear Construction. The job was for him personally, but would also entail clerical work for his company and some work around his home.