The Bull Rider's Twin Trouble. Ali Olson

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       Chapter Two

      Cassie closed the door, trying not to show just how shaky she was feeling. She took in a large gulp of air, as if she hadn’t breathed properly since first opening the door.

      She put her hand to her chest, trying to calm the beating heart beneath. As soon as she did it, she realized her fingers were only touching bare skin and she groaned. She’d been unpacking boxes in the warm living room and had answered the door without realizing she was wearing a shirt that showed far more skin than she would have otherwise.

      What must he have thought, to see her standing in the doorway showing off her stomach and chest like that?

      Her mind went from zero to naughty in an instant, and it took all her effort to bring it back to being appropriately embarrassed.

      “He’s got big arms,” Carter commented, oblivious to his mother’s mental gymnastics.

      Oh, she had noticed his arms. She had noticed every single inch of him, from the shaggy sun-kissed brown hair under a battered cowboy hat all the way to his scuffed boots. Her eyes had eaten him up like so much candy the moment she had seen him standing on her porch. But she wasn’t planning on telling her four-year-old son that. “Hopefully he’ll be strong enough to do things I can’t do all on my own to get this ranch working,” she said, trying to maintain her concentration on the tasks at hand.

      “We’ll help, too,” Zach responded, a look of such sincerity on his young face that her heart—and eyes—welled up at the sight.

      “I know you will,” she answered, ruffling the boy’s dark curls, trying to keep the worry out of her voice.

      It had seemed like a great idea only a couple of months ago. Purchase a ranch, get out of the city and live the life she’d always wanted. It seemed so simple. But she hadn’t expected everything to cost quite so much, and now here she was with a broken-down ranch that needed to make money, somehow, and she didn’t have the faintest clue how to go about it.

      She knew that once she got her small doctor’s office going in the front room of the ranch house, she would be able to make ends meet, but finances would likely be tight for a while, and a running, profitable ranch would help give her a cushion. Instead, she was going to need to pour money into this place before she could hope to get much out of it.

      Finding this ranch for sale when she so desperately wanted to leave Minneapolis had seemed like fate, and she’d jumped at the chance. Now, it seemed more like a crazy whim she’d acted on without thinking it through.

      Mrs. McNeal’s offer of a helpful son had been a gift from heaven, and she knew she could never turn down the assistance, even if the man on the doorstep made her think nothing but the most sinful of thoughts.

      Cassie pictured the way he had been standing there looking her over, and she felt short of breath again. She had tried to behave as professionally as she could, despite the inclination to kiss this complete stranger. She was no longer a whimsical young woman who could give in to an impulse of that sort, no matter how strong.

      It was more difficult than she’d like to admit, though. She did not look forward to seeing the man again, and she needed to keep her distance when those urges pushed her to do some very inappropriate things. If she had any choice, she would tell the neighbors she didn’t require any help, after all. But she did, so there was nothing for it.

      Cassie turned her thoughts back to her two sons, who were playing amid the boxes piled around the living room. “Time for bed,” she told them, and they hopped up, racing for the bathroom.

      Zach won, shutting the door in Carter’s face. While he waited his turn, he went over to his mother and pulled on her arm. “Can you tell us the story about the time Dad saved the baby birds?” he asked, looking up to her with his large green eyes.

      Cassie’s heart squeezed tight. The boys idolized their father and always wanted to hear stories about him. He had only been gone for six months, and she couldn’t face tarnishing their perfect image of him, so she had kept telling them the good stories over and over, keeping the not-so-good ones to herself. To them, he was a kind-hearted police officer who had died in an unfortunate car crash. She wanted it to stay that way.

      Zach and Carter were by far the biggest reason why she couldn’t bring a man into her life. They weren’t ready. Especially not for someone like this Mr. McNeal, who СКАЧАТЬ