One Wild Cowboy and A Cowboy To Marry: One Wild Cowboy / A Cowboy to Marry. Cathy Thacker Gillen

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СКАЧАТЬ not wanting to get into any of that with her brothers, she turned to the third and most annoying reason her love life remained a bust.

      “My lack of dates this past year is because no guy in his right mind has wanted to come near me knowing he would have to put up with you-all constantly breathing down our necks.”

      Hank refused to apologize. “We were just trying to protect you.”

      Emily glared at her three tall, brawny brothers. “Well, stop!”

      Holden looked her in the eye and held the line. “No can do. Now, here’s the plan. We’re sure we know better than Mom and Dad who you should be dating. So...we have each picked out a guy for you to meet. All of them understand the restaurant business—so you should have something in common—and all of them already get along with us.” He smiled confidently. “And as a bonus, none of them are from around here. So it won’t be anyone you’ve already met and rejected.”

      Emily didn’t care where these potential suitors hailed from. “I’m not going on any blind dates!” she warned. “And especially not with any men that have already received the McCabe Men Stamp of Approval!” That would simply confirm they were the type who would bore her to tears.

      Jeb grinned, mischievous as ever. “That’s the beauty of our plan, baby sis. You won’t have to go out with them, ’cause we’re bringing them to you at the cafe. You can scope them out while you’re serving them breakfast or lunch and then decide who you want to go out with—and then we’ll set it up for you.”

      This was insane, Emily thought. Like some sort of reality show she never would have signed up for in a million years. “These three guys agreed to be looked over by me, like hunks of prime beefcake?”

      For the first time, her brothers looked uncertain. Aha, Emily thought, this plan did have a hitch! And a possibly insurmountable one, at that...

      Grimacing, Holden said, “They all agreed to have breakfast or lunch with us at your place. The meals themselves are going to be more like business meetings, with a little socializing thrown in.”

      “And during said meeting, I’m supposed to come over, make nice and flirt a little,” Emily mused sarcastically.

      Jeb shrugged and regarded her as if she were overreacting. “Couldn’t hurt.”

      Oh, yeah? Emily drained the rest of her water in a single gulp and tossed the empty bottle in the recycling bin. “You’re making it oh so tempting,” she drawled in her Scarlett O’Hara imitation, batting her eyelashes for effect, “but no. Besides, I already have a date,” she fibbed with as much bravado as she could muster. “It’s tonight, at the benefit for the boys ranch, as a matter of fact. So you might want to pass that on to Mom and Dad, because I know they wouldn’t want to interfere in a date I already lined up.”

      “Is that right?” Hank prodded, clearly not believing a word of what she’d just said. “With whom?”

      Emily mentally ran down the list of eligible men in Laramie, Texas, and quickly centered on the one who would be the least desirable, at least by her family’s standards. The one man who had sworn he would never be tamed by any woman...

      She beamed at them proudly. “Dylan Reeves.”

      * * *

      “NO.”

      Emily stared at the sexy rancher in front of her, sure she hadn’t heard right. Especially, since she had just offered the town’s most notorious bachelor the kind of deal he couldn’t possibly resist. “No?” she repeated, stunned.

      Dylan Reeves swept off his hat, ran an impatient hand through his thick, wheat-colored hair and stepped out of the round training pen. His golden brown eyes lasered into hers with disturbing accuracy. “That’s what I said.”

      Emily cast a glance behind Dylan at the once-wild gelding who was now mooning after his momentarily distracted trainer like a little puppy awaiting his return. Then she returned her attention to the ruggedly fit cowboy who was scowling down at her.

      Dylan wasn’t just an incredibly attractive man with a towering build that dwarfed her own five-foot-seven frame. He was a horse whisperer who had moved to Laramie five years before and, through sheer grit and hard work, founded the Last Chance Ranch.

      Dylan took on the horses everyone else had given up on, and transformed them.

      That being the case, Emily reasoned, he had a heart in there somewhere that would allow him to participate in yet another worthy cause. “It’s a fund-raiser for charity.”

      His lips formed an uncompromising line. “It could be a dinner for the Crown Prince of England for all I care.” He lounged against the metal rails of the round training pen and folded his arms in front of him. “The answer is still no.”

      Emily ignored the way the tan twill shirt hugged his broad shoulders and molded to the sculpted muscles of his chest before disappearing into the waistband of his worn, dark blue denim jeans. She forced her gaze away from the engraved silver-and-gold buckle on his belt. “Look. You know we have nothing in common,” she said as a shimmer of awareness shifted through her, “so there’s no possibility this will be a real date. That’s why I asked you to go with me tonight.”

      Dylan narrowed his eyes at her. “Asked being the operative word. You asked...I declined. As, I might point out, I have every right to do. End of story.”

      “Fine.” Emily stepped closer and tilted her head toward him. “Then what’s it going to take?”

      He looked her up and down suspiciously, from the top of her flat-brimmed hat, to the toes of her favorite burgundy rattlesnake boots. “What do you mean?”

      “How many free meals at the café?” she bartered.

      Initially, she’d thought two was fair. Evidently not, in his opinion.

      Dylan flashed her a crocodile smile that didn’t begin to reach his life-weary eyes. He rubbed his jaw with the palm of his hand. “What makes you think I want to eat at your restaurant?”

      “Oh,” Emily looked him up and down just as impudently and mocked his condescending tone to a T. “Perhaps the fact that you’re there every morning when I open—and sometimes lunch, as well. And you’ve asked more than once why I don’t serve dinner at night!”

      That alone conveyed that either he couldn’t cook, or he was too unmotivated to do so. He also had a penchant for the cowboy cuisine she had perfected.

      Poking the brim of his cowboy hat up with maddening nonchalance, he leaned toward her and whispered conspiratorially, “It’s a good point, sweetheart. You’d make more money if you did stay open through the dinner hour.”

      She would also be competing with her mother’s restaurant, which was a Laramie institution and had a dance floor and lively music every night.

      “I would also have to work much longer hours,” Emily replied, suddenly flustered by his blatant nearness.

      He smirked in a way meant to infuriate. “Or—” he prodded “—hire more staff.”

      Emily harrumphed. The last thing she wanted was anyone telling her how to run the restaurant СКАЧАТЬ