The Maisey Yates Collection : Cowboy Heroes: Take Me, Cowboy / Hold Me, Cowboy / Seduce Me, Cowboy / Claim Me, Cowboy / The Rancher's Baby. Maisey Yates

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      She’d just recently quit her job at Jake’s in order to open her own shop specializing in heavy equipment, which really was how she found herself in the position she was in right now. Invited to the charity gala thing and embroiled in a bet on whether or not she could get a date.

      “So why exactly do you want to kill your brothers today?” Chase asked, startling her out of her thoughts.

      “Various reasons.” She didn’t know why, but something stopped her from wanting to tell him exactly what was going on. Maybe because it was humiliating. Yes, it was definitely humiliating.

      “Sure. But that’s every day. Why specifically do you want to kill them today?”

      She took a deep breath, keeping her eyes fixed on the fishing boat that was mounted to the wall opposite her, and very determinedly not looking at Chase. “Because. They bet that I couldn’t get a date to this thing I’m invited to and I bet them that I could.” She thought about the woman he’d been talking to a moment ago. A woman so different from herself they might as well be different species. “And right about now I’m afraid they’re right.”

      * * *

      Chase was doing his best to process his best friend’s statement. It was difficult, though. Daniel and Mark had solid asshole tendencies when it came to Anna—that much he knew—but this was pretty low even for them.

      He studied Anna’s profile, her dark hair pulled back into a braid, her gray T-shirt that was streaked with oil. He watched as she raised her bottle of beer to her lips. She had oil on her hands, too. Beneath her fingernails. Anna wasn’t the kind of girl who attracted a lot of male attention. But he kind of figured that was her choice.

      She wasn’t conventionally beautiful. Mostly because of the motor oil. But that didn’t mean that getting a date should be impossible for her.

      “Why don’t you think you can get a date?”

      She snorted, looking over at him, one dark brow raised. “Um.” She waved a hand up and down, indicating her body. “Because of all of this.”

      He took a moment to look at all of that. Really look. Like he was a man and she was a woman. Which they were, but not in a conventional sense. Not to each other. He’d looked at her almost every day for the past fifteen years, so it was difficult to imagine seeing her for the first time. But just then, he tried.

      She had a nice nose. And her lips were full, nicely shaped, her top lip a little fuller than her bottom lip, which was unique and sort of...not sexy, because it was Anna. But interesting.

      “A little elbow grease and that cleans right off,” he said. “Anyway, men are pretty simple.”

      She frowned. “What does that mean?”

      “Exactly what it sounds like. You don’t have to do much to get male attention if you want it. Give a guy what he’s after...”

      “Okay, that’s just insulting. You’re saying that I can get a guy because men just want to get laid? So it doesn’t matter if I’m a wrench-toting troll?”

      “You are not a wrench-toting troll. You’re a wrench-toting woman who could easily bludgeon me to death, and I am aware of that. Which means I need to choose my next words a little more carefully.”

      Those full lips thinned into a dangerous line, her green eyes glittering dangerously. “Why don’t you do that, Chase.”

      He cleared his throat. “I’m just saying, if you want a date, you can get one.”

      “By unzipping my coveralls down to my belly button?”

      He tipped his beer bottle back, taking a larger swallow than he intended to, coughing as it went down wrong. He did not need to picture the visual she had just handed to him. But he was a man, so he did.

      It was damned unsettling. His best friend, bare beneath a pair of coveralls unfastened so that a very generous wedge of skin was revealed all the way down...

      And he was done with that. He didn’t think of Anna that way. Not at all. They’d been friends since they were freshmen in high school and he’d navigated teenage boy hormones without lingering too long on thoughts of her breasts.

      He was thirty years old, and he could have sex whenever he damn well pleased. Breasts were no longer mysterious to him. He wasn’t going to go pondering the mysteries of her breasts now.

      “It couldn’t hurt, Anna,” he said, his words containing a little more bite than he would like them to. But he was unsettled.

      “Okay, I’ll keep that in mind. But barring that, do you have any other suggestions? Because I think I’m going to be expected to wear something fancy, and I don’t own anything fancy. And it’s obvious that Mark and Daniel think I suck at being a girl.”

      “That’s not true. And anyway, why do you care what they—or anyone else—think?”

      “Because. I’ve got this new business...”

      “And anyone who brings their heavy equipment to you for a tune-up won’t care whether or not you can walk in high heels.”

      “But I don’t want to show up at these things looking...” She sighed. “Chase, the bottom line is I’ve spent a long time not fitting in. And people here are nice to me. I mean, now that I’m not in school. People in school sucked. But I get that I don’t fit. And I’m tired of it. Honestly, I wouldn’t care about my brothers if there wasn’t so much...truth to the teasing.”

      “They do suck. They’re awful. So why does it matter what they think?”

      “Because,” she said. “It just does. I’m that poor Anna Brown with no mom to teach her the right way to do things and I’m just...tired of it. I don’t want to be poor Anna Brown. I want to be Anna Brown, heavy equipment mechanic who can wear coveralls and walk in heels.”

      “Not at the same time, I wouldn’t think.”

      She shot him a deadly glare. “I don’t fail,” she said, her eyes glinting in the dim bar light. “I won’t fail at this.”

      “You’re not in remote danger of failing. Now, what’s the mystery event that has you thinking about high heels?” he asked.

      Copper Ridge wasn’t exactly a societal epicenter. Nestled between the evergreen mountains and a steel-gray sea on the Oregon Coast, there were probably more deer than people in the small town. There were only so many events in existence. And there was a good chance she was making a mountain out of a small-town molehill, and none of it would be that big of a deal.

      “That charity thing that the West family has every year,” she mumbled. “Gala Under the Stars or whatever.”

      The West family’s annual fund-raising event for schools. It was a weekend event, with the town’s top earners coming to a small black-tie get-together on the West property.

      The McCormacks had been founding members of the community of Copper Ridge back in the 1800s. Their forge had been used by everyone in town and in the neighboring communities. But as the СКАЧАТЬ