Downhome Darlin' & The Best Man Switch Read Online Free PDF Page A

man’s voice.
    He said her name like an endearment so sexy that on its own it was enough to make her blood run faster through her veins.
    Enticing. Intriguing. Enchanting.
    â€œWake up.... Rise and shine,” he called to her in a tone that was hard to resist
    But harder still was coming out of the deep sleep that held her wrapped in its heavy cocoon. It felt too good to lie there. To hear the man beckoning. To feel his big, hard body so nearby...
    So nearby?
    She realized suddenly that she wasn’t in a field of flowers. She was in a bed. But it wasn’t her bed because her bed was much softer than this.
    And there certainly shouldn’t be a man in it.
    She struggled to wake up, and the more alert she became, the worse she felt. Her head was pounding, and when she managed to open her eyes even just into slits, daggers seemed to jab into them and force them shut again.
    â€œThat’s it,” the husky voice urged in more of that intimate, warm, whiskey tone. “Wake up. You can do it.”
    He was definitely nearby. Very nearby. And the voice was not one she recognized as belonging to anyone she knew.
    Where was she and who was this guy? And how did she get here? How did she end up with him?
    Her brain felt as if it were fogged under, making it difficult to discern what was real and what was merely a figment of her imagination or a piece of a dream.
    She remembered the previous evening up to a certain point. The point where she and her sisters were in the Clangton Saloon. She recalled drinking. A lot. And being challenged to pat some good-looking cowboy’s rear end...
    She peeked out of only a bare hint of a crack in one eye.
    That cowboy’s rear end.
    She clamped the eye closed again and fought harder to remember.
    There’d been a rest room down a hallway. He’d bought her a drink. More than one.
    Had he really ended up carrying her out of the place? Putting her into a black sports car?
    And what had happened after that?
    Total blank. She drew a total blank from there.
    But here she was—wherever here was—in a bed that wasn’t her own.
    With the rear-end cowboy.
    Oh, my God.
    â€œAbby,” he said again. “If you don’t come to pretty soon here, honey, I’m gonna start worryin’ about you. Are you all right?”
    No, she wasn’t all right! She felt like an 18-wheeler had driven over her head and she was even more sick about not knowing what had gone on in the past twelve hours.
    She steeled herself and opened her eyes all the way, very, very slowly and as she did she wondered what his name was. She couldn’t very well call him the rear-end cowboy. She must know his name. She just had to think about it....
    Cal. That was it. Cal Ketchum.
    â€œMornin’,” he said when she finally turned her pounding head his way and looked straight at him.
    Ingrained courtesy put a weak smile on her face even as it seemed ridiculous to be worrying about manners under the circumstances. “Hi,” she said through a throat that was almost too dry to let the word pass.
    She swallowed with difficulty, taking some personal stock as she did while still staring up at the man she presumed to be her host.
    It felt as if she had on her clothes. Twisted, turned, falling off her shoulder, but at least they were basically where they were supposed to be. And he wasn’t under the covers with her.
    Neither of those things offered much reassurance, but nevertheless it was better than waking up with both herself and the rear-end cowboy naked under the sheets. A lot better. She didn’t know what she would have done if that had been the case. Especially when just the hint of bare chest and stomach showing from the open front of his pale yellow shirt was enough to send her already unstable stomach into flutters.
    â€œI think I drank too much last night,” she admitted shakily.
    â€œI know you drank too much last night.”
    â€œDid I get sick or