Forbidden Read Online Free PDF

to be gunshy, so to speak. She’d make him understand that she wasn’t ready for the kind of casual relationship he so clearly wanted. She would probably never be. She’d tell him about Liam too, explain why she would be leaving town almost right away. He probably knew Liam. In a town this size, everyone must’ve known Liam….
    “Bart’s just a nickname,” the cowboy said. “It’s short for Bartlett. Cal Bartlett.”
    He closed the door behind him with a quiet click as Kayla’s eyes opened.
    She sat up in the bed, suddenly wide awake.
    Cal Bartlett. Cal
Bartlett
…?
    Dear God, the cowboy was Liam’s older brother.

          3          
    “Cal Bartlett! This is a surprise. What brings you into the store this morning?”
    Cal gazed across the racks of clothing at Marge Driscoll’s smiling face. He was ready for her question. He’d come prepared. He knew it was impossible to go into Driscoll’s without getting the third degree.
    “New pair of jeans,” he told her. “Tore the knees out of a pair last week. Need some socks too. Half a dozen pairs or so. Wool. For winter.”
    “I thought you were joining your ranch hands up at the north pasture,” Marge said, taking several packs of her warmest, largest socks from the drawers behind the counter. “Andy told me you were going to take that fancy little airplane of yours up to meet them today.”
    “Change of plans,” Cal said evenly. He’d called Earl Wayne, his foreman, first thing that morning to let him know he wouldn’t be arriving for another day or two. Earl had assured Cal he had the herd well under control. He’d even urged his boss to take advantage of the situation and take a well-earned trip someplace warm and exotic. Mexico. The Caribbean. Hawaii. Spend a small portion of that money Cal worked such long, hard hours to bring in.
    Cal knew exactly where he wanted to go, and it wasn’t but a few hundred yards from where he was standing. In fact, if he turned his head, he’d be able to see down the road clear to the sign for Ned’s Guest House and Restaurant. Where Kayla was staying.
    He pulled a pair of jeans in his size down from the shelf. He’d been buying this size and length in this brand for so long, he didn’t need to think about trying them on. They fit. He knew they fit.
    As he carried the jeans across the store toward the cash register, he stopped at a rack of shirts. They were long-sleeved with buttons down the front, in an amazing array of both bright and muted colors. They were cotton—stone-washed, the tag said. As he touched them, he was surprised by their softness. They felt like butter beneath his fingers.
    This was really why he’d gone into Driscoll’s that morning. He wanted a new shirt to wear out to dinner with Kayla that night. Everything in his closet was either badly worn out or much too formal.
    “That blue will look really good on you,” Marge called across the room. “I think I saw at least one in your size too.”
    Cal had been looking at a shirt that was light brown, but now he pulled out the blue. It was neither navy nor pale, but rather a deep, rich shade of royal blue. It looked like the color of the sky directly overhead on a perfect, cloudless autumn day. He’d never owned an article of clothing that was so colorful in his entire life.
    He carried it over to the counter with the jeans. His entire life was due for a change.
    Cal had woken up that morning with only one thing on his mind: Kayla. He was going to see her again that night. He was going to have dinner with her, gaze into her exquisitely shaped green eyes, and do his damnedest to wind up back in her room at the guest house after dinner was over. Or he could bring her back to the ranch. There was no one else around—all his hired hands were driving his herd up north. He had the whole place to himself. Kayla could stay with him as long as she liked.
    Cal could feel anticipation coursing through his veins. It was an odd