Home Is Where Hank Is (Cowboys To The Rescue 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

eyes made her drop the stack of dishes she was moving from one place to the next too quickly. They clattered loudly in the quiet room.
    The look on his face meant trouble. Big trouble. It made her feel like a kettle boiling on the stove—steamy hot, with insides that wouldn’t keep still. It made her wonder what those unsmiling lips would feel like against hers.
    No! she told herself sharply. She was not looking for a man—not even one as handsome as Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Mel Gibson all rolled into one. No one—not even a blue-eyed, square-jawed cowboy—was going to stop her from getting to San Francisco. She’d wasted half her life waiting for someone wonderful to walk in and give her a home, a connection. First at the orphanage, then at all the places she’d worked. She was through waiting. She had a plan and the determination to see it through.
    To distract herself and him, she asked, “Did you enjoy supper?”
    “Didn’t you notice he had second helpings of everything?” Claire asked as she returned from carrying empty platters into the kitchen.
    “I had three helpings of potatoes,” Hank added. “So, yes, you could say I enjoyed supper.”
    Alex felt as if her bones were spreading across the floor as relief flooded through her. She didn’t know until just then how important it had been to please him. Her hands halted for an instant as the realization sunk in. But wanting to please an employer was natural, wasn’t it? She always wanted people to enjoy her cooking. Her livelihood depended on it.
    She didn’t want to listen to the inner voice reminding her that pleasing someone’s palate had never left her weak in the knees, so she pushed it away and scraped harder.
    “Might as well get our little chat over with now.” Hank’s deep voice resonated through the room.
    “Okay, chat away,” she said as she picked up another plate.
    “Not here,” he said firmly. “The tax papers are up in my office.”
    Alex’s hands stopped in mid-scrape. The last thing she needed right now was to be alone with this man. Maybe later, when she wasn’t so on edge, when the air between them didn’t crackle with tension. “I need to clean up first.”
    He rose to his full six feet. “Claire can finish.”
    “But I should—”
    “Go on, Alex,” Claire urged. “I can do this.”
    Alex tore her eyes away to survey the table. Claire nearly had it cleared. Looked like there was no way to avoid this. Damn. She placed the plate she held on top of the stack, untied her apron and turned to Hank.
    He swept his arm toward the door. “After you.”
    Claire had given Alex a tour of the house when they had supper well under way, so she knew the second floor of the ranch house consisted of three large bedrooms, plus a bathroom and the ranch office that had been carved from the fourth bedroom. As Alex climbed the straight flight of stairs past pictures of Edens dead and living, she was vividly aware that the man ascending behind her was so close she could feel the warmth of his hard, lean body. There was an intimacy in climbing the stairs together. Alex didn’t want to think about the way their bodies moved in concert—right foot, left foot, right—but she couldn’t help it.
    She paused when she came up into the hallway that bisected the second floor. The layout of rooms echoed the four-square pattern of the first floor. To her left, the door to the office, which was directly over her bedroom, stood open. Claire. referred to it as the sanctuary. Hank retreated there after training sessions every night, wrestling with the paperwork the ranch required.
    Alex took a deep breath as Hank stepped up beside her. He placed his hand on the small of her back, and heat spread through her. Though he didn’t push, he exerted enough pressure to urge her on.
    “It’s not a torture chamber.”
    Alex gave him a weak smile, then turned away as heat stung her cheeks. Why did she feel so apprehensive? Hank was just another boss in a long