Justice for Laine (Badge of Honor: Texas Heroes Book 4) Read Online Free PDF Page A

shirt, but purple all the same. It figured they matched. They really were on the same wavelength.
    The top two buttons of his shirt were open and Laine could see he was wearing a white tee under the button-up top. He had on a pair of what she would call “dress-up boots,” as they looked shiny and pristine.
    To top off his outfit, he was holding a black Stetson in one hand, and a single purple rose in the other. She had no idea where in the world he’d found a purple rose, but at the moment, she didn’t care.
    “Hi, you look amazing,” Wes observed as she simply stood there staring at him.
    His words shook her out of her holy-hell-is-this-man-hot daze. “Oh, yeah. You do too. You want to come in while I get my purse?”
    “No. I’ll wait here.”
    “Really?” Laine asked, somewhat confused. His answer wasn’t what she’d expected.
    “First, even though you invited me, I don’t want to overstep my bounds. Second, if I come in, I’m not going to want to leave. So yeah, I’ll wait here.”
    “Oh . . . okay.” Somehow she’d forgotten how blunt the man could be.
    He held out the rose to her. “Better take this and put it in some water though. Wouldn’t want it to die while we’re out and about.”
    Laine reached out and took hold of the rose, bringing it to her nose to smell before telling him, “Thank you. It’s beautiful. I’ll be right back.” She whirled around, leaving the door open, to head back inside to fill a glass of water for the flower and grab her purse.
    After a quick trip to the kitchen to fill up a large glass to put the rose in, she went back into the living room where she’d been pacing before Wes arrived, and over to the coffee table. She grabbed her purse and her sweater, which she’d put on the back of her suede couch so she wouldn’t forget it, and headed back to her front porch and Wes.
    He took a step back as she exited the house and waited patiently as she locked her front door. Laine put her keys in her purse and hooked it over her elbow as she turned back to him. Wes held out his hand, indicating that she precede him down the two stairs and to her front walk-way. She felt his hand on her bare back a split second before he spoke in an almost too-casual way.
    “Mind you, I wasn’t disappointed in the least when you opened the door, but I was a bit surprised at your choice of attire. I figured your interpretation of ‘showing some skin’ was different than mine . . . but I was okay with that.” Laine felt his thumb caressing her spine as they walked toward his large black truck. “But it’s a good thing I turned down your invitation to come into your house, because, darlin’, if I’d have seen the back of this shirt before you asked me in, I would’ve taken you up on it and we wouldn’t have left at all.”
    Laine smiled and looked over her shoulder at him. The compliment was awesome to hear and if she was being honest with herself, she would’ve been disappointed if he hadn’t said anything about it at all. She’d chosen it to on purpose to try to make an impression. It was nice to have that validated. Wes was walking next to her, and she shivered once again as he shifted closer to her and his hand wrapped around her bare side under her shirt, not quite inappropriate-for-a-first-date territory . . . but close.
    “We can still go back inside. We haven’t left yet,” Laine noted enthusiastically. She was all for the dating thing, but with the way she felt while around Wes, and with his warm palm on her side, she could totally do the sex thing first, then the dating thing.
    She felt his hand squeeze her waist in reaction to her words, before he relaxed. “Nope. No can do. We’re out, and we’re staying that way . . . at least for a couple of hours. I’ve got plans, woman, and your seduction attempts will have to wait.”
    “ My seduction attempts? You were the one who told me to show some skin,” Laine protested weakly, loving his sense of