Morgan's Mates (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Read Online Free PDF Page A

No one trusted her. She would have no friends in Wolf Creek.
    When she began loading up the truck, a couple of tough-looking cowboys had come out of a bar across the street. They stood on the corner and watched her as she loaded the supplies into the bed of her truck. They didn’t offer to help.
    “How you doing today, pretty lady?” one of them asked.
    His voice taunted her and was filled with rude implications. Morgan ignored him.
    “Hey, honey, when you’re finished with that, why don’t you come on over to the bar. My boys want to offer to buy you a drink.” The rude cowboy leered at her through unkind eyes.
    Morgan heard the other hands he was with start to laugh. Apparently she was the brunt of some joke they all found very funny. It was probably a very obscene joke.
    “Come on over here and sit on my lap, honey,” one of the cowboys called to her.
    Morgan quickly finished loading the truck bed. Her heart was racing. She didn’t want to have any trouble with anybody. Her life was already complicated enough without adding to it.
    A young, reasonably attractive woman alone in this town of horny male shape-shifters was not safe for very long. Nathan had often warned her of the dangers and never let her come into town by herself.
    She got in behind the wheel of her truck and started the motor. Without even looking where she was going, she backed out of the lot. A tractor trailer almost hit her as it was pulling in. The driver laid on his horn.
    Morgan got the truck in drive and sped away down the main street, headed for the rural road that would take her home. She was out of breath, and her hands held the steering wheel all too tightly. By the time she made the safety of the road home, she was covered in sweat and shaking.
    She hit her brakes and paused for a few seconds at a stop sign. A road marker gave directions to I-80 and told how many miles south it was. Morgan looked at it with longing. That was the way home back to her old and sane life in Chicago.
    Every morning for the past six weeks she had been tempted to get in this very same truck with her bags packed and head in that direction. Now as she watched the road sign leading toward her old hometown, she was overcome by a temptation. How easy would it be to make a right turn here instead of a left turn and start the long trip back home?
    “I’m not that weak,” she whispered to herself. “He wouldn’t leave me if I needed him. He still loves me, and we will have a life together again.” She gave herself a pep talk and tried to force herself to believe her words.
    Then she made the left hand turn and headed back to the house Nathan had built for them. She would see this thing through to the end.

Chapter Five
     
    Drake Sinclair had just arrived at the bar for a couple of quick drinks. He shook hands with a few men he knew and inquired after their families and businesses. Then he took a stool up at the counter, ordered a beer, and watched a few minutes of the game on the overhead television.
    The buzz around the bar was about Nathan McLaughlin’s woman. Nathan hadn’t been seen around town for weeks. Now his woman was coming into town every week to buy supplies. The small-town gossip speculated something was going on out at Nathan’s place. No one knew for sure what, and Nathan had always kept himself at a distance from the run-of-the-mill life, so it was hard to know.
    Hunter Cole came up to the bar and to the stool next to Drake. The two friends exchanged a greeting. Drake had expected him and already ordered up a beer for his longtime business partner.
    They exchanged a few general comments about the town and their business. But Drake knew Hunter had heard the gossip about Nathan’s woman, too. Hunter was always chasing after a new woman, and someday it would get him into trouble. Now Drake knew it was time for Hunter to get down to business and discuss his latest target.
    “Her name is Morgan,” the younger man started off.
    “Who?” Drake