Natural Born Daddy Read Online Free PDF Page B

riding with her most of the day. Now, though, she was alone again, riding at a more leisurely pace.
    She kept glancing toward the horizon, looking for some sign of Jordan’s car. Her ears were attuned tothe sound of approaching hooves, as well, since he sometimes chose to borrow one of his father’s horses and ride over.
    He still looked incredibly well suited to horse and saddle. In fact, she’d always thought he looked far more impressive and a hundred percent sexier in jeans and a chambray shirt than he did in those outrageously expensive designer suits he wore most of the time in Houston. Every time he put one of those suits on, it was as if a barrier went up between them. Sometimes she didn’t even recognize the man he’d become in Houston.
    More than his clothes had changed. As if fitting himself to a role, he’d been transformed into a sophisticated executive, driven and sometimes, it seemed to her, a little too coldly dispassionate.
    His proposal the night before had certainly fit the new Jordan. The old Jordan, the sensitive man who often sat in her kitchen talking until dawn, the exuberant daredevil who’d ridden over every square inch of her ranch and his own with her at midnight, would never have made such a proposition. He’d had more romance in his soul, even if little of it had been directed her way. Now she had to wonder if he’d wasted it all on that string of unsuitable gold diggers who’d spent the past few years trying to catch him.
    She knew without a doubt that he wasn’t going to give up on this crazy idea he’d gotten into his head about marrying her. One of his most attractive traits was his tenaciousness. To ready herself for the next assault, she had spent the entire morning reminding herself of all the ways to say no—and mean it.
    She was so busy concentrating on shoring up her defenses, she missed the plane the first time it flewover. The second time the sound of its engine drew her attention to the vivid blue sky. There was nothing especially unusual about a small plane overhead. Many of the more successful ranchers actually had their own planes to check out the far reaches of their land. Jordan’s family was one of them. Many more ranchers hired them on occasion. There was a small but active private airport nearby.
    What was unusual about this particular plane was the message trailing through the clear blue sky behind it: Marry Me, Kelly.
    She stared at it with a sort of horrified fascination. She supposed a case could be made that it was exactly the sort of impulsive, outrageous thing the old Jordan would have dreamed up, the sort of thing she’d claimed only moments ago to miss. Her heart, in fact, turned a somersault in her chest, a slow loop-de-loop that very nearly made her giddy.
    Her gaze riveted on that message, she bit back a groan. The whole blasted county was going to know about Jordan’s proposal now. Well, maybe not that Jordan was behind it, though that news would come quickly enough. Los Pinos was small enough that nothing ever stayed secret for long, including the identity of the man who’d taken his family’s plane up from the local airstrip to make his proposal in such an outrageous way. Her phone was probably ringing off the hook already.
    Even as she watched, the plane made another slow loop and circled back. Just when it reached a spot directly overhead, she saw something being scattered through the sky. Like confetti falling, it drifted down until the first touch of pink landed on her cheek. Rosepetals, she realized at its silky touch against her skin. The man had filled the sky with rose petals.
    She sucked in a deep breath, inhaling the sweet scent of them, then lowered her head and rode deliberately away from the cascade of pink. Tears stung her eyes. He was making it awfully damned hard to say no. So far, though, he hadn’t come close to the one thing that would have guaranteed a yes.
    She