Never Love a Cowboy Read Online Free PDF Page B

and I shall attempt to prove I don’t cheat.”
    “Nope. You’ve won enough from me tonight.”
    He watched as she crouched before the fire and poured coffee into her tin cup. He tried to imaginethe women he’d known in England riding from dawn until well past dusk without complaining once—and the image simply would not take shape in his mind.
    He couldn’t see them setting up camp or building a fire by which to cook the hare they had shot and skinned only moments before. But Jessye did it, seeming to relish the independence that her iron stomach gave her.
    “If you two could keep your voices low tonight, I’d appreciate it,” Kit said as he spread his blankets over the ground near the supply wagon. “I’d enjoy a good night’s sleep.”
    Jessye glanced over at Harry, and he saw the faintest blush creep up her cheeks. He liked the camaraderie that settled between them as the night deepened.
    “I’ll take the first watch,” she said as she planted her bottom on the ground and worked her back against the log.
    He cursed himself for envying the dirt and rotting wood, but Kit had been right. The clothes she wore did nothing to help a man forget she was female. The absence of petticoats and corsets only made her that much more alluring because so little separated her skin from the open air. With but the flick of a button or two, his palm could meet her flesh. With great effort, he shoved his errant thoughts aside. She did not want his body without his heart, and he had no heart to give.
    “I know we’ve done this two nights before, but I haven’t quite figured out exactly what we’re watching for,” he said.
    She lifted a narrow shoulder. “Critters. Desperadoes. Stampeding cattle.” She cut her gaze over to him. “Once we round up some cows, you’ll need to sing to them to calm them through the night.”
    “Sing to them? Surely you jest.”
    “Nope. That’s the way it’s done.”
    “Kit’s singing is likely to make the animals run off.”
    “I heard that,” Kit grumbled, continuing to arrange his blankets. “I’ll have you know that I was a choirboy.”
    “That doesn’t mean you can sing,” Harrison pointed out. “It only indicates your mother didn’t want to have to bother with you during the church service.”
    “My mother adored me. She would have kept me at her side until I was eighty. More than likely it was Father who didn’t want to be bothered with me.”
    He heard the touch of wistfulness in Kit’s voice, so slight as to be as elusive as a shadow. How hard it must have been for him growing up to see someone who looked exactly as he did receive all the Earl of Ravenleigh’s love and attention while he received none. Still, he had known his mother’s adoration.
    Harrison had only known his mother’s hate.
    “If we’re successful in gathering those cattle we saw late this afternoon, I’ll put you both to the test tomorrow night,” Jessye said sternly, as though sensing the tension in the air.
    Harrison had noticed that she spoke harshest when most women would have coddled. From the window of his room at the saloon, he’d watched her hug her father the night before they were to depart—but the next morning when the leaving actually took place,she’d issued orders to him as though she were a general. She hadn’t hugged him then, even though the old man’s chin had trembled. Harrison had a feeling it was her own chin she had hoped to prevent from quivering.
    “So we’ll have cattle here tomorrow night,” Kit said.
    “Yep. I don’t want either one of you forgetting my instructions.”
    “Instructions?” Harrison snorted. “They sounded like mandates to me.”
    “Call them what you want. Just be sure you follow them.”
    “I don’t understand why we can’t take a cow that has a brand on it. Surely if the owner were about, it wouldn’t be roaming the wilds,” Kit said.
    “I told you before that it’s not practical to build a fence. Ranchers just let their