Once Tempted Read Online Free PDF Page A

California and opened it. “Would you mind showing me where this ranch is?”
    Ava looked at the map and then up at Tess, her black brows arched in surprise. “It’s here, pretty much where you’ve X’d the spot.” She tapped a buffed nail on the blob of green where Tess’s own finger had landed and which Anna had immediately marked with a ballpoint pen. “You’ll want to follow Main Street out of town. It joins 128. Go for about four miles. On the left you’ll see a road, Bartlett Road. Take that for another mile. Next you’ll see a sign for Silver Creek Road on your right. The entrance to the guest ranch and main lodge is about a half a mile farther on your right.”
    Her finger had landed on a ranch. Okay. Things couldn’t get much weirder. Pasting a smile on her face, Tess refolded the map and slipped it into her bag. “So I basically just head out that road and then make a left and then a couple of rights?”
    “That’s about it. You’ll want to speak to Adele Knowles. She and her husband, Daniel, and their three children run the ranch. Tell her Ava Day sent you.”
    “Thanks for your help.”
    “Hope you find something. And remember to come back for that facial.”
    Tess walked back to the post office where she’d parked, a walk that took approximately three minutes and during which perhaps five cars passed her. It was chillyenough so that only a few pedestrians were about, but through the windows of the post office–general store–luncheonette–bank, she could see a number of people clustered about small wooden tables. It was obviously the happening place in Acacia.
    Reaching her car, she opened the driver’s side door. “Here goes nothing,” she muttered, eyeing the bucket seat with distaste. After two thousand-plus miles, she was thoroughly sick of driving. But even though she couldn’t believe there’d be a job for her at a ranch, it seemed like this was her last shot at finding employment in this one-horse town. And she’d promised Anna she’d do everything she could to find a place to live and work as close to where her finger had landed. Her conscience would never give her a moment’s peace if she didn’t at least try every available option. She hoped Ava Day hadn’t been exaggerating about Silver Creek Ranch, and that it might actually need someone with her abilities.
    She turned the key in the ignition. An unearthly noise greeted her—a gnashing and grinding of metal parts—and then nothing. The silence was even more nerve-racking.
    “Oh, come on! Please, please start.” She turned the key again and pumped the gas pedal for good measure, since the car loved gas the way a vampire loved blood. This time a high-pitched whine was added to the cacophony. Then, miraculously, the engine turned over.
    Okay, the car sounded as if it had contracted whooping cough, but at least it was running.
    “Thank you, thank you, I love you, really. I didn’t mean any of those things I said in Utah,” she whispered, knowing she was stretching the truth like taffy but too pathetically grateful to stop.
    Shifting into gear, she pulled out onto Main Street and drove slowly toward the corner, partly out of respect forthe speed limit, partly because she didn’t want to do anything to further annoy the car.
    The miles crawled by. Houses began to be spaced farther and farther apart and sit farther back from the road. Tess followed the winding two-lane blacktop past fields and woods. The road dipped and climbed, and the houses disappeared from sight altogether. She was wondering whether she’d misunderstood Ava Day’s instructions when she saw the sign for Bartlett Road on her left. She turned onto it and then there was nothing around her but fenced meadows and trees and mountains, their peaks taking ragged bites out of the gray sky.
    “Thank God,” she breathed when she spied a small black-and-white sign saying “Silver Creek Road.” It couldn’t be too much farther now.
    The gates to the ranch