Pride (In Wilde Country Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

have been legitimate.
    Still, they hadn’t delved too deeply into things.
    They’d wanted to protect their mother as well as their sisters.
    They thought they had kept their suspicions from the girls, but the day of their mother’s funeral, Bianca and Alessandra confronted them. They said they’d long suspected their father was keeping some dark secret and they’d demanded to be part of whatever it took to find the truth.
    The following weeks had been spent untangling years of lies, of illusions. They’d devoted their days and nights to the search for facts.
    The fact that their father had never really been married to their mother had been the worst shock of all.
    Luca had been in the midst of opening his offices in New York. He’d set all that aside. Except for staying in contact with his administrative staff in Rome and his people in Manhattan, he’d pretty much abandoned his own existence. No dinners with friends. No long weekends at his Tuscan ranch.
    In other words, when had he last been with a woman?
    He actually couldn’t remember. Truth was, he’d all but given up noticing that women existed.
    No wonder he couldn’t stop thinking about sex.
    About Cheyenne McKenna.
    He gave her one last appraising look from behind the anonymity of his Ray-Bans. Then he turned his head and focused his gaze on the outsized Texas landscape rolling past the windshield.
    Cheyenne McKenna—and wasn’t that one hell of a name—Cheyenne McKenna was attractive. Under other circumstances, he’d have been interested in seeing where things went. He suspected she might feel the same. He’d sensed a little buzz between them and he was never been wrong about those unspoken messages, but he was expected in Manhattan this evening.
    He had no time for sex, or at least for what sex meant to a woman. Drinks. Dinner. Conversation. All the little games that went into an affair, no matter how brief. He was down with that, with seduction, but the last thing he had time for right now were those frills.
    So he’d do precisely what he’d offered to do.
    Take a look at her land, ask some questions, make some suggestions…
    A tree that had been long-ago split by lightning loomed on the side of the road. Cheyenne McKenna turned the wheel hard and zipped past it onto a narrow strip of gravel road. The truck hit a bump and all but flew into the air. The instant of weightlessness would have been enough for him to have banged his head on the roof if he hadn’t been wearing his seatbelt.
    “Sorry.”
    She didn’t sound the least bit sorry. If anything, she sounded pleased. He shot her a narrow look. Had she deliberately taken the turn too fast?
    “I should have warned you this was going to be rough.”
    He was certain of it now. She’d spotted that gully and accelerated on purpose. She was playing with him; she’d written him off as an urban cowboy, and she was having fun at his expense.
    Luca felt that tightening low in his belly again.
    If only he had the time…
    But he didn’t, so he said nothing as a handful of buildings came into view and when she slowed the truck, he hardly waited until she shut off the engine before he undid his seatbelt, flung open this door and stepped into the hot Texas morning.
    * * *
    In some ways, Sweetwater Ranch reminded him of El Sueño,
    Endless meadows stretched toward a distant set of hills, low and peaceful under the sun’s fire. The grass was a rich, brilliant green. The house itself was built on a low rise.
    That was where the resemblance to El Sueño ended.
    The El Sueño house was a mansion.
    This house was a disaster waiting to become a wreck.
    The roof was shot. So was what had once been a huge brick chimney. The porch hung askew, as if it were clinging to the house by metaphorical fingernails. Almost all the windows were gone. The massive front door was tightly closed as if to safeguard the place.
    A bad joke.
    There was nothing here to safeguard, and Luca made that clear with a blunt