Roping Your Heart Read Online Free PDF

again. Had he overreacted?
    Hell, no. That boy had no damned business being anywhere near his daughter.
    The sound of a truck coming up the drive caught his attention. “It had better not be that boy,” Blake growled out loud.
    With his jaw clenched, he headed back outside to see his brother’s truck coming up to the house, the truck pulling a horse trailer. Gage parked and climbed out of his vehicle and adjusted his straw Stetson on his head.
    “What’s gone and ticked you off?” Gage asked as Blake met him at the foot of the stairs.
    Blake scowled. “Damned sixteen-year-old boy was in Demi’s room with her when I got home.”
    “And you chased him off with a shotgun,” Gage stated as if he knew it was fact.
    Blake’s eyes were narrowed. “Boy had no business being around my daughter.”
    “I bet Demi didn’t take that too well,” Gage said.
    “Sent her to her room.” Blake set his jaw.
    Gage eyed Blake steadily. “She’s a good kid, Blake. You know that.”
    “Yeah, she’s a helluva good kid.” Blake let out his breath. “I just don’t want her to end up like her mother.”
    “You can’t come unhinged on her like that,” Gage said. “She might start doing things she shouldn’t out of sheer rebellion. You know how kids are. Hell, you were one yourself if you can’t remember that far back.”
    Blake thought about what Demi had said—that she wished her mother were here. He felt another blow to his heart. Was he being too hard on her? Was she getting the feminine influence that she needed?
    He looked away from his brother, at the land stretched out before him. When Blake looked back at Gage, he said, “So why did you stop by?”
    “You must be getting old, big brother,” Gage said, with an amused smile. “I came over to see that young bull of yours.”
    Well, hell. He’d forgotten that. Maybe he was getting old.
     
    Gage drove away with the young Angus bull loaded into the horse trailer, and Blake headed back into the house. He’d thought long and hard about it, and maybe he hadn’t handled the whole situation well.
    He closed the front door behind him and went to Demi’s room. When she’d entered her teens, he’d started knocking on her door before he let himself in. This time he knocked and waited for her to answer.
    Silence followed and he knocked again. “Demi, we need to have a talk.”
    Still nothing but silence. He tried the knob but it was locked.
    He braced his hand on the doorframe. “You’d better open this door now if you don’t want me to take the whole thing off its hinges.”
    A moment passed before heard the lock click. The knob turned and the door opened about an inch and stopped. He pushed the door open and walked into her room. He stopped and studied his daughter who was on the bed doing her homework, her head bent over a math book and her long blonde hair falling across her face so that he couldn’t see her eyes. Her cell phone was on the bed beside her thigh.
    He gave an inward sigh and moved to her bed. The bedsprings squeaked and the mattress dipped under his weight as he sat on the edge of the four-poster bed. The canopy and her comforter were white with tiny purple flowers. Her room was done in purple with posters of horses and a collection of horse figurines on a shelf that went along one long wall.
    She refused to look at him, just kept doing her math homework. For some reason that reminded him of Cat and how they’d studied together and how she’d always kicked his ass in math. But he and Cat had been the same age-—although that hadn’t stopped him from thinking about sex every time he was around her.
    “Demi.” His voice sounded gruff and he cleared his throat as he tried to even his tone. “We need to talk.”
    She ignored him, but her pencil faltered a little.
    “Look at me,” he said, but she didn’t look up. He repeated, more firmly this time. “Look at me.”
    She set down her pencil, leaving it on her math book, and slowly raised her