Temptation: Reckless Desires (Blue Moon Saloon Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

yourself back together,
the growl in his head said.
Win my mate!
    If the voice had come with a face, he’d have punched it out the window of his apartment and right into the water trough downstairs. What the hell was that voice?
    He stood in the shower, trying to figure it out. Maybe the pain killers he’d tried taking for a while were mixing with the alcohol he’d been drowning himself in over the past couple of months. Some kind of delayed reaction that was messing with his mind.
    Except the voice has been getting worse, asshole,
he told himself.
Even though you’ve been drinking less.
    He paused on that thought. He had been drinking less ever since he’d met Janna. Didn’t have much choice, what with her sneaky tricks.
    “Your whiskey.” She’d wink and set down a glass filled with Coke. Then she’d smile at him with eyes so full of hope and innocence and belief —
belief
, damn it, like she was so sure of him — that he’d had no choice but to gulp the Coke down. Gulp it and smack his lips and joke to the burly bartender that the saloon really ought to stock stronger stuff.
    Simon would roll his eyes at Janna’s misplaced crusade and go right back to watching her sister’s every move with his love-struck, faithful eyes.
    Cole thought back in time. Thought forward. Tried to match things up. The inner voice started after he’d slowed the drinking down. Sometime after he’d been knocked out in that fight at the saloon, that time he’d walked in on the men who’d cornered Janna and Jess.
    Maybe that was it. His brain had gotten rattled when he’d been thrown against the wall. The guy he’d been grappling with seemed to possess superhuman strength. But shit, he’d had a couple of other falls in his life that had knocked him cold, and none of them left him imagining voices in his head.
    Christ, maybe he ought to go back to drinking again.
    No way,
the voice shot back.
Must please our mate, and she doesn’t like it.
    He got out of the shower, finger-combed his hair, and risked another glance in the mirror. He looked gloomy. And tired. So, so tired.
    He made himself the world’s strongest coffee and a burned piece of toast then headed down the creaky outside stairs to the barn. Slowly, to soak in the sunlight, which reminded him of Janna and everything good.
    “Heya, Pip.” He tossed his toast crust to the one-eyed Chihuahua-pit bull mix that came running up to him with its tail wagging as it did every day.
    The dog scrambled to a halt, though, then backed away.
    “Hey!” he protested, stepping closer.
    Pip skittered back, showing his teeth.
    “Hey, what did I do?” he called after the dog. Then he kicked the dirt. “Great.” The only two souls in the world who looked at him without judgment were Pip and Janna, and now Pip hated him.
    Which only left Janna. And Christ, how long would it be before she gave up on him, too?
    “Bad night, Cole?” Rosalind called to him from a few stalls down.
    Ros was old enough to be his grandmother and fussed over him like one, too. The indomitable Annie Oakley-type owned Lazy Q Stables and pretty much ran the place on her own, but she said she liked having a man around. Still, Cole suspected the job was more about her taking care of him than him taking care of the horses. She tut-tutted over how much or how little he ate, drank, and slept, as if she’d lost track of how many sons she’d given birth to and had taken Cole under her wing. Him and Pip and half a dozen horses everyone else had given up on as too old or too creaky or too jittery to be of much use.
    No wonder he’d always felt at home in this place.
    “Morning, Ros,” he sighed, grabbing a saddle. “How many today?”
    The trail ride business in this part of Arizona had more downs than ups, but Rosalind usually managed to rustle up just enough customers to pay the bills.
    “Eight riders,” she said, filling a bucket with oats. “You can start with Dakota, then saddle up Rye…”
    He set the