Tex Times Ten Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Well, cowboy,” she said, “as you said, this is it.”
    “Now or never.”
    “Do or die,” she said, loving the feel of Tex’s weight on her. “Here we are, again.”
    And yet he remained frozen.
    “I promise I don’t bite on the first real kiss,” she teased.
    “I do,” Tex said, touching his lips briefly to hers.
    “You taste like un-wedding cake.”
    “Is that a good thing?”
    “It’s maybe the best cake I ever had,” he said, lowering his head so that he could kiss her, and taste her more deeply. She moaned, arching, wanting to be tighter against him as she ran her hands up over his back.
    Before she knew what was happening, he pulledaway. Her heart plummeted as he got off the bed. “What happened?” she asked.
    “Nothing,” he said. Everything.
    “Did your escape hatch fly open?” she demanded, sitting up on the bed to glare at him.
    Tex didn’t like the sound of that. “Meaning?”
    “No man leaps away from a woman like his pants are on fire, when a moment before he was sucking at her lips like a drowning man sucks air. Maybe your intimacy issue returned full force.”
    He bit the inside of his jaw. His pants were definitely on fire, but he shifted so she couldn’t notice. “I’m trying to be a gentleman. I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
    “Oh, please. You think that if you kiss me and like it too much—maybe even make love to me again—you’ll end up at the altar like your brothers. You don’t want to fall in love. Which is perfect as far as I’m concerned, because I’m the last girl who wants to see a wedding ring.”
    There went that unattractive prescient side of her. “I could kiss you all day and not fall in love,” he lied, his pride in full force. “Heck, I could kiss twenty girls and not fall in love! Marriage is not a good way for men to live. All that devotion and fidelity stuff is hard on a guy.”
    “Guess you won’t have any trouble with that raffle, after all,” Cissy said.
    He didn’t like the gleeful smile on her face. “Sounds like the most fun I’ll have all year.”
    “I’ll have to come watch.”
    That hadn’t entered his thoughts, and he wasn’t certain he was entirely comfortable with Cissy watching women bid on him. “Uh—”
    “I could be a mole bidder and drive up your price,” she offered.
    Did he hear revenge in her tone? “A mole bidder?”
    “You know, every time someone bids, I outbid them, so that they have to bid again. Of course, I have no intention of buying you.”
    Trying to ignore her obvious disinterest in him—where was the jealousy, for heaven’s sake?—Tex puffed out his chest. “How much do you figure I’m worth?”
    “Ten, twenty bucks?”
    His brows shot to his hairline. “Oh, come on. Be real. I’ve still got all my teeth!”
    “Well, that does count for something,” she said reluctantly. “How’s your continence?”
    “My what?”
    “You know. Your…you know.” She gestured to his jeans.
    “Oh, my continence!” he exclaimed. “I can go all night.”
    “You don’t say.” Her gaze swept his jeans and then lingered a moment more. “And you’ve got a full head of hair,” she said. “I think you’ll fetch about fifty bucks. I’d bid on you,” she said with a sigh, “but I’m financially embarrassed these days, and Lord only knows I wouldn’t know what to do with you if I won you. I suppose I could put you towork in the rose garden out back. I know how much roses appeal to you, those secretive buds of romance.”
    Though he knew she was tweaking him, it was getting on his nerves. He’d just kissed her. Darn it, she should be acting more…more, well, appreciative. And interested. After all, he didn’t go around kissing just any girl. In fact, he hadn’t kissed anybody in a long time. Nobody since her.
    Maybe that was his problem. He was out of practice. He was taking it all too seriously. “I need a trashy girl to purchase me,” he said.
    “Oh, yes, the only type for