Walk Away Joe Read Online Free PDF Page A

guest house. So. She was still up, too. He rubbed a hand roughly over his bleary eyes and, for a brief, shadowy moment, thought he saw her pace by the window. With a deep, slow breath, he turned away.
    When he finally hit the sheets, it was with her haunted eyes on his mind. And with the taste of her on his tongue. The feel of her in his arms.
    Her scent still filled his senses. She’d been a sweetly exotic blend of honey and silk and wild Texas sage. And salt, he added with a guilt-ridden sigh. She’d tasted of salt from the tears she hated herself for shedding and that he felt like a heel for bringing on.
    Hell. He might not have taken Sara Stewart to her bed tonight, but she sure as hell had managed to find her way into his.
    ∙ ∙ ∙
    Sara glanced at the walk clock then drummed her fingers nervously against her coffee cup. It was 8:07 a.m. Exactly one minute later than the last time she’d looked. She knew where Lambert would be this time of the morning. She knew there was nothing for it but to face him.
    In the week she’d been at Blue Sky, she’d more or less figured out the routine. At seven every morning, Tucker’s sister-in-law, Lana, fixed breakfast at the ranch house for anyone who wanted to eat. By that time, Tucker and his brother, Tag, had already done morning chores and started working the horses. After a quick sit-down and a little horseplay with Cody, both went right back to the barns to work until dusk. Much as she wanted to wait until evening to face him, she knew she had to get this over with.
    Short on sleep, long on regret, she drained the last of her coffee, rose from the table and tucked her yellow tank top into her jeans. Tugging on her boots and pulling herself together, she headed resolutely out the door. When she thought of the way she’d thrown herself at the no-good cowboy last night, a rolling nausea stopped her before she got through the archway.  
    She’d stripped for him, for God’s sake. She’d all but begged him to take her to bed. Worst of all, she’d let him see how vulnerable she really was.
    “Nice work, Stewart,” she muttered under her breath. “Puts the phrase getting caught with your pants down in a whole new light.”
    Her stomach rolled again. She didn’t admit to many weaknesses. That Lambert had seen her in the grip of a monster one made her sick with self-loathing.
    “There’s one thing about it,” she acknowledged with false brightness, “at least when you screw up, you have the pleasure of knowing that nobody does it better. Queen of the screwups, that’s you. High priestess of the royal foul-ups. And champion staller,” she added, admitting that this little bit of wordplay was just another ploy to postpone the inevitable.
    Nobody could say she didn’t own up to her mistakes. With that in mind, she drew a deep breath and walked across the courtyard. Lambert might have been a reluctant knight errant, she had to admit that, but tarnished armor and all, he’d saved her sorry hide last night. Whatever his reasons, she owed him for that; and she was a woman who settled her debts.
    Though part of her still wanted to hate him for the humiliation, a bigger part thanked God he’d scraped up enough integrity to walk away from her.
    Grateful for the dark glasses that covered her eyes and the shadows beneath them, she forced herself to keep walking. The Texas soil dusted her boots with each step. The summer sun, already hot and high, beat down like a furnace on her actively pounding head.
    She felt like one big, throbbing nerve. Even without a hangover, this confrontation with Lambert wouldn’t have been easy. Facing a lynch mob would have been less painful than doing this with one. To add to her misery, every muscle in her body tightened like a noose knot when she walked into the horse barn and spotted him.
    He was standing outside a box stall on the other side of the sawdust-covered floor of the central alley, bridling one of the horses. When he heard her,