Texas Tangle
Thanks to her cheating ex-husband and her thieving brother, all horse breeder Nikki Kimball has left is a bruised heart, an overdrawn bank account and an empty home. When sex-on-legs Dillon Barnett and his brooding foster-brother Brett Anderson start showing more than just neighborly attention, Nikki is intrigued…and a little gun-shy.
Dillon and Brett have a history; back in high school, the two friends fought a bitter battle over Nikki. Now, ten years later, Brett still longs to be the man in Nikki’s life, but he’s determined to stand back and let Dillon win Nikki’s heart.
Society says Nikki must choose between the two men she loves. Is Nikki strong enough to break all the rules in order to find happiness?
Dear Reader,
Thank you for purchasing this Carina Press launch title. During our journey these past months to acquire manuscripts, develop relationships with authors and build the Carina Press catalog, we’ve been working to fulfill the mission “Where no great story goes untold.”
If you’d asked me what I’d be doing a year ago, I never would have conceived I’d be working with the brilliant team behind Harlequin’s digital program to bring you a new and exciting digital-first imprint. I have long been a fan of Harlequin books, authors and staff and that’s why I’m so pleased to be sharing these first Carina Press launch titles with you.
At Carina Press, we’re committed to bringing readers great voices and great stories, and we hope you’ll find these books as compelling as we do. In this first month, you’ll find a broad range of genres that showcase our promise to Carina Press fans to publish a diversity of content. In the coming months, we’ll add additional genres and continue to bring you a wide range of stories we believe will keep you coming back for more.
We love to hear from readers, and you can e-mail us your thoughts, comments and questions to [email protected]. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.
Happy reading!
~Angela James
Executive Editor, Carina Press
www.carinapress.com
www.twitter.com/carinapress
www.facebook.com/carinapress
Texas Tangle
Leah Braemel
Contents
Chapter One
“No, no, no!” With steam billowing from the hood of her truck, Nikki maneuvered blindly easing the vehicle to the side of the road, making sure the horse trailer she was towing wasn’t blocking traffic. “You can’t die here. We’re so close to home.”
With a sigh, she killed the engine, climbed from the cab and kicked the front tire. “You couldn’t have held on for another three miles, could you? No-o-o, you had to blow out the rad here, you piece of shit.”
She waited in the inky black night for ten minutes before a vehicle crested the hill, its high beams blinding her until the driver dimmed the lights. She moved to the side as the Jeep zipped past, not even slowing to see if she needed help. A half-dozen cars zoomed by over the next half hour without a single one slowing. She was starting to consider unloading her newest horse and riding him home when a familiar white pick-up slowed then parked in front of her truck.
First a long, booted leg, then the rest of the driver’s body unfolded as he clambered down. Dillon Barnett jammed a dusty black cowboy hat on his head before he ambled over. “Hey, Nik. Need some help?”
“Yeah, my truck’s overheated.” Trying to ignore the shivery feeling that had her nipples hardening every time she set eyes on her neighbor, Nikki reached for the hood release.
Dillon caught her wrist and stopped her. “Whoa, don’t touch that yet. Let it cool down a while longer, or I’ll be hauling you off to the burn unit.”
Before she could stop herself, she leaned in and filled her lungs with his scent, detecting only a hint of the aftershave he’d used that morning behind a heaping of good honest sweat. Mostly he smelled of machine oil, sawdust and…mesquite? She scrunched up her nose and took another sniff. “You been at a barbecue?”
Dillon chuckled, a dark delicious sound that reminded her of humid summer evenings eating barbecued ribs and drinking cool beer. Of star-filled nights that promised long sessions of hot, sweaty sex.
Where had that come from? Maybe because she hadn’t been with a guy and had hot, sweaty sex in a couple of years?
“We’ve been cuttin’ down some mesquites out back of the old Pritchert place. New owners are plannin’ on putting in a pool and hired me to do the landscaping around it. I figured I might as well get started in there with my machinery.”
When he released her, she took a step back, stopping her sigh before it could escape.
Stop with the fantasies, Nik
.
If Dillon was interested in you, he’d have made some move after Wade moved out
. Oh, he was always over checking on her, helping her fix the fences the horses or weather knocked down, but not once had he given her any indication he was interested in her.
No, Dillon just did those things because he’d been raised to be a good neighbor, willing to help the struggling divorcee with the measly forty acres of scrub behind his spread of two hundred and fifty. Still, a girl could fantasize. Oh. My. The fantasies she’d been having about him lately.
But had she imagined the way he’d held her after pulling her against him? Or the way his hand stroked the small of her back? That couldn’t have been accidental. Could it?
The sigh she’d been holding back escaped. “You know, your hat’s the wrong color.”
Frowning, he took off his Stetson and examined it, checking it both inside and out. “What d’ya mean? It looks fine to me.”
“It’s black. It should be white.”
Lame, Nikki. Real lame.
“Why—oh, white hat. Good guy. I gotcha.” His puzzled expression remained. “Why am I a good guy? Because I stopped? Heck, I couldn’t have just driven by. What type of a person would that make me?”
“Like the half-dozen other drivers who left me standing here?”
After knocking the dust off his hat on his thigh, he resettled it on his head, covering the thick black hair she’d been fantasizing running her fingers through. The shadows thrown by the brim hid the liquid-chocolate eyes that turned her knees into putty. “Pretty girl standing all alone at the side of the road at night? You’re safer that they didn’t stop.”
Her heart thumped a little harder against her ribs. Pretty girl. How pretty could she be, considering she’d been in a truck all day? Still, it was nice to hear.
He grimaced at the still-steaming engine. “You call a tow truck?”
She shook her head. “I don’t have my cell with me.” She’d searched for the damned thing for a half hour before she’d given up and left home.
He pulled out his own cell. “Hey, Gloria, it’s Dillon Barnett. Nikki Kimball’s truck’s overheated. Looks like she’s going to need a tow.” There was a pause then he frowned. “Shoot, you sure he can’t be here any quicker?”
At Nikki’s anxious look, he shook his head. “Yeah, okay, guess there’s not much choice. We’ll leave the truck here, and I’ll take Nikki home.” He paused, listening. “We’re on Tower Hill Road, ’bout a half mile south of my place, right before it meets up with Alvarado. Oh, and Glor? Have Ernie call her when he knows what’s wrong and how much it’s gonna cost to fix it, will you?”
He ended the call and pocketed the phone with a frown. “There’s a big pile-up on the interstate keepin’ all the trucks busy, so the soonest Ernie can get a truck out here is an hour, maybe even an hour and a half. I’ll take you home, and he’ll pick up your truck soon as he can.”
“What about Bashir?” Nikki waved to the horse trailer she’d been hauling. “I can’t leave him here.”
“How about we unhook the trailer, and I’ll tow him home.” He peered in the back of the trailer. “Bashir, huh? That’s a rotten name to stick on a horse. You should rename him Buddy or Bucky or some good Texan name.”
“Buddy?” She laughed. “Considering he’s from Arabian bloodlines, I think Bashir suits him just fine.”
The dark shadows accentuated the bright white of his grin. “Seems to me, one of your beloved Blues is named Daisy. Can’t say it’s a particularly Arabian name now, is it?”
She rolled her eyes. Figured he’d point out her lapse. “Daisy came to me already named. I could hardly change it since she’d gotten used to it, any more than I’ll change Bashir’s name.”
Twenty minutes later, the trailer successfully unhitched from her truck and hooked up to Dillon’s, Nikki found herself sitting beside Dillon in the cab of his truck. While he started the truck, she fiddled with one of the vents, turning it so the stream of cool air blasted her. The A/C in her truck had stopped working months ago. The trip back in the damned Texas heat had just about had her melting into the vinyl seats of her truck.
“Where’d you pick this one up?” Dillon checked his mirror and eased onto the road.
“Muncie.”
“Indiana?” He whistled through his teeth. “That’s quite a haul to do by yourself. You do it all in one shot, or you stop over somewhere in between?”
“I didn’t want to give Bashir’s owners a chance to change their mind, so once I closed the deal, I loaded him up and headed straight back.” She closed her eyes and fought the exhaustion swamping her.
“Shit, woman, that drive’s a good fifteen, sixteen hours one way even if you’re not hauling a trailer. You shoulda stopped somewhere in between. You coulda fallen asleep at the wheel.”
Without opening her eyes, she lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “Thanks for stopping tonight. I appreciate it.”
“As I said, I wouldn’t be much of a neighbor if I hadn’t offered a hand.” A strong hand dropped over hers, his thumb stroking hers. She didn’t dare open her eyes. If she did, he might stop.
He was always touching her. Nothing sexual, just little things. Massaging her shoulders when they were repairing the fences, or keeping his hand wrapped around hers after he’d helped her off her horse at the end of her last endurance ride. But after not having been held by a man for several years as her marriage fell apart, every nerve ending fired each place Dillon touched her. Tonight, being so close to him in the dark cab, her imagination inundated her with images. Images of him slipping his hand beneath her top, of him cupping her breasts, bending his head down to take her nipple in his mouth.
Her body heated, softened, imagining his hard thighs pressing hers apart, or holding her up against a wall as he plunged into her. The taut muscles in his forearms planted on either side of her head while he pumped into her. Thick shoulder muscles rippling beneath her palms, except in her imagination, instead of hoisting himself on one of his horses, it was her he rode.
Dillon, bless his soul, didn’t say a word for the next ten minutes, allowing her to indulge her fantasies. The truck slowed, the steady click-click of his turn signal announced they were turning onto the boundary road. Five minutes later, he turned right again. The truck bounced over the washed-out spots the spring rains had worn away, forcing her to grab the door handle and pray Dillon’s truck didn’t break a spring.
“Damn, Nik, you need to get a road grader in here to smooth these ruts out right soon. You’re not going to be able to get the truck out one day.”
“Graders cost money.” Money she didn’t have. Not that type of money, anyway. Not unless she got a couple more horses to board.
“You didn’t happen to notice I’ve got one as part of my business?” He snorted. “I’ll send one of my guys over to fix this up tomorrow morning.”
When she started to protest about how much it would cost, he narrowed his eyes at her. “No arguments. It won’t cost me a thing.”
Except paying the guy who ran the grader, or the gas both for the machinery and for the truck to haul it over. But she knew if she argued those points, she’d hurt his pride.
