The Courting Cowboy Read online

  He raised his head to get a better look at her. Heavy flakes of snow had landed on her grime-streaked face and rested lightly on her eyelashes. The blackface smudged her features, outlining a pair of wild eyes, the pupils blocking out all but a rim of pale luminosity. Her small breasts rose and fell in a staccato rhythm, pressing against his chest on every other beat.

  Fear was a contagious beast, and it was rolling off this lady. Jaz decided a distraction was in order. “You never told me your name,” he said close to her ear.

  Chantal’s eyes widened even more, and her body stiffened. “You got that right.” She threw his words back at him, amazement blocking her panic. Who was this guy? she wondered, but she didn’t ask. She had a sneaky suspicion he would probably tell her, and she didn’t want to know. The less she knew the better.

  Three more shotgun blasts came in quick succession, and with each one Jaz wrapped her more tightly in his arms, throwing his leg over hers, and burying his head in the crook of her neck. She flinched with each explosion, her hands digging deeper into the sweater underneath his jacket. She didn’t know how her hands had gotten that close to him, but she wasn’t about to let go. His muscles were like whipcord beneath her fingers. Even through her fear she felt the strength of his arms protecting her, the warmth of his breath on her skin, and she wondered at the strangeness of her thoughts.

  The last shot faded into the more powerful sound of the alarm, and she felt his mouth move over her ear again.

  “I beg your pardon?” she asked, not believing what she’d heard.

  “You smell good.” That got her attention, he thought, and she did smell good, soft and womanly. The scent and feel of her teased his mind with a memory he couldn’t quite place.

  “At a hundred and fifty an ounce, I should smell good,” she snapped. Her aunt Elise always bought the most extravagant gifts. Oh, brother, why did she have to think of her aunt now? Elise would be mortified if she knew what her one and only niece was doing. Not worried, because she was well aware of the depth of the Cochard skill, but just mortified, because she’d never expected those skills to be used on her side of the world.

  Lord, Chantal thought, she wished he would quit breathing in her ear. It was very distracting. Distracting and warm, and she wondered if she was on the verge of hysterics. She couldn’t think of any other reason for her mind to be so bent on straying when she needed every atom of her body to survive. She’d never had this problem before. Concentration was her forte.

  “Real good,” Jaz went on. His leg tightened around hers, drawing her closer. “Too good to pass up,” he drawled huskily, moving his mouth over hers.

  What was he doing now? Her mouth opened in protest, but the words died on her lips, taken away with her breath when he deepened the kiss. His tongue delved into her mouth, and a frisson of pure electricity froze her motionless beneath him. Sometime in the next two minutes Chantal learned two things: Kissing a stranger had an incredible effect on her, and a kiss could block out reality. It wasn’t the silence that warned her the alarm had been turned off; it was the sound of agitated voices coming from the lawn.

  Jaz lifted his head and gently brushed his thumb over her cheek, tracing the curve to her brow. Chantal focused on the shadowed depths of the eyes so close to hers and slowly surfaced from a cloud of confusion. Unconsciously she ran her tongue over her lips, still warm from his kiss. Who was this guy? The thought was persistent, but she refused to give it priority. She didn’t want to dwell on the powerful effect of his kiss. It didn’t make sense.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” she whispered, barely gathering the energy to shove him away.

  “Me too,” he said, and she would have sworn she saw the flash of a smile behind his blackface.

  Shaking herself free from his mesmerizing gaze, she rolled onto her feet and hazarded a glance over the peak. The first thing she realized was that she couldn’t go down the way she had come up. The second was that she could very well be trapped on the roof. Voices were coming from three sides of the house and she knew the fourth side was a seventy-foot drop over a cliff. Anger tightened her small hands into fists. She was going to kill this jerk for messing her up, no matter how well he kissed. She should hit him for that anyway.

  “You low-down . . .” She didn’t get any further before he grabbed her hand and hauled her over the peak. “Let go of me, you . . .”

  He only moved faster, his grip tightening. Was she never going to get a word in? she wondered, taking two steps for each of his, all of them against her will. The strength that had protected her was now dragging her toward her doom. She was sure of it.

  He stopped a few feet from the expansive library window and dropped to his knees. She followed suit and was gearing up to light into him again when she saw the fluid action of a rope snake out of his hands over the edge. A man with a plan.

  Hope flickered back to life, and she shot him a quick glance. She had done some rappelling before, and although she was by no means an expert, she knew enough. The principle, at least, was simple. The rappeller, safe in a harness, held onto the rope with two hands, one in front of him, the other at his hip. The rope was threaded through a metal figure eight, which provided the necessary friction. Slackening off on the rope allowed it to slide; tightening on it kept it from running.

  He threw her the harness and she stepped into the webbed loops, jerking on the rope to double-check the anchor. A clip of the carabiner into the figure eight and she was ready.

  Before the word go was out of his mouth, she was over the edge and rappelling herself with world-record speed into the safety of darkness. Her feet tapped the window and she pushed off again, letting the rope zing through her hands. She landed in a tangle at the bottom of the cliff. Her mind was beyond fear, and with methodical speed she relieved herself of the harness and tugged on the rope. He was on his own now.

  She spun around and started her dash for freedom, but didn’t get five yards before a large square of light brightened the shadows at her feet. She whirled back, dropping to a crouch as her eyes quickly scanned the awful scene behind her. The library light had flashed on, creating an obscenely large backdrop for the lone figure coming down the back of the house. Even though Chantal knew she should keep running, her body didn’t budge.

  “Let it out,” she muttered. “Come on, go for it.” Her eyes were glued to the lanky silhouette. She wasn’t even aware of her whispered encouragement, or of the cold creeping up around her ankles into her legs, or of the blood oozing from the rope burns across her palms.

  One jump and two or three more feet and he would be past the window. She held her breath, unconsciously rising and stepping toward the cliff. As soon as he was clear she’d run like hell. Then the nightmare of her memories unfolded.

  Both barrels of a shotgun exploded, shattering glass into confetti. Chantal instinctively dove for the rope and buried her head between her shoulders—but not before seeing Jaz slump against the wall.

  * * * * * * * * *

  Thank you for reading The Courting Cowboy. Please visit my website, www.tarajanzen.com, and follow me on Facebook http://on.fb.me/tcBKCq, and Twitter @tara_janzen http://twitter.com/#!/tara_janzen so you won’t miss the release of my upcoming eBooks.

  Table of Contents

  Reader Letter

  Titles

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Excerpt from Shameless

  Excerpt from Thieves in the Night

 

 

 
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