Love and a Blue-Eyed Cowboy

by Sandra Chastain

Genres: Women's Fiction; Romance; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

Beloved romance author Sandra Chastain delivers a seductive tale of passion that blazes hotter than the Georgia sun—as Fortune smiles on a lonely Hunter.
 
Hunky cowboy Hunter Kincaid is bruised, broke, and brash enough to think that he can win the top prize in a motorcycle scavenger hunt through the backwoods of Georgia. What he doesn’t count on is being saddled with Fortune Dagosta as a partner. After locking horns with the back-seat driver, Hunter soon hopes to lock lips. Can a loner of the open road be a lover with an open heart?
 
Fortune has no idea how she’ll survive a week on the road with a smartass like Hunter. But she needs the money from the race to put a new roof on her halfway house for troubled kids—and Hunter’s her best shot at first place. Despite a few bumps on the way, Fortune finds herself lost in Hunter’s deep blue eyes. Neither expects the attraction to last, but Hunter and Fortune have embarked on the ride of their lives.
 
Includes a special message from the editor, as well as excerpts from these Loveswept titles: The Reluctant Countess, Wild Rain, and Silk on the Skin.

Release date: February 11, 2013

Publisher: Loveswept

Print pages: 192

Sample

One
 
The woman was riding a pink bicycle, for Pete’s sake, heading toward a gang of the toughest motorcycle buffs since the Hell’s Angels.
 
Hunter Kincaid caught his breath, then let out a sigh of relief as he watched her pedal past the entrance to the motorcycle dealership. He leaned against a concrete pylon, adjusted his aviator sunglasses, and let his gaze slide back across the mass of humanity. They reminded him of buzzards circling a fresh road kill.
 
Banners strung across the parking area announced the scavenger hunt being held by the manufacturer of the new Panther Motorcycle as part of an introductory advertising campaign. But the fifty thousand dollars in prize money didn’t entirely account for the crowd. This crew of road hogs would have been there for the prize of a new Panther cycle alone, Hunter surmised.
 
The same scenario was taking place in six other towns in the country. Fourteen teams of one man and one woman were to be selected in each area. A couple of hundred wide-eyed innocents mixed uneasily with the tough guys waiting for the drawing to select the teams to begin. Though he’d ridden with the best of them, even Hunter had never seen so much leather and so many tattoos in one place.
 
Mary Poppins on a pink bicycle didn’t fit into that crowd.
 
Idly, Hunter chewed on a small brown cigar and wondered what had happened to her. He bent his knee and felt the ever-present ache in his lower back as he propped his foot against the concrete. He was tired of listening to the president of Panther, Inc., rave over the virtues of the motorcycle.
 
His gaze was drawn back to the sidewalk in search of the pink bicycle and its rider.
 
Across the parking area, Fortune Dagosta parked her bicycle in a stand of pines and hurried down the grass embankment, afraid they’d already started calling names. She’d learned only an hour earlier that Joe had filled out an entry form in her name. She was late. She was always late. Only this time she couldn’t afford to be.
 
Joe, the oldest member of the group of orphans and runaways she’d taken in, had been gone when she’d awakened. But his note, the note she’d found pinned to her purse, had explained that when the organizers of the scavenger hunt called out her name, she had to be there, or she’d lose her chance at winning fifty thousand dollars. That was all she knew. She’d worry about the details later.
 
The temperature in Cordele, Georgia, was at least 95 degrees, and the concrete at two o’clock in the afternoon was hot enough to fry eggs on.
 
Fortune danced barefoot across the parking area as she skirted the crowd, trying to get closer to the platform. She couldn’t imagine what had happened to her shoes. Misplacing things was nothing new to her, but she didn’t want to think that Joe’s being gone had anything to do with her missing tennis shoes. Still, she had a bad feeling about the connection.
 
The man standing at the bottom of the steps in the shadow of the second-story entrance to the building was out of Fortune’s line of vision. She didn’t see him grind out the cigar, flicking the hot ashes across the pavement. She only felt the fire burning the bottom of her left foot.
 
“Holy hell! I’m branded!” She let out a more vivid oath and hopped around, holding her injured foot crossed over her upper thigh.
 
Hunter Kincaid, leaning against the building, took a step toward her and shook his head. “That’s not all you’re going to be if you don’t put on some shoes.”
 
For the briefest moment their gazes met, and he felt an unexpected intensity of feeling arc between them. He couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away from her face, a pert face with wide lips that were parted, not in anticipation of a kiss, but in fury.
 
“Well, thank you very much for your concern, Mr. Wise Guy.” She glanced down at the ground, catching sight of the scattered ashes and the still-smoking cigar butt. “I don’t suppose you know who threw that down.”
 
“I did.”
 
Fortune slowed her hopping and glared at the man who was frowning at her. His clothes were trendy and expensive. He hadn’t pulled his designer jeans from the throwaway bag at the thrift shop. The boots certainly weren’t hand-me-downs either. They were snakeskin probably, and the skin hadn’t been long off the snake.
 
If that weren’t enough, he was wearing a cowboy hat with a band that matched his boots. The Stetson was pushed to the back of his head, revealing a mass of sun-streaked blond hair. For a moment she had an insane urge to run her fingers through his thick locks. Yep, this sidewalk cowboy was well-heeled and full of himself, she determined, and runaway-from-home-with good-looking.
 
So what if he did set off skyrockets in her stomach? she told herself. What gave him the right to pollute the earth and contaminate the ground where innocent people could blister their feet? He didn’t have to lay down a bed of fire to burn her; he was roasting her with the intensity of his gaze.
 
“You did that? Why?”
 
“Well, I didn’t expect company,” said Hunter, not caring for the sudden coil of heat that fired in his lower body. The woman probably didn’t weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet. Sizzling dark eyes glared at him as if he were the enemy. His first impression of her as a Sesame Street follower ended when he glimpsed those flashing black eyes. Where she belonged was in some MTV rock video.
 
Except for the freckles, he thought, the freckles didn’t fit the punk image. They weren’t covered with makeup. They were just there, a peach-color scattering of freckles below the darkest, most expressive eyes he’d ever seen—eyes that were exploding with pent-up anger. She seemed as confused over what was happening as he, but while she covered her uncertainty with fury, he covered his with stoic indifference. Hunter decided that they were both very good at shielding their emotions.
 
Decked out in jeans with no knees and a hairdo that resembled a frightened porcupine, she stood her ground. Her looks matched her personality—outrageous. Normally, he’d just walk away, but something about those freckles challenged him. And being challenged by a freckle-faced, fire-breathing pixie was a welcome change from dealing with the perky, charming “And how are we feeling today, Mr. Kincaid?” attitude of the nurses who’d driven him mad for the last twelve weeks.
 
The strange cut of her short, spiked hairdo and the Down with the Establishment on her T-shirt told Hunter that he was doing battle with a woman who had no qualms about taking on causes, and at the moment the cause was him. She was bound to be one of those fanatics who didn’t eat meat and would attack him for contaminating her airspace.
 
Still, he shouldn’t have wounded her. He was out of practice with apologies, but he was about to try when she railed at him.
 
“Okay, Mr. Big Shot. You’ve made your statement. It’s your space, and I invaded it. You don’t care much about other people, do you?”
 
Fortune didn’t know why she was behaving so badly. Normally, she was easygoing. It had to be this man who gave the impression of a powder keg, contained but ready to explode at any minute, who forced her to act so out of character.
 
“Not much,” he drawled, pleased to see her register shock at his honesty. “I’ve found the feeling pretty much mutual. Are you always this prickly?”
 
Fortune’s feet really hurt now, both of them. The sun had cooked the sidewalk to a red-hot intensity. She glanced around, seeking shade. There was none.
 
“I’m not prickly. I’m in pain. The least you could do is step aside and let me share your shade,” she said. “I mean, I think you owe it to me since you re responsible for my injury.”
 
“Certainly.” Hunter stepped sideways, allowing Fortune to move into the small shady space. They were too close, he thought. He could smell an elusive floral scent, like wildflowers in the spring.
 
Damn, he must not be as strong as he’d thought. Maybe all those weeks in bed had affected his mind. Here he was thinking of hidden meadows and wood sprites, sprites with bare feet and freckles. He stood there for a moment, then said, “I’m sorry that you were burned.”
 
“It’s my fault, actually. I ought not to be barefoot, but you ought not to be smoking. Both things are bad for the health, cowboy.”
 
Her tongue slipped out from between her lips, painting them with moisture in the heat. As Hunter stared down at her, he had the absurd desire to follow the path her tongue had taken with his own.
 
Maybe it was the heat that was making him crazy. He shook his head, trying to focus on his reason for being there, the chance at a spot on the scavenger-hunt team.
 
“The name’s Hunter, and do you always tell other people what they should do?”
 
“Yes.” She glanced up at him, her eyes bright with merriment. “Hmmm, Hunter. As in bounty hunter?”
 
“I’ve been called that.”
 
The name fit. “Do you take your victims back alive?”
 
“I haven’t lately.”
 
“That’s about what I thought.” She pulled her shirttail down and dusted off the bottom of her foot, muttering under her breath, “There was a young woman with bare feet, who burned them—bleep, bleep. The devil from hell, gave orders very well, but the dude was basically cheap.”
 
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
 
“Nothing. I was making up a limerick. Forget it.”
 
“Look, I really am sorry about your feet. I don’t normally singe my victims. As soon as the drawing is over, I’ll make it up to you by buying you a new pair of shoes and a shirt.”
 
“No thanks, I’ll survive.” She glanced at the shirt and grimaced. “No need to replace the shirt, I didn’t buy it. It came from Goodwill. I guess you don’t do much shopping there, Mr. Hunter.”
 
“Not Mr. Hunter, it’s Hunter Kincaid. And I haven’t shopped there lately, but I know of them.” He could have said he knew of them well, but he didn’t, adding instead, “Where are your shoes, anyway?”
 
Hunter didn’t even know why he’d given her his name. It connected them somehow, and that was the last thing he wanted. She reminded him of one of his grandmother’s fancy chickens, ready to peck the hand of anybody trying to take the eggs from her nest.