Page 153 of Hold Me Until Morning

And she looked like a farther kind of girl.

Besides, she was the ranch owner’s daughter.

As off-limits as they came.

First thing the ranch manager had told him when signing on was to keep at least a hundred feet between himself and Douglas Wagner’s daughter, and he’d heard the rest of the hands making jokes about the knockout girl that would get you lost in a shallow grave if you dared to even glance her way.

Forbidden fucking fruit.

Sweet fucking fruit, though, he’d bet.

He couldn’t avert the power of her aura, the way it slipped through the air, infiltrating the oxygen.

She kept coming closer, though she wasn’t alone. That chick Brooke he’d hooked up with at the river a few weeks back was at her side.

His stomach fisted.

That was a mistake.

She’d seemed totally on board that night, agreeing she wasn’t looking for any attachments when he’d told her he was a solo-kind of guy, but he’d be game for a good time if she was interested.

He should have heeded the warning that spun at the back of his mind when she’d gone for a kiss as she’d been riding his dick in the bed of his truck. The way she’d pouted when he’d told her no. That he didn’t kiss because it felt too damned intimate.

He’d had instant fucking regret when he’d seen her here on the ranch a couple days later, and she kept coming around, clearly looking for a repeat.

Guilt thickened his throat. He hated to be an asshole. Hurt someone.

But he’d been upfront and clear, and it seemed she was the one who wasn’t being honest. Not with him or herself.

Brooke grabbed the other girl’s hand, tugging at her and whispering something as she giggled, before she came dragging her through the field before they were standing on the other side of the fence he was building.

“Hey, Cody,” Brooke drawled, no doubt trying to come off as sexy. Wearing the tiniest tank that barely covered her tits and didn’t even offer the innuendo of it to her midriff.

She was gorgeous, no question, but something soured in his stomach when he looked at her standing next to Wagner’s daughter.

“Hey, Brooke.” He tried to keep looking at the dark-haired beauty, wondering what the fuck was wrong with him when his attention kept trying to slide to the blonde at her right.

“How’s it going?” he asked, going for cool and casual.

Brooke groaned. “Terrible. I’m being a good sport and going out to the stables with Hailey since she thinks she needs to spend half her life with the beasts.”

Cody took the opportunity to look at Hailey.

He’d never officially met her, only knowing her name by the mumblings of the hands.

“You like horses, huh?” he couldn’t help but ask her.

He already knew she did. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been stupidly tracking her every movement over the last two weeks when she’d been out on the grounds.

He didn’t know what it was about her.

What had him intrigued.

Probably the fact that she was forbidden, which was seriously fucked.

She was clearly innocent and sweet, the way she kept down casting that ice-blue gaze, her cheeks pinked, continually shifting on those dusty cowgirl boots.

He needed to leave it at that.

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