A Cowboy for Holly. Maureen Child

dark brown hair. He nodded briefly at Katie and Charlie then locked his gaze on Holly.

      “What’re you doing here?” she asked when she could find her voice again.

      “What the hell do you think I’m doin’ here, Holly?” he demanded. “You left without a word. I’m here to find out why.”

      Ben Gray took just a minute to enjoy the sight of the woman he’d followed halfway across the country. When she’d left, he had been out on the mountain helping his wranglers round up a few lost cows who’d wandered off the pasture. He’d gotten back to the main ranch house only to be told she had checked out.

      She hadn’t left a note. Hadn’t explained why she was taking off. She was just gone, leaving behind an empty guest room and an equally empty space in his heart.

      He hadn’t thought to give chase. After all, Ben Gray didn’t have to hunt a woman down. They were usually throwing themselves at him. But he hadn’t been able to forget Holly Banks. And so, after a week of nursing his own temper, here he stood, in the middle of Manhattan.

      She seemed…different here, he thought. In her pretty dress and high heels. She was still beautiful, and one look into her eyes told him this was the same woman who had so captivated him. But damned if he didn’t miss how she looked in jeans and a T-shirt and boots. He missed her smile—which was notably absent at the moment. And he missed knowing she was there. With him.

      He gazed down into her wide eyes and felt as if he could drown in those lake-blue depths. Hell, he pretty much had from the moment he’d first seen her on his ranch. She had come, as so many people came, to be a guest on his luxury ranch. For ten years, he’d opened his home six months out of the year to people who wanted to experience life in the high country.

      But this was the first damn time he’d had his feet knocked out from under him by one of them.

      “Okay…” one of the women alongside Holly said, “I think we should go back to work.”

      Holly didn’t even glance at her. She kept her eyes locked with Ben’s as she said, “You guys go ahead. I’ll be there in a bit.”

      “Are you sure?” the other woman asked.

      He admired her friends’ loyalty even while he wished they’d teleport to the other side of the planet.

      “It’s okay, Katie,” Holly assured her.

      Ben couldn’t stop looking at her. He hadn’t seen her in a week, and damned if it didn’t feel more like a year.

      No woman had ever walked away from him, and he told himself that it was pride that had drawn him away from the ranch to the middle of Manhattan. But now that he was here, drinking in the sight of her, he knew that it was more than pride. It was want. Hell, need.

      The woman had touched something inside him he hadn’t even been aware of. With her, he’d been a man who could enjoy simple pleasures. Walks in the moonlight. A canoe ride on the lake—a ride that had ended with laughter when she’d tipped them both into the water. Hell, he couldn’t even walk across the ranch now without thinking about her—and how great it had been between them—and he wasn’t going to let her just turn her back and walk away without so much as an explanation.

      When her friends moved off, Ben finally spared them a glance, but only to make sure they were leaving. Then he looked back at Holly and asked, “Why? Why did you run off without even talking to me?”

      “Because,” she said, lifting her chin and straightening her shoulders, “I didn’t want to hear more of your lies.”

      “Lies?” He scowled at her as frustration frothed inside him. “I didn’t lie to you.”

      “There’s another one.” She shook her head. “Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?”

      “Find out what?” He threw both arms wide and let them fall.

      Holly stepped in close and poked his chest with her index finger. “That you’re not just a cowboy…you own that ranch.”

      Ben scraped one hand across his face. “That’s why you left?”

      “Yes.” She stepped past him and tried to walk away, but Ben took hold of her arm and kept her in place. She stared down at his hand with a look hot enough to singe his skin.

      He didn’t let go.

      “I didn’t lie to you about that,” he muttered, dipping his head closer to hers. God, he caught her scent—a fragile blend of flowers, spice and Holly—and dragged it deep inside him. Just being this close to her again…touching her again…made him hungry for more.

      To disguise his own desire, he gritted his teeth and said, “I just didn’t tell you everything.”

      “That’s a lie, in case you were wondering,” Holly snapped and tugged her arm free.

Chapter Three

      Holly had never dreamed that Ben would come to New York.

      Their two weeks together in Montana had been like a dream. She’d fallen fast and hard for the man she’d thought was a hardworking cowboy and hadn’t even second-guessed her decision to sleep with him almost immediately.

      That wasn’t like Holly at all. She was more the slow and steady type when it came to relationships. She had never—before Ben—jumped into bed with a man she barely knew.

      But from the first, Ben had been…different. It was as if a part of her had always known him. There was an almost instantaneous connection between them that had only grown deeper and richer the more time they spent together.

      And as the end of her vacation had loomed, Holly had been trying to think of a way to stay. To leave behind her lonely life in New York for a chance at something more with a magnetic cowboy who lit up her insides like a Fourth of July fireworks show.

      Then she had found out the truth. That he wasn’t a struggling cowboy—he was a billionaire. That he had lied to her from the beginning. So, with her heart aching, she’d run for home. Back to safety. Back to what was familiar and what she was sure of. Her house. Her job. Her friends.

      She had never expected to see Ben again, and having him here, now, was staggering. She knew she had done the right thing in leaving him, but even so, her body was betraying her with every breath. Her blood was buzzing and her heartbeat was thundering in her own ears.

      But she wasn’t about to let her own hormones dig an even deeper hole for her heart to fall into.

      “I have to go back to work,” she said.

      “Fine.” He was still scowling. “What time do you get off?”