The Loner by Joan Johnston Page A

Now her mother offering her Bitter Creek because she was concerned with appearances and didn’t want to call off the wedding.
    She had half a mind to marry the first man whose path she crossed. That would show her parents she was no puppet on a string!
    Summer dressed hurriedly in a plaid Western shirt, crisp new jeans, and her favorite red boots with the Circle B brand hand-tooled into the fine leather, determined to escape the Castle before her mother awoke and demanded her answer. She needed more time to think, and she needed a private, peaceful place to do it.
    Summer headed out the kitchen door, undecided whether to ride horseback or take her pickup. She never got past the cherry-red Silverado her father had given her as a twenty-first birthday gift.
    It reminded her of Billy.
    Summer remembered leaning against the front fender of the big Chevy truck, the warm sun on her face, as Billy Coburn kissed her. Remembered hearing her buttons ping against the cherry-red finish as he tore open her blouse to bare her breasts, his gaze both endearingly reverent and excitingly carnal.
    She’d offered him her virginity.
    Summer remembered the astonishment she’d seen in Billy’s eyes when she’d told him she was untouched. She couldn’t blame him for being surprised. She’d spent years running with wild crowds at one university after another, doing whatever outrageous acts it took to get herself thrown out, so she could return to Bitter Creek—until her father made a generous donation to another institution of higher learning and the whole ridiculous scenario began again.
    The truth was, between her father and her three older brothers, Trace and the twins, Owen and Clay, no boy in high school would have dared to touch her for fear of his life, and she’d never let a man in college get close enough to seduce her. Owen had done a good job of warning her what happened to an unwary woman when a man started spouting flowery compliments. Forewarned, she’d gotten bored with hearing how her eyes were like topaz jewels and her hair was like spun gold and her lips were like wild, sweet strawberries, and rejected her would-be suitors out-of-hand.
    Maybe the reason she’d liked Billy so much from the start was because he hadn’t used false flattery to get her attention. Even the lowliest cowhand at Bitter Creek knew who she was, and they’d all tipped their hats in obeisance.
    Except Bad Billy Coburn.
    Summer grinned ruefully as she remembered the first time she’d come to the stable and found him mucking out stalls. Billy hadn’t even acknowledged she was alive. He’d kept right on working as though the barn were empty.
    She’d studied him secretly from the safety of the wooden stall while she saddled her horse. Billy was extraordinarily tall and had black hair like her brothers, but his eyes were a brown so dark they were almost black. A day-old beard stubbled his cheeks and chin. His jeans had worn white at the seams and his T-shirt had the arms torn out, allowing her to see the flex and play of corded muscle and sinew as he worked.
    Both intrigued and affronted at being ignored—after all, she was an acknowledged beauty and the boss’s daughter—she’d contrived a way to force him to speak to her.
    She’d led her horse from the stall, stopped near the wheelbarrow into which Billy was forking manure and asked, “Do you think Brandy’s hock is swollen?”
    Without glancing in her direction, he’d forked another load of manure into the wheelbarrow and said, “Looks fine to me.”
    “You haven’t even looked,” she accused. Not at her horse… or at her. She might be only sixteen, but she had a grown-up figure which she knew had turned older men’s heads. Billy Coburn seemed immune.
    “Look,” she insisted. Even she hadn’t been sure whether she meant at her horse or at her.
    He stopped abruptly, leaned his elbow on the pitchfork, and did a slow, sensual inspection of her body that left her pink with