Read Online Wicked Wyoming Nights by Leigh Greenwood - Free Book Online

between Sturgis and Royce that had fully engaged his attention.
    “It’s that gal we ran off Bear Creek during the winter.”
    “You’re crazy. That female is scared of her own shadow.”
    “I swear it’s the same one. The boys at the Crazy Z can’t stop talking about her. Seems they’ve been sneaking off to town every night.”
    “Doesn’t the foreman catch them?”
    “He’s there ahead of them.” They had laughed, and after making plans to go into Buffalo when it came their turn for a night off, they had talked of other things.
    Cord had tried to put it out of his mind too, but his figures wouldn’t add up and he kept forgetting his sums in the middle of the column. He couldn’t forget Eliza and her huge black eyes, and the only way he was going to get any work done was to see for himself. Then maybe he could figure out why he couldn’t get this girl out of his mind. After Eugenia, that shouldn’t have been hard.
    Cord had arrived at the Matador one blazing hot summer in the spring of his maturity, handsome, virile, and anxious to prove his manhood. One glance at Cord’s powerful chest and forearms, bare and glistening from a brisk wash under the bunkhouse pump, and Eugenia Orr was only too willing to help. That hooded gaze and firmly set mouth were an irresistible challenge and she set about his conquest; Cord fell without a struggle.
    He first tasted the heady delights of her warm and yielding flesh in a quiet, dusty glade, and fell hopelessly in love. Certain Eugenia cared as passionately for him, he had asked her to marry him. A single peal of laughter, cruel and taunting, shattered his dream and destroyed his innocence.
    For the next six months, through the worst winter to ravage the West in a hundred years, Cord had worked to drive Eugenia out of his mind. Unending blizzards decimated the Matador herds, and Pierce Orr, already deeply in debt from building the enormous house, was forced to sell his ranch. No one would pay Orr for lands he didn’t own, herds that no longer existed, or a huge house in the middle of a desolate plain, and the only buyer who offered the cash he needed was Cord Stedman. Even then Cord’s inheritance hadn’t covered the whole purchase price, and he’d had to borrow the rest.
    Eugenia had come to him in the bunkhouse, now empty of the roistering cowboys whose jobs had disappeared, and offered him what he had so ardently desired just a few short months before, but the moment his lips met hers, he knew he never wanted to touch her again and he stalked from the bunkhouse. She was gone when he returned.
    Eliza had brought back the memory of that summer, and Cord wondered if he might not be making the same mistake all over again. But then he would remember her wide-eyed gaze and the trembling innocence that were so unlike Eugenia’s sultry self-confidence. This was no pampered, over-indulged siren toying with his heart for a summer’s amusement, but a young girl too afraid of life to have yet discovered the power of her attraction.
    He remembered every syllable she had ever spoken to him, and the simplicity of her words and the honesty of her gaze were beyond doubting. If he feared falling in love again, if he was reluctant to open his heart to the possibility of deception, the fear was for himself alone. Timid, antelope-eyed Eliza would never betray anyone she loved.
    Cord doubted she could be the girl who was singing for rough cowboys in the smoke-filled saloon, but he remembered her unnatural fear of her uncle’s wrath, and his protective instincts stirred, sending prickles of worry and anger up his spine. What if Eliza was being forced to do what she found frightening and distasteful? Instinctively Cord’s legs tightened around the girth of his gelding, sending him into a canter.
    Don’t be in such a hurry to make a fool of yourself, he admonished. Maybe you’re imagining things. Maybe it isn’t Eliza Smallwood after all. And if it is, maybe she doesn’t object to