Brazen, p.1
Brazen, page 1
Titles by Jaci Burton
Boots and Bouquets Series
THE MATCHMAKER’S MISTLETOE MISSION
(an eNovella)
THE BEST MAN PLAN
THE ENGAGEMENT ARRANGEMENT
Brotherhood by Fire Series
HOT TO THE TOUCH
IGNITE ON CONTACT
ALL CONSUMING
Hope Series
HOPE SMOLDERS
(an eNovella)
HOPE FLAMES
HOPE IGNITES
HOPE BURNS
LOVE AFTER ALL
MAKE ME STAY
DON’T LET GO
LOVE ME AGAIN
ONE PERFECT KISS
Play-by-Play Series
THE PERFECT PLAY
CHANGING THE GAME
TAKING A SHOT
PLAYING TO WIN
THROWN BY A CURVE
ONE SWEET RIDE
HOLIDAY GAMES
(an eNovella)
MELTING THE ICE
STRADDLING THE LINE
HOLIDAY ON ICE
(an eNovella)
QUARTERBACK DRAW
ALL WOUND UP
HOT HOLIDAY NIGHTS
(an eNovella)
UNEXPECTED RUSH
RULES OF CONTACT
THE FINAL SCORE
SHOT ON GOLD
Wild Riders Series
RIDING WILD
RIDING TEMPTATION
RIDING ON INSTINCT
RIDING THE NIGHT
RIDING TO SUNSET
(an eNovella)
RIDING THE EDGE
(an eNovella)
Stand-Alone Novels
WILD, WICKED, & WANTON
BOUND, BRANDED, & BRAZEN
Anthologies
UNLACED
(with Jasmine Haynes, Joey W. Hill, and Denise Rossetti)
EXCLUSIVE
(with Eden Bradley and Lisa Renee Jones)
LACED WITH DESIRE
(with Jasmine Haynes, Joey W. Hill, and Denise Rossetti)
NAUTI AND WILD
(with Lora Leigh)
NAUTIER AND WILDER
(with Lora Leigh)
HOT SUMMER NIGHTS
(with Carly Phillips, Erin McCarthy, and Jessica Clare)
MISTLETOE GAMES
(Holiday Games, Holiday on Ice, and Hot Holiday Nights in one volume)
eNovellas
THE TIES THAT BIND
NO STRINGS ATTACHED
WILD NIGHTS
INTERMIX
Published by Berkley
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © 2010 by Jaci Burton
Excerpt from Brazen copyright © 2010 by Jaci Burton
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
INTERMIX and the “IM” design are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Ebook ISBN: 9780593098554
Berkley Heat trade paperback edition / March 2010
First InterMix Edition / December 2021
Cover design by Farjana Yasmin
Cover image of western couple by Cavan Images / Getty
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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contents
Cover
Titles by Jaci Burton
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Excerpt from Engagement Arrangement
About the Author
To my husband, Charlie,
the roughest, toughest cowboy a woman
ever had the luck to fall in love with.
You are and always have been my hero.
Jolene
WHAT KIND OF HOUSE?
Mansion
Apartment
Shack
House
CAR?
Tractor
Truck
SUV
ATV
WHERE TO LIVE?
On the ranch
On the ranch
On the ranch
On the ranch
NUMBER OF KIDS
2
0
3
4
GUY
Walker
Walker
Walker
Walker
OCCUPATION
Rancher
Rancher
Rancher
Rancher
one
When the prairie was on fire, a smart man would run like hell in the opposite direction.
Nobody had ever accused Walker Morgan of being smart.
And Jolene McMasters was one hot prairie fire.
He should walk away, but she was a wildfire out of control, and he was having a damn hard time resisting the heat.
He rode in his truck behind her, watching her lean over in her open Jeep, igniting fires along the side of the roadway on Bar M land. It was a no-wind day, which was pretty damn rare in Oklahoma in the spring. Perfect time to burn away the tall dead winter grass around the acreage. And it figured Jolene would just have to be in the front of the line, in control of the whole deal.
Of course she did own the ranch, and for the most part had been running it herself for the past few years, since her uncle had gotten too sick to see to the day-to-day things. Her sisters, Valerie and Brea, had both lived out of town and hadn’t wanted any part of the Bar M until they’d recently come home, and even now seemed content to let their baby sister take the lead.
Right where Jolene liked to be—at the lead. She hopped out of the Jeep and raised her hand so the convoy of trucks behind her stopped. They’d circled around behind the fires they’d set so they could monitor the progress of each fire and keep them from getting out of control.
Jolene shielded her eyes and face from the whipping flames and climbed onto the bed, and then the roof of one of the trucks. She had such a catlike grace as she moved, comfortable in her own skin, unafraid as she widened her stance and balanced on top of the truck to scan the track of the fire.
“Walker, climb on up here and tell me what you think.”
He swung up onto the bed and climbed onto the roof to stand next to her. “Looks steady,” he said as he surveyed miles of charred black land with thin rows of flame. “It’s under control as long as the wind doesn’t pick up.”
Jolene nodded. “Good enough.”
Walker jumped down and held out his hands. Jolene slid into his arms, over the rail of the truck bed and onto the ground, grabbing her gloves as she headed toward the water truck.
“Joey, take the truck to the west end. I don’t like the direction or how fast that fire is moving. We don’t want to burn up that grove of trees on the western end of the property, so be sure it doesn’t get that far.”
Joey, one of the hands, tipped his hat, climbed into one of the water trucks and took off. At ten thousand acres, the Bar M was one of the largest ranches in their part of Oklahoma. Which meant it was a huge responsibility, and Walker thought Jolene did a fine job handling it all for someone as young as she was. In fact, the harder she had to work, the happier she seemed to be.
Walker admired her for that. She never whined or complained, and one would think a girl in her mid-twenties would rather be in the city dancing and drinking in the clubs or dating a different guy every weekend instead of standing in the middle of a scorched field sucking in ash and smoke.
But Jolene was grinning and swilling down bottles of water like she was having the time of her life, her face smeared with black ash and soot, her perfect lips cracking a wide smile. He wanted to go over to her, grab her pigtails, drag her sweet body against his and kiss her until the ache he had for her went away.
But he already knew kissing her would only make his dick hard, and then he’d want a hell of lot more than kissing.
She’d want more than kissing.
Jolene had already made it clear what she wanted, and what she wanted was him. He was the one backing away, saying no, which wasn’t something he was accustomed to doing. When a sexy blonde with a heart-shaped face, a mouth that was created for one thing only and curves that won’t quit wanted you, you didn’t say no. Yet that was what he found himself doing.
Ron ald McMasters had hired him five years ago, and he’d taken the job and started working for Mason. And then he’d met Jolene, barely twenty-one at the time. Even then she’d been a beauty, with womanly curves and a face that would stop a man in his tracks. Now she had come into her full womanly beauty, and she was devastating, a devilish temptress in blue jeans and cowgirl boots.
He wanted her like he’d never wanted a woman before. And she was 100 percent off limits.
She was the boss and he was a ranch hand. He’d already gone down that road once and vowed he’d never do it again. He was determined not to break that vow, even if Jolene McMasters was the hottest thing on the Oklahoma prairie.
He was still going to tell her no, and no again, until she got the message loud and clear.
* * *
* * *
The fires were out, all the grass they’d wanted burned was scorched to the ground, and Jolene and the guys were now enjoying the fruits of their labor—beer and barbecue in the backyard of the main house. No way was Lila going to let any of them inside, since they were all covered in soot and ash from head to toe. But there was plenty of food and cold beer to drink. They’d been at this before dawn, and the sun had just set. Jolene had known the hands would be hungry when they got back, so she’d made advance arrangements to have this feast prepared.
There was nothing she liked better than seeing a bright orange glow lining up across the horizon before the sun even came up. The day had been perfect, the winds had been calm and they’d only had to chase a couple fires threading out of control.
She craved a shower and her scrubber so she could get the grit out of her skin and the smell of smoke out of her hair and nostrils. But right now she wanted to celebrate with her guys—they’d worked their asses off today.
And while they all hooted and hollered and told stories about their heroics of the day, Jolene took a seat on the ground under one of the many shade trees. Away from the crowd and nobody needing anything from her, she could watch Walker Morgan to her heart’s content. And her heart was pretty damned contented to watch him a lot.
Like her, he was covered in dust from his face to his shirt and jeans and pretty much everywhere else. His hair was black as the charred fields, and his eyes as gray as the ash that coated their clothes.
He was doing his damndest to ignore her, but Jolene knew better. He noticed her all right. She could tell when a man watched her, and she’d felt his gaze on her today. Since Mason was off on the other side of the fire, and Walker was usually Mason’s right-hand man, he’d been right there by her side the entire time. She didn’t know if he enjoyed that or if it irritated the hell out of him.
Walker had been at the ranch for five years now, and he was as tight-lipped about himself as any man she’d known. Maybe that was part of the attraction—she liked a mystery. There were a lot of things about Walker she didn’t know, but she intended to find out. If she could just find time to be alone with him, and get him to admit that he was interested in being with her. Because she knew damn well he wanted her. She was pretty adept at reading a man, and she caught the sidelong glances he sent her way when he thought she wasn’t looking. Jolene was always looking.
And in those looks she saw a hunger that equaled her own. What she didn’t understand was why he turned and headed in the opposite direction whenever they had an opportunity to be alone.
If there was one thing Jolene was, it was determined. She wasn’t going to let Walker keep running. She’d made up her mind a long time ago that Walker was who she wanted in her bed, and she wasn’t going to give up until she had him there.
She glanced over at her sisters, admittedly a bit jealous at their smiles of contentment. She was happy for Valerie and Mason, who had a second chance at happiness, and for Brea and Gage, who’d found kindred spirits in each other. It was just seeing her two older sisters happy and in love made Jolene crave something she had never really wanted before.
She liked sex just fine, enjoyed a roll in the hay as much as any other woman her age did. But the sudden craving for permanence was new, as was the need to have a man claim her as his and the need to claim him in return. It was something she had never considered before, probably because she’d been too busy running the Bar M and arguing with her uncle Ronald. She’d never had the time to think about settling down, about falling in love, about who she’d eventually end up with. She figured there’d be time for all that later.
But now, seeing her sisters with men at their sides made her look at the men in her life differently.
She’d have to get around to settling down one of these days.
She thought about that silly M.A.S.H. game she’d played with her sisters last month, and realized she’d only listed one man’s name, not four. And that name had been Walker’s. Probably because no other man was on her radar at the time.
Hell, no other man had ever been on her radar like Walker had been, no doubt due to the fact that he wouldn’t even give her the time of day.
She was hardly hideous in the looks department, so what was it about her that made him not want to occupy space with her? They worked together just fine, but when it came down to socializing, he was nowhere to be found.
Like now. She’d been so deep in thought she’d lost sight of Walker. As she glanced through the crowd, she couldn’t find him. She stood, threw her empty plate into the nearby trash can and grabbed another beer, then spotted Mason and Valerie and headed their way.
“Lila outdid herself on these ribs,” Mason said as Jolene stopped in front of them.
“And you need a shower in the worst way, Jo.” Valerie brushed her thumb over Jolene’s cheek and showed her the blackened evidence.
“Yeah, I know,” Jolene said, scrubbing her cheeks with her fingertips.
Valerie laughed. “Now you’ve made it worse.”
“I don’t care. I know I’m a mess.”
“And yet, still as beautiful as Cinderella after cleaning the chimney,” Valerie said with an affected sigh.
“Bite me, Val. Have either of you seen Walker?”
Mason’s lips twitched, and he motioned with his head over his left shoulder. “I think he said he was going to the bunkhouse.”
“Okay, thanks.”
The party would be going on as long as there was beer left, and there was plenty of beer, so she didn’t think any of the cowboys would be moseying on to the bunkhouse anytime soon.
She knocked on the bunkhouse door and waited. No answer, so she knocked again, and when he didn’t answer, she crossed her arms and tapped her feet.
She rapped again, harder this time. “Walker, open the door.”
Still no response. Irritation drove her to pound on the door. He was avoiding her and that pissed her off. “Open the damn door and be a man. I know you’re in there, Walker.”
“Actually, I’m not.”
She yelped and whipped around.
“Dammit, Walker, you scared the shit out of me.”
His lips curled as he unlocked the door and pushed it open. “It’s your own fault for having a hissy fit on the doorstep.”
She followed him inside and shut the door. “I was not having a hissy fit. I never have hissy fits.”
“If you say so.” He went to the fridge and grabbed a beer without bothering to offer her one.
“There’s plenty of beer over at the main house.”
He popped the top off the can and bypassed her to lean against the counter. “I know that. I just didn’t feel like socializing. I’m going to finish this beer, then I’m going to take a shower.” He pointed the beer can at her. “You could use one, too.”
She knew what she looked like, and it probably wasn’t her finest moment. It was hard to attract the man you’re hot for when you were covered in black ash, but he’d seen her looking a lot worse. She had him alone for the first time in ages and she intended to take advantage of that. “I could shower here,” she said, grabbing the beer from his hand and taking a long swallow before handing it back to him.
“Why would you do that when you have a shower at your house?”
Was he truly that dense? She moved in, trapping him between her and the counter. She laid her hands on the tile counter, only a fraction of an inch separating her body from his, and inhaled the scent of smoke, and male. He frowned at her, but didn’t push her away. That was a good start.
