“Will you wait just a damn minute!” she ground out, determined to catch his attention before her feet were worn down to stubs.

  He stopped suddenly, turning to face her so fast that she nearly bumped into him. The look he gave her made her feel like a three-year-old caught scribbling on the walls with permanent marker.

  “You don’t have the sense God gave a goose,” he snapped, motioning to her shoeless appearance.

  She opened her mouth to argue—she did have the sense God gave a goose, she just wasn’t used to running out of the house without shoes on to chase after rude cowboys—but he cut her off.

  “Come out here in your bare feet and you’re likely to need a tetanus shot.”

  Monica glanced down, searching the ground around her feet for sharp, dangerous objects. She didn’t see any.

  “We shoe horses out here. There could be a stray nail you wouldn’t see until it was stuck in your foot. And those grassy toenails of yours are bound to be a temptation to the cows,” he added with derision.

  She ignored his comment about her toenails being painted Jolly Green Giant green. If she’d known she was going to wake up in Hooterville, she’d have used Cow Pie brown instead.

  “Well, you didn’t exactly give me a chance to put shoes on,” she said defensively, tugging harder at the loose waist of her pants. “Besides, all I have are my satin pumps, and they’d be filthy just chasing you this far.”

  He rolled his eyes again. Then he came forward, leaning toward her, and before she had a chance to react, he lifted her into his arms.

  Her body stiffened, not only surprised by his actions but by her sudden shift from vertical to horizontal. She wasn’t used to not having her feet flat on the ground—even if that ground was dirty, gritty, and crawling with God-knows-what. Then she began to notice the warmth of his body seeping into her skin, the strong arms holding her, and she decided not to protest.

  Bumping happily against his chest, she stared at his stubbled chin, full mouth, and the cool azure eyes shaded by the brim of his hat. With a sly grin, she said, “Your mama sure did raise you right, Mr. Nash.”

  His face remained blank. He didn’t even turn his head to look at her. “She raised me to be a gentleman, no matter how flighty a woman might be.”

  She leaned back as far as his arm would allow, affronted. “I am not flighty.” And then she grabbed the edge of his hat and yanked it down over his eyes.

  He kept walking, never breaking stride. But he lifted his head and glared at her from beneath the low, oddly angled rim of his cowboy hat.

  “Flighty,” he said. “And short-tempered.”

  Before she had time to respond to that, or exact her revenge, he stepped through the doorway of a large, half-dilapidated barn and set her on her feet.

  Stray strands of straw—or hay, she wasn’t sure which—lined the barn floor and bit into the bottoms of her feet. It also threw up small motes of dust that tickled her nose and eyes.

  She took a moment to glance around the building, noting that the back half was completely missing. From the color and texture of the wood, she didn’t guess it had been all that much of an architectural accomplishment to being with. But like this, with one corner fallen in a heap of broken boards and the other wall bowing like a weak shelf, it was truly pathetic.

  Two men worked in the destroyed corner, holding up new support beams, hammering, cussing, and all around making a racket.

  “Hey, Ryder,” one of the workers called when he spotted them.

  Ryder raised his hand and waved. “Hey, Kevin. Benji.”

  They didn’t seem the least interested in her, simply went back to what they were doing.

  “What happened?” she asked, still staring at the destroyed area.

  “Tornado. Ripped through here last summer and nearly leveled the whole place.” He hitched his head to the side, toward where the men were working. “That’s the least of my problems.” Then he turned to face her more fully and said, “This is the main barn. We use it for storage and chopping the cattle.”

  Monica let out a gasp of despair. How could he be so blasé about the slaughter of poor, defenseless animals? “You kill cows in here?” she asked, horrified. She could almost hear their desperate moos for help and was glad a tornado had ripped down the barn, if it meant saving a few innocent bovine lives.

  He gave her an odd look, and then his brows lifted and he broke out in laughter. “No,” he said. “Chop is the food we give them. When we bring the herd in to feed, it’s called ‘chopping.’”

  She sighed, thinking The Powers That Be could have come up with a better name for cow food than “chop.”

  Still chuckling, Ryder moved across the barn floor and opened the door to a small, unlit room. From where she was standing, she could see cobwebs hanging in the air and dusting Ryder’s hat. She shivered, deciding she would never enter that part of the barn unless she was covered from head to toe with full body armor.

  “If you’re going to follow me around like a lost puppy, you’re going to need something on your feet.

  Offended, she put her hands on her hips and opened her mouth to toss back a retort.

  “These should fit you,” he cut in, turning with a pair of dusty, dirty, knee-high rubber boots in his hands. In his other, he held an equally dusty and dirty cowboy hat. He tossed the boots at her feet, then swiped at the hat with one of his big, gloved hands.

  She began to stick her foot into one of the boots when she saw something move. She screamed and threw it back toward Ryder.

  “What?” he asked, giving her one of those hysterical-female glares.

  “There’s something in there,” she rushed breathlessly, her heart trying to beat its way up her throat. She sounded like a hysterical female, she knew. But until the multi-eyed creature inside that boot was dead as a doornail, she didn’t particularly care.

  He picked up the boot, turned it upside down, and shook it hard. A large, long-legged spider fell to the straw-strewn floor and skittered away.

  “It was just a spider,” he told her.

  “I can see that,” she said, batting at little invisible creatures that she suddenly felt crawling all over her body. “But I’m not putting those things on until you’re sure there are no more bugs inside.”

  He gave a long-suffering sigh, but picked up the other boot and began shaking them both. He slapped them together, banged them against the floorboards, and then reached inside each and swiped the interiors with his gloved hands.

  “I think they’re safe,” he said finally, handing them back to her.

  She wasn’t so sure, but as long as Ryder had checked them, she felt fairly secure. Still, as she stepped into them, she kept her toes curled under, prepared to jump out at the first sign of arachnid inhabitance.

  “Okay?” he asked.

  She nodded, shifting warily inside the footwear.

  “Good.” He slapped the extra hat on her head and pushed it down until it held. “This will help shade your eyes and keep you from getting sunburned.”

  She smiled then, a little smittenly, she suspected. But how could she not almost want to kiss the man when he’d just given her shoes for her battered feet and a hat for her delicate, Southern Belle skin?

  “Think you can manage to keep up now, Rapunzel?”

  Risking crow’s feet after all, and other assorted wrinkles that might form in her later years, she scowled at him. “I have no intention of keeping up. You’re going to stand still while we discuss just what you meant about keeping me hostage.”

  He laughed, one deep exhalation of breath that could have been a snort if he’d inhaled instead. “I never said you were a hostage.”

  Her lips thinned. “Then what exactly did you mean when you said I wasn’t leaving until you got your money?”

  When she stuck her fists on her hips in agitation, her jeans fell dangerously low. She ignored them, but Ryder’s focus zeroed in on their downward slide like a trained fighter pilot.

  He remained silent for a moment, then cursed. “Lord have mercy, woman, you could give a dead man a heart attack in those things.” He took one last look before turning to root around in the closet room again.

  He turned back to her, a long length of thin rope in his hand. His eyes went back to the pants riding low on her hips, but he didn’t seem quite so distracted this time. “What I meant to say earlier was that you’re not getting a divorce until I get my money.”

  She blinked, not sure how to react to that. She wanted to ask if an annulment was a possibility. If he said yes, then she would know they hadn’t done the hanky-panky last night. After all, you could only get an annulment for a handful of reasons, one of which she was pretty sure had something to do with not having sex. If he said no…

  She didn’t even want to contemplate “no.”

  Pulling off his gloves and sticking them under his arm, he threaded the twine through one of the belt loops at the front of her pants. With each loop, he moved closer to her body, brushing the bare skin of her midriff. Her stomach muscles tightened instinctively as the air caught in her lungs. His hot breath dusted her cheek, and she let her eyes flutter closed. It felt good, having him lean so close, feathering touch after touch of his fingertips along her sensitized flesh. When he came to the back loops, he didn’t bother turning her around, instead slipping both arms around her waist and feeling his way through the motions.

  A stuttering jolt of electricity ran down her body, calling every E, F, and G-spot to full attention. Knowing he had to finish soon or she’d melt at his feet, she lifted her head to see how much longer he planned to be. Only to find him staring at her with the same intensity he seemed to be dedicating to the makeshift belt.

  His hands moved from the center of her back to her side, ending at the front button of the jeans. Dark eyes still boring into hers, he tugged the rope tight and created some sort of knot or bow that she didn’t dare look down at. She might not have been able to see what he was doing, but she felt every agonizing movement as though they were both stark naked and Ryder was playing connect-the-dots with her beauty marks.

  Finished tying the rope, his hands stilled and Monica forced herself to breathe before she passed out. Which she was very much in danger of doing.

  Slightly dizzy from lack of oxygen and the sexual tension racing around them like honeybees, she reached up and grabbed hold of his upper arms for balance.

  Ryder didn’t move. Didn’t reach out to steady her or shake off her grasp. He simply stood statue-still and stared into her eyes.

  And then the back of one finger touched her stomach just above the waist of her jeans. His smooth, hard nail caressed her skin lightly, and she felt it all the way down to her toes. It moved upward slowly, so slowly, she bit her lip to keep from sighing in pleasure. Her chest hitched, and she clutched his arms even tighter as he toyed with the small hoop at her navel, flicking it back and forth, before skimming higher. Up to the knotted closure of her shirt, over button after button after button, until he reached the bareness between her breasts.

  He stopped there, almost unsure of whether to go on.

  And, oh, lord, she wanted him to. She wanted him to keep sliding that warm, strong finger over her skin, maybe even lean forward and press his equally warm, strong lips to hers.

  But that probably wasn’t such a good idea.

  She blinked. Definitely not a good idea, considering their relationship up to now. Yes, they were technically married, but that didn’t give them any call to go doing the Mattress Mambo or Macarena or any other euphemism for getting naked and horizontal. They hardly even knew each other. And she wasn’t drunk anymore, so she would have no excuse for sleeping with a near-stranger. No matter how much she wanted to.

  Breaking eye contact, Monica cleared her throat and took a step back. She looked down at her new belt and fiddled with the simple knot he’d made at the front.

  “Now I really do look like Ellie May,” she muttered.

  “What?”

  She lifted her head to find Ryder still studying her closely, though not with as much intensity or raw desire. His mind was obviously elsewhere. And she suspected she knew where.

  Shaking her head, she said, “I was just thinking that I look an awful lot like Ellie May Clampett from The Beverly Hillbillies.”

  “She was a blonde,” he pointed out, and his voice sounded gravelly, unused.

  She chuckled, tucking a stray curl of her own short, dark hair behind her ear. “Not a natural one, I don’t suppose.”

  “No, I don’t suppose.”

  Monica felt as out of sync as Ryder sounded, like she’d been picked up, spun around, and dropped in a foreign land. And it had nothing to do with where she’d woken up this morning. That, she was actually beginning to deal with. This had much more to do with the fact that she found herself suddenly quite attracted to her husband. Who would have thought?

  She racked her brain for something to get them past this awkward moment. What had they been discussing before he slipped the rope around her waist? Something important, about money and being held prisoner.

  The image of herself in a harem outfit, tied to his headboard with the same kind of rough twine he’d just used to hike up her pants, flashed through her mind and sent a deep throb to her lower extremities.

  I have to get out of here! she thought, shaking off the erotic haze spinning its web around her mind and body. If she didn’t, she might just try to put that love-slave fantasy to the test.

  Oh, yes, she remembered now. She’d asked if Ryder meant to hold her hostage, and he said she wasn’t a hostage; he just didn’t intend to give her a divorce until he got his money. Money that she simply didn’t have.

  She cleared her throat. “I’d better be going,” she said, taking a step backward, almost reluctant to move away. “Thanks for the hat and boots. And the belt.” Her voice caught on the last word, sensations assaulting her memory.

  “Where are you going?”

  She began to shrug, then stopped herself, not wanting him to think her indecisive. “Home,” she told him. She still had to figure out what to do about Matt stealing her money and marrying another woman, but it could wait until she got home and was back on firmer footing…literally. “I’ll just call a cab and see if it can take me to the airport.”

  “There are no cabs that come out this far.”

  That caught her off guard for a moment. “Then I’ll walk to the nearest Greyhound station and catch a bus.”

  He grabbed her arm before she could take another step. “Not so fast,” he said, all signs of intimacy gone from his tone and expression. The moment had passed and it wasn’t coming back.

  Monica frowned. “I thought you said I was free to go.”

  He shook his head. “Uh-uh. I’m not going to keep you prisoner, darlin’, but you aren’t leaving, either.”

  Ignoring the grip he still had on her, she put her hands on her hips and threw him an arched glance. “By definition, not letting someone leave is keeping them prisoner. Darlin’.”

  His upper lip quirked at that, and she wanted to smack him for being so amused.

  “If you leave, there’s a good chance I’ll never see you again, which means I’ll never get my money. So you’re staying.”

  “I told you,” she ground out. “I don’t have any money.”

  Letting go of her arm, he turned her in the opposite direction and rested a hand at the small of her back as he guided her forward out of the barn. “Then you’ll just have to work off your debt.”

  Chapter Seven

  When a man asks a woman to share his lot, she has a right to know how big it is.

  She balked, digging the heels of her too-big rubber boots into the dirt. By “work,” he meant sex, she was sure. Good lord, how many times would it take to work off fifty thousand dollars? Even at a hundred dollars a pop, she could be here until the cows came home.

  She looked around her. Bad analogy, Mon. The cows are already home.

  Not that she had any intention of being his sex toy for the next ten or twenty years. She didn’t intend to be his sex toy for five minutes. She might have considered the idea a few seconds ago when his warm breath and even warmer fingers were doing wicked things to her mind and body, but not now. Not now that he was keeping her here against her will. If he needed sex so badly, he could go find himself some other dairymaid to diddle with.

  She twisted free and started back toward the house. “I don’t think so.”

  Before she got three feet, he caught her again. “I do.” Keeping hold of her arm, he led her past the front of the ugly brown barn toward a much nicer yellow one.

  “You’re crazy.”

  “No, desperate. And desperate men take desperate measures.”

  “Let go of me.” She fought, wondering why one hayloft wasn’t as good as another for what he had in mind. “I’m not going to sleep with you just because you think I owe you some stupid money.”

  He stopped like he’d run smack into a brick wall. Turning wide eyes to her, the corner of his mouth began to tilt upward. He let his gaze run down her body and then up again, pausing for a moment at her navel ring. And then he chuckled. “Sorry, Ellie May, I just ain’t interested. Frankly, you’d have to pay me.”

  She clicked her teeth together to keep from gasping in outrage.

  He wasn’t interested, hmm? Then what were all those soft touches and blatant looks he’d treated her to in the barn? And the intense scrutiny back in the kitchen? How curious could a man be about a belly button ring and a hidden tattoo if he wasn’t even affected by the body that went with them?

  She opened her mouth to tell him just how interested he should be when a man on a horse rode into the yard. He wore dusty cowboy boots and a dusty hat, just like Ryder, and another one of those long-sleeve plaid shirts with silver-rimmed, fake pearl buttons on each of the pockets. Was there some sort of fashion code for cowboys that they all had to dress alike?

  “Hey, Ryder,” the man called, jumping down from his mount and throwing the reins over the paddock fence.

  “Ned,” Ryder returned the greeting, inclining his head.