Page 99 of Tempting Wyatt

His eyes meet mine, then move to Antonio’s. “Is it Friday?” He takes a step toward me. “Please tell me she’s from?—”

“She’s a guest ofthe ranch. A guest of the Logan family.” There’s a sharp warning in Antonio’s voice. “Mind your manners, Colter. Or you’ll find yourselfwithout a job.”

The last three words sound more likedead in a ditch.

His thick Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows his disappointment.

“Well, damn.” He forces a smile at me, then reaches out the hand that isn’t holding his towel. “They call me Colter. It’s Lane Colter actually, but you can call me whatever you’d like, beautiful.”

This one is definitely a wrangler, then.

“You want me to call you Beautiful?” I tease, placing my cool hand in his warm one. “I’m Ivy.”

“Ivy. . . ” he prompts, as if expecting my last name.

“Just Ivy is fine.”

He grins. “Where you from, Just Ivy?”

“California,” I say, and he groans dramatically in response, releasing my hand briskly.

“Should’ve figured. And here I was, planning to propose.”

Antonio rolls his eyes. “Back up, Colter. And put some damn clothes on.” He turns to me. “I’ve got to step outside and make a call. You good?”

I nod. “I think so. If Beautiful here is the most dangerous one, I should be fine.”

That gets a laugh from the group as Colter retreats in search of pants, and then Antonio is gone. I’m called into the kitchen, where I’m given a paper plate with two slices of pizza piled on it and a bottle of a local IPA.

Beer isn’t typically my first choice, but the ice-cold citrus-infused stout is amazing with the pizza.

I sit at the card table with Houston and the guy I think is Marcos joins us. Once everyone is eating, the atmosphere is much more relaxed. Or maybe it’s because Antonio left. Either way, there’s teasing, some kind of feud revolving around a video game they begin playing once the football game ends, and a group gathering at the card table to play poker.

I’m realizing I can’t eat my second slice of pizza when a petite but full-figured blonde who looks about Sutton’s age steps out of the room Colter came from. She’s wearing a tiny tank top and cutoff shorts the size of underwear. She is very, very sexy. An abundance of girl-next-door beauty, playing dirty-doll dress-up.

“Colter, what the hell?” she hisses.

Several guys glance over at her, then pull annoyed faces at Colter.

Resounding shouts of, “What the hell?” and “Fuck you, dude,” fly at Colter.

He grins and shrugs. “I told you to go out the window.”

“You said you’d grab me a jacket and—” She glares at me. Glares at Colter even harder. “You said women weren’t allowed in here on weeknights.”

“They aren’t,” about five guys say in pissed-off unison.

I feel much less welcome than I did a few minutes ago.

When Colter resumes eating pizza at the card table, she folds her arms across her ample, exposed chest. “Judd, you want to walk me to my car?”

The cowboy, who I suspect is the other wrangler, with the shaved head and black goatee stands. He has a sleeve full of tattoos and a hot ex-convict vibe. I glance at Colter to see ifhe minds another guy walking his date to her car. He winks at me and goes back to his poker game, completely unbothered.

Judd gives her his jacket, and a ranch hand, whose name I’ve forgotten, stands.

“I’ll come, too, if you’re good with that, Randi?”

She pauses, bites her lip, and slings another dirty look at Colter, who ignores her completely, now caught up in his card game.