Rancher Claims His Runaway Wife

The rain hammered the tin roof of the old ranch house like buckshot when the knock came at a little past midnight. Colton McCabe set his whiskey glass down on the scarred oak table and walked to the door with the slow, deliberate gait of a man who’d spent fifty-two years letting the land teach him patience. He expected a lost hunter or maybe one of his hands drunk again. He did not expect the soaked, trembling vision standing on his porch in what remained of a white wedding dress.

Lila’s veil was gone. The satin gown clung to her small, curvy frame, torn at the hem and one shoulder, mud splattered up to her thighs. Rainwater streamed from her long dark hair and ran in rivulets between her full breasts. She looked up at him—wide green eyes, defiant little chin, lips parted like she’d just run a thousand miles and still had fire left.

“I’m not going back,” she said, voice raw but steady. “If you turn me away, I’ll keep walking until something worse finds me. So… can I come in, mister?”

Colton’s cock twitched hard behind the fly of his worn jeans before his brain even caught up. Nineteen, if she was a day. Barely legal and dripping on his porch like every filthy fantasy he’d never let himself admit he had. The massive difference in their ages should have made him send her to the bunkhouse. Instead the word left his mouth like a growl.

“Inside.”

She stepped past him, leaving wet footprints and the faint scent of jasmine and fear-sweat. He shut the heavy door against the storm. The kitchen light caught the way the soaked fabric molded to her perky nipples and the flare of her young hips. Colton’s large, calloused hands flexed at his sides.

“Name’s Colton McCabe. This is my ranch. You got a name, runaway?”

“Lila,” she whispered, hugging herself. “Lila Voss… or I guess I don’t want to be a Voss anymore. I was supposed to marry some sixty-year-old banker this afternoon. I ran before they could sign the papers.”

Colton’s silver-streaked beard twitched. “And you came here.”

“I saw the lights from the road. Figured a man who lives this far out might understand wanting to be left alone… or maybe not wanting to be left alone at all.” Her gaze dropped deliberately down his broad chest, over the thick forearms crossed over his flannel shirt, then lower. When her eyes returned to his, they were sparkling with something far too knowing for her age.

He felt that look like a hand around his cock.