Cowboy Crazy by Joanne Kennedy Page A

He’d bet everything and lost, so they’d had nothing to fall back on.
    That was never going to happen to her again. She’d worked hard to become a new person. A successful person, a rich person who could take care of herself and have enough left over to help her family.
    She needed to get back to work, where she only had the younger brother to contend with. The safe one.
    Because being with Lane was not safe. She could feel her old self clawing at the cage she’d created, trying to break through the layers of sophistication she’d built up over the years. And if her old self got loose, she was liable to do a lot more than kiss Lane Carrigan the next time they ended up in a dark alley.

Chapter 9
    Lane watched Sarah sit primly in a folding chair, watching the band crank out country’s greatest hits on the platform at the front of the tent. Her lips were pressed tightly together, her hands knotted in her lap. She was probably afraid the locals would eat her alive.
    He smiled at the thought. As far as he was concerned, her world—the business world—was full of piranhas and barracudas. Worse yet, the predators there dressed like regular folks. In his world, people might look a little rough but at least you knew what to expect. Bikers wore leather, and cowboys wore hats. Easy girls wore low-cut tops, and good girls—good girls dressed like Sarah.
    The top of the tent was a tangle of electrical wires, each one leading to a paper lantern. The individual circles of light made each table a mini-stage, highlighting the various dramas taking place. At one, a woman sat slouched over a beer, watching with wounded eyes as the cowboy beside her chatted up a woman at the next table. At another, three women watched the band, their eyes fixed in identical predatory squints on the lead singer. At the one closest to the door, a man and woman conversed in furious whispers. Lane couldn’t hear what they were saying, only the faint hiss of anger in their tone.
    He let his eyes roam down the bar, where cowboys and cowgirls perched on tall stools, boy-girl, boy-girl. Some of the women leaned close to the men beside them; others seemed determined to shrink into the smallest space possible as eager cowboys waved imaginary lassos in the air, recounting their glory days.
    Everyone was trying a little too hard, including the band up on the makeshift stage. A singer with serious dental issues was rasping out the lyrics to “Sweet Home Alabama” with his stance spread wide and his skinny hips thrust forward. Behind him, a fiddler sawed determinedly at a battered violin. Everything was a little too loud, a little too desperate.
    Sarah’s eyes flicked from one face to another, then slid back to a thirty-something cowboy who was standing a few feet from the bar, talking with a bunch of other guys. Lane had seen the guy ride a few times, and his mental tape loop pictured him getting bucked off a lot. He remembered a fatal tendency to misread the horse’s cues, a habit of letting his shoulders tilt into the spin and pull him off center.
    The guy sure wasn’t making much of an impression on Sarah. Lane hoped she never looked at him like that, with her brows lowered and her lips tightened in disapproval. He scanned the luckless cowboy from head to foot, wondering what annoyed her so much. He wasn’t bad looking—reasonably fit, dressed in the typical cowboy uniform of striped shirt, Wranglers, and boots. The shirt was faded as if it had been washed about a hundred times, but Lane didn’t think Sarah cared about the condition of a man’s clothes. If she did, his own would never pass muster. And however cold she was now, she’d kissed him like she wanted him. He brushed a finger over his lips and she flashed him a glare almost as cold as she’d given the other guy.
    Maybe coming to the beer tent was a mistake. He should have kept her in the shadow of the potato skins stand.
    As Sarah swung her gaze back to the cowboy, the guy turned like he