Under Threat by B.J. Daniels (reading the story of the .TXT) 📕

Maybe he’d figured it out and was pretending like he hadn’t, and she was an idiot for thinking otherwise. Or maybe the “girls” Herman said The Stallion kept didn’t have anything to do with her sister.

She let out a gusty sigh. Right now she was too hungry to think about anything other than the fragrant soup that had been warming on the stove when she’d left the kitchen. It wasn’t gourmet or anything, but she hadn’t eaten since... She actually wasn’t sure when she’d last eaten. Between the fire and the paperwork and the nervousness and fear during the drive, she probably hadn’t eaten more than a few bites of food.

She hurriedly got dressed and pulled her hair back with a band she’d found in a little plastic bin under the sink. It would be a curly mess later, but she was sure this was the place where what little vanity she had left had come to die.

She had none of her normal hair products. No makeup. None of the clothes that fit her properly. While she had lost her job as a hypnotist with the Texas Rangers, thank you Ranger Jerk, it still felt like Cooper was more of a colleague than anything else. She wanted to dress professionally and be taken seriously and...

And she had to put her hair back into a crazy ponytail, and wear someone else’s very nearly gaudy and way-too-tight sweats.

“Just what you should be concerned about, Natalie, how you look,” she muttered to herself. She was hopeless. That was all there was to it.

She stepped out into the hall, her feet propelling her forward only because she could smell that soup in the distance.

Ranger Cooper was sitting at the table, spooning soup into his mouth as he stared moodily at a laptop screen.

He flicked a glance at her and then pointed toward the stove. “Help yourself.” She gave him a little nod, and then did just that. He’d set out a bowl for her, and she ladled soup into it.

She heard a choking sound and looked back to find him nearly red and coughing.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he said, his voice nothing more than a scrape.

He wasn’t the type of man to errantly choke on his soup. “What happened? Did you find something?” He had been staring at the laptop screen, but then there were windows in the kitchen too. “Did you see someone out a window?” She whipped her head around, looking for some clue as to what he’d choked over.

“No. No, none of that.”

“Then what?”

“It was nothing,” he replied, his voice returning to normal, his attention returning to his computer.

“Ranger Cooper, honestly, don’t be—”

“It’s the back of your...pants,” he ground out.

“Well, they’re not my pants,” she muttered in return. She tried to look over her shoulder, searching for what he saw, but she didn’t see anything except pink on the backs of her legs.

“It, uh, says something.”

“It says what?” she demanded, flinging her arms in the air. “Do you have to be so infuriatingly vague?”

“Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

“Ranger Cooper, I swear to all that is—”

“It says Ride...” He cleared his throat. “Ride Me, Cowboy.”

She blinked at him. “Ride...” She blinked again, a hot flush infusing her face. “I... I’m going to go change.” She hurried out of the room and inspected every piece of clothing in the closet before choosing plain green sweatpants. She didn’t quite love the too-tight fit, but that was far less...embarrassing than Ride Me, Cowboy being printed on any part of her clothing. Most especially her butt.

Wait. Why had Ranger Cooper been looking at her butt? He was probably just inspecting her for signs of weapons or something. There was no way that man checked out anyone in the course of his oh-so-important duty.

Only the desperate hunger situation coaxed her to return to the kitchen, otherwise she might have happily holed up in the strange little color burst of a room and never forced herself to have to look Ranger Cooper in the eye again.

Ride Me, Cowboy.

She shuddered, then took a deep breath before she stepped foot into the hallway again. She was just going to have to accept that her face was probably going to be beet red for the next...eight million hours.

There are more important things to think about than a little silly embarrassment over pants that aren’t even yours.

Which was a very sensible thought all in all, but it changed absolutely nothing. She was embarrassed. She was... Well, trying very, very hard not to think about riding of any kind.

She placed her palm to her burning cheek and inwardly scolded herself as she haltingly forced herself back to the kitchen.

Ranger Cooper’s gaze remained steady on the laptop, but unlike the first time she’d stepped into the open front area, he was aware she was there. He didn’t move, he didn’t look at her, but she knew he was aware of her. So much different than that moment she’d caught him lost in his thoughts.

And wondered a little too hard what those thoughts might be.

“What do you know about The Stallion?” Ranger Cooper asked in that maddeningly professional tone. As if nothing had happened a short while ago, as if this was some sort of interrogation, not him protecting her. Or whatever it was he was really up to.

“I don’t know what that is. A person?” Based on what Herman said, she assumed it was, but she really didn’t know. It was imperative Ranger Cooper give her a hint, but she had to play that carefully. No jumping into an interrogation mode of her own.

“Yes, a person.”

She finished ladling her soup and grabbed the spoon that Cooper had left out for her. She could stand here and eat it over the kitchen counter, and she’d probably be more comfortable doing that, but she didn’t want to give him that kind of power over her. She wouldn’t stand to eat just because she didn’t want to face him.

She walked over to