Status Updates From Falling for the Rancher (Cu...

"It wasn't worth hurting her like that over some fling."

Some fling. The words landed like a blow. She pressed a hand to her stomach as if applying pressure could relieve pain. Ridiculous. The agonizing throb she felt wasn't in her abdomen. It was in her heart. "That's all this was - a fling?"

"You're leaving next week, Sierra. What else could it be?" He said it so matter-of-factly that she wanted to cry.

Vicki asks Sierra if she's sleeping with Garrett, and when Sierra admits it, Vicki freaks the fuck out.

He'd once launched into a discussion of grass at dinner that had lasted a full half hour. Sierra had managed not to fall asleep, but only because she'd entertained herself by mentally replaying her favorite episode of an old sitcom.

Number One: If any man (or woman) fucks you or wants to fuck you, but tells you it will be a secret, tell them NO. Never agree to be anyone's secret lover. Tell them to fuck off.

Number Two: "Well, coffee is the most important meal of the day." Truth.

Pushes her away because he's fucked up about his past, and now has extreme guilt about sex.

He asks her to keep it a secret.

As he'd noted this afternoon, she had no real poker face. Being deceptive did not come easily to her. If she couldn't keep Will Trent and Kate from seeing her attraction to Jarrett, how long would she be able to hid it from someone who was living with them?
...
Actually, she preferred not to dwell on the fact that she was sleeping with the guy who signed her paychecks. In that

"Make love to me, cowboy."

"Yes, ma'am."

He headed up the stairs, struck by the novelty of how rare it was to be with a woman under his own roof. There'd been a few furtive encounters at the ranch over the years, but a lot of his love life had taken place in motel rooms and the bench seat of trucks. When was the last time he'd woken up next to a woman he'd fallen asleep beside and started the day with her? He's seen quite a few lovers naked, but he was

Small make-out session

Kissing

Jarrett had always been very goal-oriented. It was one of the things that made him a winner in the ring. With past lovers, he'd focused on the act of sex itself, on making sure his partner enjoyed herself, but he'd overlooked how sexy even seemingly platonic moments could be. Maybe because you never bothered to have platonic moments. When a woman had demonstrated her interest in him, he hadn't spent weeks courting

She opened the door wider, and he entered in a cloud of expensive body spray.

Expensive body spray?

Expensive BODY SPRAY?!?!!?

Pressuring someone who is terrified of horses to ride a horse. Very common trope in Harlequin American Romance, and not one I'm fond of. Seems barbaric and sadistic to me.

Gets something down for her off the high shelf and then asks if there's anything else he can do for her. So cute.

She used to date a doctor. He slumped in his chair, wondering why he found that discovery so depressing. Because it's a reminder that even if you COULD ask her out, Sierra is completely out of your league. She was a sophisticated woman who'd gone to medical school. He was a rodeo has-been who lived with his parents.

Fantastic. She was employed again - by a laconic cowboy who lived at the butt-end of nowhere and kept staring eerily into space as if he were about to have a psychic vision.

She knew it was bad form to show up tardy to an interview, but before she'd had a chance to explain, Jarrett had suddenly declared, "Tea!" the way a scientist might shout "Eureka!" Then he'd pointed her into a wood-paneled study and bolted in the opposite direction. Presumably, to fetch tea.

He clenched his jaw, conflicted about his little sister's "alone time" with her boyfriend. Hypocrite. Like YOU were celibate at nineteen? Hell, no. He'd always been ready and willing to hit the sheets with a pretty lady - a character trait he deeply regretted.

SBTB RITA reader review book #1!

I loved Her Cowboy Hero, so I have high hopes for Falling for the Rancher. I'm also in a bit of a reading funk, and Michaels has remedied that in the past.