Promise Me Forever

He dared her to be wicked. She dared him to be good.

They complemented each other. Not opposites so much as different pieces to the same puzzle.

Her rough cowboy, who could melt her with a kiss, who wore a gun strapped to his thigh, her tough cowboy had a soft heart.

He lowered his head and brushed his lips over hers as lightly as a breeze wafted over the first blossoms of spring.

He couldn’t explain it. To be part of two countries, to love one and to want to love the other. To want to belong and to know that, deep down where it mattered, he didn’t. And he probably never would.

he’s devilishly handsome, frightfully uncivilized, and incredibly wealthy

Yet he was still her Tom. What ever it was that had first drawn her to him was still there, perhaps not quite as obvious, but she sensed that it was still a part of him. That for all the rules he’d broken and the scandalous behaviors, he possessed an undeniable goodness deep down inside where it mattered the most.

She sure was a pretty thing, with eyes the color of bluebonnets in spring and hair the shade of the full moon that looked down on him while he slept.

“Quick to smile, slow to anger.” Although his smiles had always been slow in coming, the corners of his mouth taking their time to hitch up as though they enjoyed the journey as much as they did getting to their destination.

Lauren remembered a lazy smile that had made her heart race, brown eyes that reminded her of a puppy that had been kicked once too often and was now afraid to trust. She remembered a defiant stance and a challenging expression in a face that should have looked younger than it did. She remembered coal black hair, long and shaggy, always in need of a trimming. Dirty hands and worn, dusty clothes, a tall, lean body that was agile and surprisingly strong.

she knew exactly what he was referring to, what he was