Batteries Not Required Read online

  It would be nice, Joanna reflected, to be a dog.

  Teague followed and threw another chunk of wood onto the fire, causing sparks to rise, swirling, up the chimney.

  Joanna plunked into the overstuffed armchair a few feet away, at the edge of the firelight. She swirled her wine in her glass but didn’t drink. “Maybe we should go back to the city,” she said. “We could catch the six o’clock ferry.”

  “Go if you want,” Teague replied coolly. “Sammy and I are staying here.”

  Joanna closed her eyes for a moment, trying to keep from being swept downstream into the Sammy conflict again. “If he’s staying,” she said, “I’m staying.”

  To her surprise, Teague laughed. It was a raw sound, gruff and low. “Damn,” he said. “One thing hasn’t changed, anyway. You’re still as stubborn as a toothless old bulldog with a bone.”

  “Are you comparing me to a toothless old bulldog?”

  Teague shoved a hand through his hair, swearing under his breath.

  Joanna set her wineglass aside on the table next to her chair. “Okay,” she conceded. “I might be a little stubborn, but I am not old or toothless.”

  “A little stubborn?” He moved out of the firelight and began rummaging again in the darkness. Just when Joanna had decided he was definitely going to strike her with a blunt object or stab her with an ice pick—by her own admission, she’d watched way too many episodes of Forensic Files and Body of Evidence—she heard the staticky crackle of a transistor radio.

  He was turning the tuning knob, probably looking for a weather report.

  “—ferries temporarily out of commission,” a disembodied male voice said, between buzzing bursts of static, “widespread power outages—winds reaching—”

  Joanna sat up very straight and reached for her wine again. “We’re stranded,” she said.

  Sammy, lying on the rug in front of the fireplace, rolled onto his back, paws in the air and belly exposed, and snored.

  “I see the dog’s terrified,” Teague quipped.

  “Teague, this is serious. What are we going to do?”

  “Well, we could tell ghost stories. Or play checkers.” He paused. “Or tear off each other’s clothes and have sex on the floor like we used to, whenever we came out here without Caitlin and half her Girl Scout troop.”

  A hot chill went through Joanna, making her ache in some very private places. In danger of spilling the wine, she set it aside again with a thunk.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.

  And suddenly Teague was in front of her, kneeling, parting her legs.

  An involuntary groan escaped her.

  Teague slipped his hands up under her sweatshirt and cupped her bare breasts in his hands. Ran the pads of his thumbs over her nipples until they hardened.

  Joanna groaned again. “Teague—”

  He pushed her shirt up, tongued her breasts, then suckled.

  “This is—” She paused, gasping. “This won’t solve anything—”

  He was pulling at the elastic band of her sweatpants, drawing them skillfully down, off, away. “Maybe not,” he murmured, raising one of her bare legs and placing it over his shoulder, “but it’s going to feel good.” The other leg went over the other shoulder. “Don’t be quiet, Joanna,” he said, sliding his hands under her backside and raising her until she felt the warmth of his breath through the nest of curls at the juncture of her thighs. “Please, don’t be quiet.”

  Clawing at the arms of her chair, bucking against Teague’s mouth, sobbing as she reached the first of several shattering orgasms, Joanna was anything but quiet.

  And the dog didn’t even wake up.

  Linda Lael Miller began her publishing career in 1983 at Pocket Books. Since then, Linda has successfully published historicals, contemporaries, paranormals, and thrillers before coming home, in a literal sense, and concentrating on novels with a Western flavor. For her devotion to her craft, the Romance Writers of America awarded her their prestigious Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007.

  Linda’s 2011 contemporary Creed Cowboy trilogy—A Creed In Stone Creek, Creed’s Honor and The Creed Legacy, released in March, June and July, respectively—each debuted in the number one position on the New York Times bestseller list. To learn more about Linda, please visit her at www.lindalaelmiller.com.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

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  Copyright © 2005 by Linda Lael Miller

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  First Electronic Edition: July 2016

  ISBN: 978-1-6018-3919-0

  eISBN-10: 1-60183-919-7