Joan Johnston Quotes

One little temper tantrum isn't going to scare me away."
"I can't guarantee it won't happen again."
"I work every day with cantankerous beasts who growl and bite, when I'm only trying to help. I think I can handle you."
"I'd like to see you handle me," he said, eyeing her up and down.
She ignored the double entendre, but she was pretty sure he wasn't sizing her up as an adversary on the tae kwan do mat. She put a hand to her stomach, which was doing a strange flip-flop. "Don't think I couldn't take you down," she said seriously. "I've trained in the martial arts."
He smirked. "That I've got to see.

Stay put," he said. "I don't want you setting off any explosives that'll get us both killed."
"Let me go with you."
"I don't want you getting hurt, Red."
There was something about the sound of his voice that gave her pause. "Don't tell me you care."
He ruffled her hair as though she were four instead of twenty-five. "All right, I won't. Just stay put.

When Bay was done she looked down at herself, dressed in a plain white bra, torn bikini underwear, and cowboy boots. "I feel like I'm dressed for the midnight show at the Crazy Horse Saloon," she muttered.
Her mouth went dry when she looked at Owen, who was left wearing cowboy boots and black Calvin Klein's. The knit cotton underwear hugged him lovingly from waist to thighs. He was a female's fantasy come to life.
They stared at each other, enjoying what they saw. And realizing just how close they'd come to losing their lives.
"You look good," he said.

Katie Lane is a wonderful new voice in Western romance fiction.

Good night, Owe," she whispered.
"Good night, Red. Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite."
"You would have to mention bugs," she muttered.
Owen laughed.

Too anxious to sit still, she stood in the stirrups to stretch her legs, then moved her bottom back and forth in the saddle until she found a comfortable spot to settle.
She dallied her reins loosely around the saddle horn and reached up to unbutton the top two buttons of her blouse, then leaned over and shook the cotton cloth back and forth to cool herself. Her Stetson hat came off next. She settled it on the saddle horn, so what little breeze there was could reach the sweat on her nape.
"What the hell kind of strip show are you putting on?"
Bay nearly fell out of the saddle at Owen's angry outburst. She jerked upright, knocking her hat off the horn and onto the ground. Her horse saw the shadow when it fell, figured it for a dangerous, horse-eating jackrabbit, and shied violently toward Owen's mount.
His horse took exception to being bumped and kicked out with both hooves, striking Bay's horse in the rump, which grabbed for the reins, but they fell loose from the horn, and she was helpless to restrain her mount when he began to run helter-skelter down the canyon, sunfishing and crowhopping.
Bay was thrown up onto her mount's neck, where she held on for dear life. She heard Owen galloping behind her and knew it was only a matter of time before he caught up to her. But a narrow passage was coming up, and there wasn't room for both her and her horse. She was going to be scraped off. Unless she jumped first.
From her precious perch, Bay stared dow

Charlotte!" Denbigh roared. "What are you doing in my bedroom, and why didn't you knock?"
"I brought the doctor," she said with asperity.
"A young lady does not enter the bedroom of a gentleman to whom she is not married," Denbigh retorted.
"Then what is Olivia doing in here?" she asked.
"Olivia is my sister."
"So?"
"You are my ward."
"So?"
Olivia laughed. "Oh, Lion, you won't win an argument with Charlotte. Believe me, I've tried.

I'm wondering what it would be like to be kissed by you."
"Let's not go there," he said. "I don't want to mess up our friendship."
"It wouldn't," she said, grinning suddenly. "I'd like to know how it feels. I mean, as an experiment."
"Put the wrong chemicals together, and they explode."
She frowned. "Are you saying you don't think I'd like it? Or that I would?"
"It doesn't matter, because I'm not going to kiss you."
She looked up at him shyly, from beneath lowered lashes, and gave him a cajoling smile. "Just one teeny, weeny little kiss?"
He laughed at her antics. Inside his stomach, about a million butterflies had taken flight. "Don't play games with me, Summer." He said it with a smile, but it was a warning.
One she ignored.
She crooked her finger and wiggled it, gesturing him toward her. "Come here, and give me a little kiss."
She was doing something sultry with her eyes, something she'd never done before. She'd turned on some kind of feminine heat, because he was burning up just looking at her. "Stop this," he said in a guttural voice.
She canted her hip and put her hand on it, drawing his attention in that direction, then slid her tongue along the seam of her lips to wet them. "I'm ready, bad boy. What are you waiting for?"
His heart was beating a hundred miles a minute. He was hot and hard and ready. And if he touched her, he was going to ruin everything.
"I'm not going to kiss you, Summer."
He saw th

Billy pulled her snug against his body, forgetting his arousal in the urgent need to give her comfort.
He felt her stiffen, sought the reason, and realized she must have felt his erection. She shoved him away with the flat of her palms and stared up at him, her eyes wide with surprise. Or maybe shock was a better word.
Billy knew instantly what he'd lost. The wariness in her gaze spoke for itself. She'd always trusted him implicitly. Like a brother. But it was a lover's body she'd felt. He could see she was astonished that he'd become aroused by touching her.
He let his hands drop to his sides. He didn't think excuses would work, but he was willing to give them a try. His mouth curled up on one side in a cock-eyed grin. "Sorry about that. The feel of a female body does that to a man, whether he wants it to happen or not."
"It shouldn't happen between us," she said with certainty. "We're friends."
He shrugged. "You're female. I'm male. Sometimes it happens."
"Not to us," she insisted. She stared into his face suspiciously. "Or has it?"
"It might have happened once or twice. No big deal."
She stared at the visible bulge in his jeans, then glanced up at him, her face flushed and said, "It looks pretty big to me."
Billy couldn't help grinning. "Summer, you can't be this naïve. This is how a man reacts when he's around an attractive woman."
"You find me attractive?"
He saw the startled interest in her eyes and realized he'd op

uttered a word. He had

Cowboys are always leaping from their horses in the movies, and they never get hurt."
"You forgot to roll."
"Oh. I knew I did something wrong.

She tightened her seat belt yet again, so she felt like she was wearing a strait jacket - appropriate dress for someone as crazy as she had to have been to come along on this trip.

Owen stepped into the saddle and reached a hand down as he took his foot out of the stirrup, so Bay could mount behind him. Once she was settled, he said, "Hang on. And don't be wiggling around. We can't afford any more accidents."
Bay glowered at him. She clamped her hands on either side of his waist at his beltline, but his Colt .45 was holstered on one side, which kept her from getting a comfortable hold. She put her right hand above the gun, but that meant it was practically under his armpit. Then she moved it below the gun, but that put her hand low on hips close to his crotch.
"Sonofabitch." He grabbed her hands and pulled them around his midriff. "Now hang on."
Bay kept her breasts rigidly distanced from Owen's back, but her nipples puckered anyway. It was that damned washboard of male abdominal muscle under her hands. The man could do commercials for those workout machines they advertised on TV.
The horseflies were a surprise. Where had they come from? She let go with one hand and swatted at one that seemed determined to bite her on the nose.
And knocked Owen's hat askew.
"That does it. Off."
"It wasn't my fault," Bay said. "I was getting bitten."
"Off." He grabbed her arm and levered her out from behind him and onto the ground.

What's your greatest regret?" she asked.
He turned to look at her, then focused his eyes on the windshield in front of him. "You."
She felt an ache in her chest. "That you admitted you loved me? Or that you took me with you?"
"Both."
"Will it help if I say I'm in love with you?"
He shot another quick look in her direction, but a sudden gust of wind hit, and he had to focus on sideslipping the plane.
When it was steady again, he focused piercing gray eyes on her and asked, "Are you in love with me?"
"I think so.

She slipped into the shadows and waited, like a she-wolf, for her quarry.
Bay caught her breath when Owen Blackthorne stepped into the cool night air. He was close enough to touch. His shaggy black hair looked rumpled, as though he'd shoved both hands through it in agitation. When he started to move off the porch, Bay reached out and grasped his sleeve.
A second later she was slammed back against the wall, a powerful male hand at her throat choking her. She could feel the heat of him, the solid maleness of him. And panicked. She clawed at Owen's flesh with her nails and drove her knee upward toward his genitals. Her thrust her upraised knee aside, and the full weight of his over-six-foot frame shoved hard against her from shoulders to thighs.
Bay froze, staring up at him in mute horror. Her body trembled in shock. She tried to speak, but there was no air to be had beneath the crushing pressure of his grip on her throat.
"What the hell . . .?" He released her throat and grabbed her arms to yank her into the narrow stream of light from the kitchen doorway.
She gasped a breath of air, coughed, then gasped another, pressing a shaky hand to her injured throat. She wrenched to free herself, but he let her go without a struggle and took a wary step back. She rubbed her arms where he'd held her, wishing she'd approached him more directly.
"What are you doing out here, Mizz Creed?" His voice was clipped but controlled. The violence she'd felt in his touc

My brother is somewhere in here." She paused and added in an almost inaudible voice, "I think."
Owen bit back an oath. He'd been raised not to swear around ladies, but as she'd pointed out, it was going to be a long trip if he had to mind his manners when the goddamned woman was going to be so provoking. "I knew this was going to be a total waste of time.

When the sun was low in the sky, he retreated back into the cave and tapped her on the shoulder. "Wake up, sleepyhead."
She bounced upright, and her head caught him on the chin, knocking his teeth together and catching his lip between them.
"Ouch!" he yelped.
"I'm sorry. I get called so often in the middle of the night for emergencies that I'm used to popping out of bed."
He massaged his chin and worked his jaw and dabbed at his split lip. "I'll remember that."
She leaned toward him and moved his hand out of the way. "You're bleeding."
She unwounded the handkerchief from her hand and used it to dab at his lip. She moved the cloth away and used a finger to plump his lip where his teeth had left a tiny cut. "Speaking as a physician, I'd say you'll recover."
"Not if you keep that up for long," he murmured, looking into her eyes.
She seemed startled, then looked back at him. Their eyes caught and held. "We really shouldn't do this," she murmured.
"I know," he said, as he lowered his mouth to hers. "Be gentle with me. I'm wounded.

Every day is precious. And like is too damned short!"
Ren hadn't forgotten the heart attack that had nearly killed Blackjack two years before. "Are you all right?" she asked, laying her hand on his heart.
"My heart will be fine. So long as you don't break it.

As she lifted her own backpack over the side of the black, heavy-duty dodge pickup, Owen took it out of her hands and set it beside the one-man tent and sleeping bag the FBI had provided for him.
"I could have done that," she said.
"Sure you could. But my daddy taught me a gentleman always helps a lady."
Bay was so startled at what he'd said, and the chagrined way he's said it, that she laughed. "Oh, my god. Chauvinism is alive and well - "
"We call it chivalry, or Southern courtesy, ma'am," he said. She realized he was heading around the truck to open the door for her.
She stepped in front of him and said, "It's going to be a long trip if you refuse to let me pull my weight. I can get my own door, Mr. Blackthorne."
For a minute, she thought he was going to make an issue of it. Then he touched the brim of his hat, shot her a rakish grin that turned her insides to mush, and said, "Whatever you say, Mizz Creed."
She was so flustered, she took a half step backward, slid into the seat when he opened the door for her after all, and said, "My friends call me Bay."
Bay flushed as she realized what she'd said. As he came around the hood and got in, she said, "That is - I mean - you know what I mean!"
He belted himself into the driver's seat and started the engine, before he turned to her and said, "My friends call me Owe. You can call me Owen."
She stared at him disbelief. "Oh. You. Blackthorne, you.

You're going to have some really sexy scars back here, Owe."
"Do girls go for that sort of thing?"
She was surprised to hear him speak and realized he'd spit out the piece of wood. It was marred with impressions of his teeth. "Scars like this are a sign you've survived in battle."
"Some battle," he said ruefully. "Me and a cactus going three rounds, and I nearly bit the dust.