Designed for Love (Texas Nights) Read Online Free Page B

try again.” He swiped the card again and received the same beep in response. “It appears your card has been rejected, Ms. Davenport.”
    She ducked her head to dig into her purse again, but she couldn’t hide the flush rising over the collar of her flirty pink shirt. She pulled out another card. “Try this one.”
    A minute later, there was another beep and
hmm.
    By this time, Ashton was standing in front of the counter, her neck and face filled with color, but if he’d touched her, Mac had a feeling she would be pale as death beneath all that embarrassment.
    “Third time’s a charm?” the manager asked. Snidely, if Mac’s ears were working right. And he’d damn well never had a problem with his hearing.
    Ashton reached for Napoleon, and Mac passed him back. She took a deep breath, straightened her back and looked the manager directly in the eye. “Those are the only ones I have.”
    “Surely, you don’t expect me to believe you can’t—”
    “I’ll take care of it,” Mac cut in, shifting closer to Ashton’s side and skimming her shoulder.
    Mouths half-open, both the manager and Ashton swung their attention to him. Yeah, he was a little surprised at his offer too. Especially since paying her bill would pretty much wipe out what he had scraped together in his account. He’d planned to send a payment to his drywall sub in Dallas, but the guy’d been waiting for months now. He could wait a day or two longer. After all, it wasn’t as if Ashton wasn’t good for the money.
    “What did you say?” she asked.
    Mac pulled his checkbook from the back pocket of his jeans. “I’ll write a check.”
    “You don’t have to—”
    He leaned close, lowered his voice. “Do you want out of this place anytime in the next century?”
    “More than you could possibly know.”
    “It’s a technicality. Just paper.”
    “Over ten grand worth of paper.”
    “My account can handle it.” For a day or two.
    Ashton rubbed a hand over her beautiful face as though warring with herself. Finally, she lifted her chin and made eye contact with him. “Fine, but I’ll pay back every cent.”
    Something about her low but forceful tone set Mac’s oh-shit-ometer vibrating.
    “I’m just not sure when.”

Chapter Two
    Ashton hit her car’s brights to better light the cratered oil-top road she was bumping down. Within a half mile, the road dead-ended into twin dirt ruts bisected by weeds taller than her convertible’s hood. If those weeds weren’t listing to the left, proving someone had driven this path recently, she would’ve backed out, turned her butt around and taken Napoleon back to the apartment for a bowl of Frosty Paws.
    Then again, they’d been out of the pricey frozen dog treats for three weeks now.
    After the grocery store fiasco a few days ago, Ashton had been so humiliated and so damned thankful for Mac, she’d darted out of the grocery store before he could finish filling in the check to the Piggly Wiggly. And the name on his check...Michael E. McLaughlin. She hadn’t known his name was Michael. And that
E
initial was driving her crazy—Ethan, Edward, Earl?
    Now that she knew his real name, she felt even more indebted to him.
    “He’s not my type,” she told Napoleon. Never in her life had she been with a man who looked as though he could pull up a tree, roots and all, and carry it ten miles on his back. “He’s too big and burly. He probably has to siphon off the excess testosterone every morning. So my heart beats a little faster when he’s around. I probably have a cardiac problem. The man wears flannel shirts. With snaps, for God’s sake.”
    She sat at the crossroads, her headlights shining into the woods surrounding Lily Lake, while Napoleon perched his fuzzy paws on the passenger side window and whined. She could normally read his moods easily, but the sound he was making was a cross between “I swear there are bears in those trees,” “I desperately need a pawdicure on these ragged