The Millionaires' Club: Ryan, Alex and Darin

She was a big girl. She’d always been a good judge of character. Nathan Beldon’s character was just fine. So was his smile. He wasn’t Ry. But for once and for always, Ry wasn’t interested. And Nolan… She stopped herself, horrified, and cursed Ry under her breath. Nathan not Nolan. Nathan was interested. Very interested. And she and her little black dress were going to make sure he stayed that way.

The wine, Carrie thought, was perfect. The candlelight was romantic and Nelson— She mentally slapped herself over her repeated mental block when it came to Nathan’s name and made a promise to slap Ryan, too, the next time she saw him, for planting the seed that refused to die.

Okay. She could do this. Nathan. Nathan, Nathan bo-bathen, banana-panna mo-mathan, fe, fi, fo, Nathan. Na-than.

Got it.

Deep breath. Regroup.

She smiled across the table. Reestablished the mood. One more time: the wine was perfect, the candlelight was romantic and Nathan was definitely interested.

“Have I told you how incredibly gorgeous you look tonight?” he asked, his gaze flicking from her face to her very-there cleavage then back to her face again.

Assuring herself that his hot looks made her feel desirable, not a little uneasy, she blinked demurely over her wineglass. “Twice. And frankly I can’t think of a single reason for you to stop now.”

His chuckle was deep and sexy as he lifted his glass toward hers. “To the beginning of a beautiful…friendship,” he added after a meaningful pause.

“Yes,” she said, ignoring a little flutter of nerves and clinking her glass to his. “To beginnings.”

Ry felt like a louse. Hell. He was a louse.

“You want to tell me what this is about now?”

He smiled grimly across the front seat of his black Lexus at his friend, Stephanie Firth. The model-slim librarian and high school drama coach was a quietly stunning beauty who had not yet figured out exactly how pretty she was or how to use her shy intellect to intrigue the opposite sex.

He and Steph had been buddies since grade school. These days she wore her light brown hair straight and long. Back then she’d worn it in pigtails and hidden her pretty brown eyes behind owlish glasses. He’d been the class clown, she the class brain who had taken a lot of grief over her intelligence and her tall, gangling frame, which she had since grown into quite nicely.

She used to help him out with geography and he used to knock Josh Bowstead, the class bully, into the scrub brush out back of the middle school playground whenever Josh got a yen to call her egghead or Einsteinette or pencil or bean pole or be a general pain in her easily bruised and very fragile ego.

They’d even tried the dating thing once during their freshman year, then laughed themselves silly over a first kiss that was pretty much all locked braces and sweaty palms. The experience had been enough to satisfy them both that the only chemistry between them involved the notes she’d slipped him so he could study for his chem final. But their bond of friendship had stood up over time and she still turned to him when she was in a pinch…just as he turned to her.

Tonight, however, he was using her. If that didn’t make him a louse, his plans to spoil Carrie’s date did.

“Why does tonight have to be about something?” he asked evasively as he parked the car. The Lexus wasn’t a four-wheel-drive like the trucks and SUVs he favored, but it was one smooth, sleek machine, and he hadn’t been able to resist it when he’d seen it on the lot a month ago. You could never have too many horses or too much horsepower, he’d always said. “Can’t an old friend take an old friend out to dinner without having to have a reason?”

“Oh, I suppose they could,” she said, slicing him a suspicious look as he led her through the front door of Claire’s, “but, gee, isn’t it coincidental that you had to head straight home after your meeting at the bank, until I told you Carrie had a dinner date with Dr. Beldon, and then suddenly, why, you were just dying for one of Claire’s rare filet mignons?”

“Yeah, well—” he cleared his throat of the lump of guilt that had lodged there and forced a smile “—a guy’s got to eat.”

“Uh-huh,” Steph said, telling him with a look that she didn’t know what he was up to, but that steak, no matter how well prepared, was not a factor in his motive for bringing her here.

Thankfully, before she could call him on it, the maître d’ was escorting them to a table set with sparkling white linen, slim burgundy tapers and fine Austrian crystal.

The moment Ry spotted Carrie and Beldon seated at a secluded table in the corner of the room, the decor and genteel ambiance of Claire’s faded to a distant, background buzz.

All he saw was Carrie.

In a killer dress that damn near dropped him to his knees.

The vibrant fire lighting her eyes and brightening her cheeks was rivaled only by the shimmering highlights the candlelight cast in her silky red hair…and by the flames licking through his belly and spreading by slow degrees to his groin.

He’d always thought she was pretty. Had done his damnedest to avoid thinking about the fact that she was also sexy as hell. There was no avoiding it tonight. Not the way she looked.

The creamy swell of her breasts rose and fell provocatively above her almost-there dress as she laughed and, with a flirty tip of her head, showed off the slim, elegant lines of her throat.

My God, she looked incredible. Edible. And Beldon was ogling her as if he wanted to lap her up like ice cream.

No way, Ry decided then and there, was he letting that slug put his clammy hands on her. Not on his woman. Whoa. Strike that. Not on his watch.

She was not his woman. Never would be…but she was his responsibility. He’d promised Trav.

He’d been a reluctant guardian angel up until this point. Had been telling himself Beldon was harmless. But there was nothing harmless in the man’s eyes tonight. He had predator written all over him…and Carrie was the most innocent of prey.

Ry might be a louse, but his cause was righteous and had him cutting an arrow-straight path to their table.

“Well, would you look who’s here?” he said, faking surprise.

Stephanie shot him a look as he touched a hand to the small of her back and guided her along ahead of him. “What in the devil are you up to, Ryan Evans?” she asked in a hushed whisper.

“Why…just being neighborly, Steph. Just being neighborly.”

Carrie wasn’t sure what alerted her, but she was aware of Ry’s presence before she ever saw or heard him. Each individual hair on the back of her neck had sprung to attention just before his deep baritone voice boomed into the secluded intimacy Nathan had created with his hot looks.

“Aw, look at that, would you, Steph. Don’t they look great together?”

No! she thought, refusing to believe Ry had just intruded—again—on her evening with Nathan.

No, no, no! This cannot be happening. Not again.

She closed her eyes, drew a calming breath and assured herself that when she opened them, Ry would be gone, his voice just a figment of her imagination, and all she would see was Nathan’s attentive smile.

Only, Nathan wasn’t smiling. Instead, his jaw was clenched and that huge vein was bulging out on his forehead again. His face had also turned the color of the wine filling their glasses.

Her heart sank as her temper ratcheted up about a bizillion degrees.

“Can you believe the good luck?” Ry asked in his very best, golly shucks and I’ll-be-darned cowboy yokel drawl. “What are the odds of running into y’ll two nights in a row?”

“About as good as the odds of you living to see your next birthday,” Carrie muttered under her breath before finally shooting a glare up at Ry, who stood by their table sporting a big dumb grin.

Beside him Stephanie looked apologetic and embarrassed and was leaning just a little to the left of mortified.

“Had we known you were coming, we’d have arranged for a larger table,” Nathan said with a stiff smile. “What a shame you can’t join us.”

As hints went, Nathan’s statement was the size of the U.S.S. Roosevelt. Carrie silently applauded him for his resourcefulness. Her celebration, however, was short-lived. She should have known it would take the entire U.S. Naval fleet for Ryan to get the message.

“D’you hear that, Steph? The man wants us to join them. Didn’t I tell you he was a stand-up guy? Robert,” Ry said, hailing a passing waiter. “How about a couple of extra chairs and place settings here? The doc just invited us to dinner. But the tab’s on me.

“No, no really,” he added, deliberately misinterpreting Carrie’s glare with a quick, magnanimous grin. “I insist.”

Carrie sat there and quietly set about plotting murder as Ry made himself comfortable and, with the charm of a snake oil salesman, introduced Stephanie to Nolan.

Nathan.

She rubbed her fingertips to her suddenly throbbing temples. She really was going to have to kill him for this. She just couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t.

“Third time’s the charm,” Nathan said later that week as he and Carrie sat huddled on a blanket in the city park. “Evans can’t possibly stumble on to us here,” he added on a sour note.

They sat in a secluded spot in the park near the lake, and even though the evening was chilly—it was, after all, February—her heart was warmed by both Nathan’s thoughtfulness and persistence in the face of Ryan’s coincidental appearances every time they tried to find some time to spend together.

She wasn’t used to the kind of attention Nathan had been giving her. After their disastrous evening at Claire’s that had ended early when he’d gotten a beep on his pager requiring that he hurry back to the hospital, he’d continued to call her.

In fact, he’d called her every day, asked her questions about herself, her volunteer work, told her a few things about himself. It was romantic and flattering, and she really wanted to believe he could be the man who represented her future. Maybe he could, if Ry would quit sabotaging all of Nathan’s attempts to get intimate.

Not this time, she thought with unwavering determination. No way could he find them here. Tonight, she’d decided, was the night. The champagne was making her bold. She was going to take Nathan home and—gulp—she was going to take him to her bed.

“I really am sorry about Ryan,” she said with a shake of her head. “I can’t even give you a logical explanation for why he keeps showing up.”

Nathan reached for the champagne bottle, refilled her glass. “Obviously, he’s jealous of me.”

She barely managed to stall an indelicate snort. “Jealous? Ryan? Oh, no. No…I’m thinking it’s more like he has this big-brother complex or something going on.”

“Big brother?”

She told him then about her parents’ death and how Ry’s parents had taken her in and how Ryan had stepped into Travis’s shoes when Trav had enlisted in the marines.

“How difficult that must have been for you,” Nathan said, and draped an arm over her shoulders.

Without warning she felt the sting of tears burn her eyes. Horrified by the unexpected surge of emotions, she blinked them back and let Nathan’s kindness warm her.

“This is very nice,” she said when his arm tightened slightly.

“And very private,” he said with a hint of suggestion in his voice.

Yes. It was private. And romantic. A twilight picnic at Royalty Park was about as romantic as it got, in her book. Despite the cold weather, she loved it. Nathan’s romantic Valentine’s Day gesture thrilled her.

So did his smile and the goodies—caviar, crackers, grapes and Brie—that he’d taken the time to pack into the picnic basket.

Everything was perfect. The champagne cut the chill and relaxed her as much as Nathan’s compliments.

“Can I kiss you, Carrie?” he asked as a flock of black birds flew gracefully over the lake.

She turned her face up to his, smiled in invitation…and waited for the heart-pounding excitement to fill her breast as he lowered his mouth to hers.

And waited…and waited…and waited as he pressed his lips to hers, groaned deeply and, with an insistent pressure of his tongue, encouraged her to open her mouth for him.

Okay, she thought, trying to get into the kiss with the same enthusiasm he was showing. This was…nice. Sort of. But…where were the fireworks? she wondered as she worked at making herself respond with as much passion as he seemed to be experiencing for her.

You’re just out of practice, she assured herself. It had been a long time since someone had kissed her. A very long time. Determined to become fully engaged in the moment, she lifted a hand to touch it to his hair and shifted a little closer as his other arm wrapped around her and drew her flush against him.

She closed her eyes, made herself relax as he laid her back on the blanket and deepened the kiss…that seemed to go on and on and on…and not really in a good way.

Instead, she felt…cheated. Where was the breathless anticipation? The endless longing?

“Let me come home with you, Carrie,” he murmured as he dragged his mouth away from hers and pressed kisses along her jaw.

Wet kisses, she thought. Cold kisses that made her shiver…and not from desire. What was wrong with her? She wanted this. She really, really wanted this, and yet, when his hand started an upward glide toward her breast, she clamped her fingers around his wrist and stopped him.

She sat up abruptly, fighting a surge of panic. “Nathan…I…um…”

She was so embarrassed. Very slowly she lifted her gaze to his…and saw a flash of fury that frightened her.

And then he smiled, and the anger faded so quickly she wondered if she’d just imagined it.

“I’m going too fast, aren’t I?” he asked gently.

So gently that she felt like a fool and a loser.

“No,” she insisted and moved back into his arms. “I’m…just a little…I’m not very experienced, Nathan,” she admitted, and on a flash of insight, told herself that was the reason she was having difficulty responding to him. It was jitters. “I want you to change that,” she added with a boldness that shocked her.

His eyes heated again and he leaned forward to kiss her…just as a horse disguised as a dog came bounding out of the woods and with a deep-throated “Woof” launched himself at Nathan’s chest.

“What the hell…” Nathan sputtered as the shaggy, smelly furball knocked him to his back and pinned him there, then held him down with his canine teeth hovering dangerously close to his juggler.

Carrie shot to her feet with a scream and bumped the bottle of champagne, which toppled over and spilled down the front of Nathan’s trousers.

After one huge lick, the dog lost interest in Nathan’s throat. Still straddling him like a WWF wrestler applying a half nelson, the moplike monster alternately slurped at the champagne-soaked blanket and snarfed up the scattered crackers and cheese while his hind feet mutilated the grapes and ground caviar into Nathan’s pant legs.

“Oh my God,” Carrie wailed…and finally recognized the dog. “Oh. My. God,” she repeated, her shock shifting to fury as she whipped her head around to find the Newfoundland’s owner, who, she’d known, wouldn’t be very far behind.

Sure enough, Ryan Evans burst out of the trees at a slow jog, an appropriately appalled and apologetic look creasing his brow.

“I can’t believe this,” she ground out as he trotted toward her, a leash in one hand, an empty dog collar in the other.

He stopped short, a little out of breath, as if he’d been giving chase, and gave her a helpless look.“Man, I can’t, either. That sucker threw his collar slicker than an oil spill.”

Yeah, right. How neatly coincidental that a dog whose idea of exercise was licking his food bowl, would tug on a leash so hard that he’d break free.

If rage had a tangible form, it would be a cement block and she would be breaking it over Ry’s interfering head. “Get Shamu-the-killer-whale dog off him this instant!” she demanded.

Ry was already moving toward the dog, tugging and coaxing—and not very convincingly, she thought—him off Nathan.

Carrie was so mad she couldn’t see anything but red. Couldn’t hear anything but bits and snippets of Ry’s aw-shucks apologies and “Here, let me help you up, Nelson,” and “Gee, so sorry about the mess,” and “Whoa…that’s really gonna stain, huh?” And the ever popular “You’re all wet, man. You’d better head home and out of those pants before you catch a chill.”

It was all over but for the venomous looks that Nathan threw Ryan as he struggled to his feet. He slanted Carrie a glare, gathered up his blanket and basket and stomped off toward the parking lot and his car.

Several long, humiliating moments passed as she stood there, peripherally aware of Shamu snuffling around for the last of the cracker crumbs and tidbits of cheese while Ry tried to wrestle him into his collar.

“You, uh, okay?” Ry finally asked.

She followed Nathan’s car with her gaze until it disappeared from sight, then slowly turned her attention to the one-man romance wrecker and his four-legged accomplice. “Do I look like I’m okay?”

Five

What she looked like, Ry thought, was a woman on the verge. Possibly of murder.

He wasn’t scared.

Much.

But he was pretty pleased with himself. His timing could have been a little better, though. That creep had had his hands all over her, his tongue jammed down her throat by the time Ry had found them, skirted around to the edge of the woods and let Shamu loose with a heartfelt command to “Kill.”

Of course Shamu wouldn’t kill a toad, so Beldon had never been in any real danger, but the big hairy lummox dearly loved a picnic so Ry had figured it was a pretty good plan. All in all it was—if you didn’t count the look on Carrie’s face right now.

He could take her anger. He couldn’t take her misery. And she was a riled-up mixture of both.

Guilt gradually took the satisfaction out of his victory. Uneasy, he scratched his jaw and tried to figure out where to go from here.

Here was the dilemma. If he offered her a ride home, she’d tell him to go to hell and walk the twenty blocks back to her house. If he said a quick goodbye, he’d up her anger to the boiling point, but she’d probably demand he give her a ride home.

He opted for effect.

“Well…see ya,” he said, and with a firm grip on Shamu, who was now panting in doggie adoration at Carrie, turned to go.

He got all of five steps before her clipped, incensed question stopped him.

“That’s it? You ruin my Valentine’s Day and all you’ve got to say is ‘See ya?”’

He stopped, turned and pretended to consider. “Let me think. Panic. Disorder. Chaos. Yep. I’d say my work here is pretty much done.”

His admission of sabotage threw her for all of about two seconds. It threw him, too. He hadn’t meant to own up to it…but she looked so miserable standing there, and while he didn’t feel any guilt where Beldon was concerned, he hated to see his little Carrie-bear unhappy.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she wailed, her fists clenched against her long coltish legs that were covered in snug, faded denim. And she literally shook with outrage; her cheeks had turned pink from the cold and embarrassment. Her hazel eyes were as big as dinner plates and misty with unshed tears.

Oh, damn. Please, don’t let her cry. He couldn’t stand it if she cried.

He compressed his lips, looked from her to his feet and shook his head. He couldn’t do this anymore. He had to explain. Maybe if he were able to convince her that Beldon was bad news—even though he didn’t know it for a fact—she’d come around.

“Come on, bear,” he said softly. “I’ll take you home. We’ll talk.”

She shot him a fierce glower, heaved a defeated breath then stomped past him toward his SUV. Without a word she jerked open the passenger door and climbed in.

She was sitting there, her arms crossed tightly over her breasts, glaring out the window when he let Shamu into the back then climbed behind the wheel.

He sat there for a moment, trying to figure out how to breach the tense silence when she very quietly said, “Save it, cowboy. Just drive.”

The threat was implicit. If he opened his mouth, the only thing that was probably going to come out of it was a couple of teeth when she busted his chops. He’d seen her in action. For a girl she had a helluva right hook—in her teens, she’d used it on Trav once or twice when his teasing had stirred her into a stew pot full of temper.

She was beyond riled at the moment and working her way toward a full-blown snit. He’d drawn a few broncs in his rodeo days sporting the same kind of attitude she was nursing right now. They’d slam-dunked him into the dirt like he’d been a wet noodle. He’d lived to ride again…but just barely.

He cleared his throat, turned the ignition and, opting for wisdom over valor, he did exactly what the lady had said. He kept his mouth shut and he drove.

“Inside. Now,” Carrie ordered when Ry pulled up in front of her house fifteen minutes later after a very silent ride.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said obediently, told Shamu to “Chill for a few minutes” and quietly followed her to her front door.

She could feel his eyes on her as she led the way up her front walk. She hoped he enjoyed the view because he wasn’t going to be seeing it again anytime soon.

After unlocking the front door, she swung it open and, with a lift of her hand, indicated he should precede her inside. Compliant to a fault, he eased past her…then stood in the middle of her living room, hands on his hips, Resistol tugged low over his brow and waited…looking for all the world like an ad for pro rodeo or Wrangler jeans or Texas tourism, she thought in disgust as she tossed her house keys on the foyer table.

Damn him for being so gorgeous and so clever and so successful in his mission…whatever it was.

Well, she was about to find out and then she was going to put the skids to it. On the ride across town, she’d made herself hold her tongue, tried to settle herself down so when the words came out, they would be forceful, rational and decisive.

“I have had it,” she said slowly, distinctively and with enough force that he actually looked a little unsettled. “I’ve had it with your meddling. With your play-acting. With the humiliation.”

When he opened his mouth, she held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear it.”

Wisely, he held his silence.

“I don’t want to hear anything you have to say because there is no explanation in Texas big enough, good enough or convincing enough to excuse your actions.

“Now, I want you to listen to me, Ryan Evans,” she said, marching up and getting right in his face.

“No more good-ol’-boy grins, no more misguided protector mentality. No more showing up and sabotaging my dates with Nathan Beldon. I’m a big girl and I can handle myself.

“Now, I’ve got a pretty good idea that Trav put you up to this and I know you feel loyalty to him, but so help me, if you don’t butt out of my life and my business, I will never speak to you again as long as I live. And Trav’s on the short list of dispensable people, too, so make sure he knows it.”

“Carrie—”

“I didn’t say you could talk yet. I’m talking. You’re still listening. I want to know if you understand what I’m saying to you. A simple nod will do.”

He tugged on his hat brim, set his mouth in a hard line and settled himself with a deep breath.

“Do. You. Un. Der. Stand?” she demanded.

“Oh, yes, ma’am,” he said, and she wasn’t at all surprised to hear an edge of anger creep into his voice.

Good, she thought. He’d brought this on. Let him have a taste of it, too. It made it that much easier to stay mad at him.