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His easy, good-natured capitulation to her rejection boosted Roxanne’s confidence another notch. Obviously, she was better at this man/woman thing than she’d thought. Or, rather, her sexy alter ego was better at it.
“And just who should I holler for, sugar?” She tilted her head, looking up at him from beneath her lashes. “If I do happen to change my mind, that is.”
“The name’s Clay.” He offered his hand. “Clay Madison.”
Roxanne put hers into it. “Roxy Archer,” she said, giving him the version of her name she’d decided went with her new persona.
“Well, Roxy, it’s been a real pleasure.” He lifted the hand he held to his lips and brushed a careless kiss across her knuckles before letting it go. “You remember what I said now, hear? Holler if you change your mind.”
“I’ll do that,” she promised mendaciously, knowing it wouldn’t happen.
Clay Madison knew it, too. He touched two fingers to the brim of his hat in a brief cowboy salute, then turned and left her standing at the edge of the dance floor while he zeroed in on a big-haired, big-bosomed young lovely in skintight jeans and a skinny little tank top that exposed a great deal more cleavage than Roxanne could ever hope to possess, even with the help of a push-up bra.
“Oh, well,” she said to herself, watching without rancor as he twirled the delighted girl onto the crowded dance floor with the same smooth moves he’d used on her. “Easy come, easy go.”
She had no doubt at all that if she’d been willing, it could have been her out on the dance floor, plastered up against young Clay Madison with his hand inching inexorably toward her butt. It was a comforting thought. Before Clay and the cowboy in the parking lot, her belief in her ability to inspire that kind of lustful feeling in a man had been based on little more than research and hope. Now, it was established fact. She could do it. She had done it. She could do it again. All it took, apparently, was a short, tight skirt, a provocative smile, and the ability to flutter her eyelashes.
She was utterly amazed it had taken her nearly twenty-nine years to figure out something so simple, but now that she had, she was going to put her new knowledge to good use. With a confident toss of her head, Roxanne turned and headed for the bar with a sultry, hip-swinging stride that drew more than one admiring male glance.
“Lone Star,” she purred when the bartender smiled and asked her pleasure.
She waved away the mug he brought with the beer, wrapped her hand around the frosty long-necked bottle and swiveled around on her bar stool so she was facing the pool table tucked into the far corner of the honky-tonk. She raised the beer to her lips and took a long, slow swallow, surveying the men playing pool over the upturned end of the bottle.
There he was.
Her cowboy.
The good-looking, dangerous one.
She lowered the beer, resting the cool frosty bottom on her bare knee, and watched him as he circled the pool table with the cue in his hand. He wasn’t movie-star handsome like young Clay Madison, but Roxanne didn’t want movie-star handsome. She wanted craggy and rugged. She wanted virile and manly. A real cowboy, not the rhinestone version.
The cowboy playing pool was as real as it got.
He was long and lean, an even six feet according to his stats, although his boots and hat made him seem taller. Broad at the shoulders and narrow at the hips with the strong, hard thighs of a horseman, he moved around the pool table with the ambling, easy, loose-kneed gait of a man who knew the value of patience. He was older than most of the other rodeo cowboys—an important consideration to a woman staring her thirtieth birthday in the face—with tiny lines of experience etched into the tanned skin around his eyes, and laugh lines creasing his lean cheeks. His dark hair was conservatively cut, neither short nor long, with the appealing tendency to curl from underneath the edges of his hat. His snap-front, Western-cut shirt was a plain, pale blue; his jeans were snug but not tight; the silver trophy buckle on his belt was moderately sized. His whole manner bespoke quiet, rock-solid confidence with no need to advertise either his physique or his prowess.
Roxanne had been surreptitiously watching him for the past two weeks, sizing him up from the safety of the stands and around the rodeo grounds. Now, her decision made, her quarry in sight, she leveled her gaze at him from across the room and stared openly, her interest obvious to anyone who cared to look.
The object of her interest stood, hip cocked, head down, the brim of his hat shadowing his face, his upper body bent over the pool table as he lined up his shot, seemingly oblivious to the woman watching him.
Roxanne kept staring, willing him to look up. According to all the books she’d read and the research she’d done in preparation for her Wild West adventure, the easiest and most direct way for a woman to signal her interest in a man was with eye contact. Prolonged, direct eye contact. The trick, she realized now, was to get him to look at her in the first place. The books and magazine articles had made it all sound so simple. Catch his eye, lick your lips, trail your fingertips suggestively over your cleavage or the rim of your glass, all the while holding that all important eye contact, and he’d come running. That was the theory, anyway. Unfortunately, nothing she’d read had mentioned what to do if he was so intent on his next pool shot that he didn’t even notice you were staring at him.
She was just about to switch tactics, steeling herself to slide off the bar stool and saunter over to the pool table for a more direct approach when, suddenly, his shoulders twitched under the pale blue fabric of his shirt. His hands stilled on the pool cue. He raised his head, slowly, his upper body still positioned over the felt-covered table in preparation for his shot.
She saw the chiseled angle of his jaw first as it emerged from beneath the shadow of his hat…the full, sculpted curve of his lips…his blade of a nose…the strong, angled cheekbones under skin the warm golden color of old doubloons…and then, finally, the startling blue of his eyes as he looked straight at her from under the brim of his hat.
Their gazes locked.
Held.
Roxanne felt the jolt all the way down to her toes. Steady, she told herself, fighting the urge to lower her gaze. Steady. Now wasn’t the time to get all girlie and flustered. She’d caught his attention. Now she had to engage his interest enough to make him approach her. Deliberately, with a gesture she’d practiced a hundred times in front of the mirror in preparation for this moment, she lifted her free hand and touched her crimson-tipped fingers to the lace-trimmed edge of her scoop-necked blouse, brushing them lightly, languidly, back and forth over the cleavage produced by the push-up bra.
The cowboy’s eyes widened and his gaze flickered downward, following the sultry movement of her fingers on her skin. The expression in his blue eyes when they came back to hers was hot, focused and intent, rife with speculation and frank sexual curiosity.
Roxanne felt equal parts fear, excitement and sheer female power sizzling through her at the success of her ploy. She’d done it. She’d hooked him. Now all she had to do was reel him in.
Come to mama, she thought, and smiled in blatant, unmistakable invitation.
2
IT TOOK TOM STEELE a good ten seconds to convince himself the hot little blonde at the bar was actually aiming her come-hither stare at him. Not that he hadn’t been the focus of a come-hither stare before. He did all right with the ladies. Always had. But the trophy-hunting buckle bunnies who hung out in places like Ed Earl’s usually went after bigger trophies—and younger, flashier studs. There was nothing flashy about Tom Steele.
His last birthday had put him on the far side of thirty, for one thing, making him a good five to ten years older than most of the peach-fuzz cowboys in the honky-tonk. And even in his younger days he’d never been one of those Fancy Dans who went in for wildly colored custom-made shirts, glittery bat-wing chaps or oversize silver belt buckles. He was a circuit cowboy, and proud of it. A weekend competitor who fit his rodeoing in around a job and a ranch and an eighty-hour workweek.
Or rather, he had been a circuit cowboy.
This year—his last year before he quit for good—he’d decided to go hog wild and really live it up, competing in as many rodeos as possible, traveling from one go-round to the next, living, eating and breathing the foot loose and fancy free life of the professional rodeo cowboy for one full season. So far, that meant he spent a good deal of his time behind the wheel of his pickup, chasing the rodeo from one dusty Podunk town to another, living on fast food and bad coffee, and getting tossed around by snortin’ mad broncs on a daily basis instead of just on the weekends.
It was a good life, as far as it went. The days were mostly hot and dirty, comprised of long periods of boredom and inactivity interspersed with eight-second intervals of heart-pounding, teeth-rattling, bone-jarring excitement. The nights were mostly spent on the road or in honky-tonks like Ed Earl’s. He had no responsibilities to speak of beyond making sure he was paid up and on time for each of his events. And no worries beyond wondering which bronc he was going to draw in the next go-round. About the only thing missing from his last fling was, well…a last fling.
It appeared things might be looking up in that department.
“Well, hell, Tom. You gonna stand there, starin’ at that little gal like some big dumb critter what ain’t got no sense, or you gonna take your shot?”
Without shifting his gaze away from the woman at the bar, Tom straightened and handed his pool cue to the cowboy who’d asked the question. “I’m going to take my shot,” he said.
“Hey, you got a twenty ridin’ on this game,” the cowboy reminded him.
Tom didn’t even glance at the crumpled bills under the shot glass on the edge of the pool table. “Consider it forfeit,” he said. “I think I’ve just found a more interesting game to play.” Then, paying no attention to the hoots and hollers that followed his comment, he rounded the end of the felt-covered table and headed toward the blonde at the bar.
He moved slowly, purposefully, the way he did when he was approaching the chute to climb aboard his next ride. His gait was measured and even, his boot heels clicking against the floor with every deliberate step, neither his gaze nor his pace wavering as he unerringly honed in on her through the noise and smoke of the jam-packed honky-tonk. She didn’t fidget, didn’t look away, didn’t blush or giggle or toss her hair. She simply sat there, perched on the bar stool as regal as a princess—her back ramrod-straight, her long slim legs crossed at the knee, her hand playing idly at her breast—and watched him come to her.
She was a tall, cool glass of water, for sure, a far cry from the usual oversprayed, overdone, overeager groupies who congregated around rodeo cowboys. Long and lean with a glossy, high-tone polish, she had a pampered, well-bred look to her underneath the fancy packaging, like a Thoroughbred racehorse all decked out in a show pony rig. And, hot damn, what a rig!
Her short blond hair was kind of rumpled and tousled-looking, as if she’d just rolled out of bed and wouldn’t mind rolling back in. Her lips were red and shiny, as if she’d just licked them. The tiny little skirt she was wearing showed off miles of slender, well-toned leg and clung like denim-colored Saran wrap to the sweetest curve of hip it had ever been his privilege to see. The neckline of her white blouse dipped just low enough to offer a tantalizing glimpse of cleavage. And those long, red nails…
Damn, she knew just what she was doing, brushing those glossy red fingernails back and forth above the scooped neckline of her blouse, all nonchalant and casual-like, as if she had no idea she was doing it or what the sight did to a man, with that mysterious, knowing little smile curving those matching red lips, offering compliance and challenge without a word being spoken. And all the while staring at him as if she meant to gobble him up when he got close enough.
It riveted a man’s attention, for sure, and got the blood pumping through his veins harder than it did when he was in the chute, sitting on top of twelve-hundred pounds of quivering horseflesh and waiting for the gate to swing open.
Tom did what he always did in that situation. He narrowed his focus to the task at hand, settled in, and prepared to take hold, determined to assert his dominance from the get-go. Women or horses, he’d always figured the game plan was pretty much the same. A man had to show ’em who was boss, right off, or he’d end up getting stomped on. Especially with the high-spirited ones. And he could tell at a glance the long-legged blonde with the cool, glossy polish and the hot come-hither look in her eyes was definitely one of the high-spirited ones. If a man let a woman like that get the upper hand, he’d never get it back.
He came to a stop directly in front of her.
And then he just stood there, his jeans-clad knees inches from her bare dimpled ones, his wide shoulders blocking her view of everything except him, and silently offered up a hot-eyed challenge of his own.
Her sassy little smile faltered a bit and the tip of her tongue came out, licking nervously at her bottom lip, but her gaze never wavered. “Buy you a drink, cowboy?” she purred.
Her voice was low and husky with a hint of something foreign and exotic under the drawl, as if she were from someplace other than Texas. Tom liked exotic, especially when it was sleek and blond and brazen. He pushed the brim of his hat up a fraction of an inch with the tip of his thumb, then, still silent, leaned in and put his hand on the bar beside her.
She shrank back, just slightly, and her gaze dropped for a split second. Then her spine stiffened and her chin came up, and she met his eyes. Five long seconds passed in silence as they stared at each other, deep blue eyes gazing into pale golden brown, male to female, yin to yang, speculation, curiosity and pure undisguised sexual energy crackling back and forth between them like static electricity as they silently jockeyed for position in the age-old battle of the sexes.
Then one of her eyebrows rose, all hoity-toity and imperious. “Well?” she said, and there was a snap under the cornpone and molasses in her voice. “Do you want a drink or not, sugar?”
Tom bit back a grin—damn, he liked a woman with sass!—and put his other hand on the bar, caging her between his outstretched arms. “How ’bout we skip the preliminaries, Slim,” he said, his voice low and husky and suggestive, “and just get right to it.”
Her eyes flared wide for a second, and he would have sworn he saw her gulp, but the angle of her chin stayed the same. “Skip the preliminaries?”
He leaned in just a bit closer, all but surrounding her with his size and strength in a deliberate attempt to overwhelm her with the none-too-subtle body language of the dominant male animal. The grin he couldn’t quite control curved his lips, quirking up one corner of his mouth when she refused to give ground by shrinking back a second time.
“No sense wasting time when we both know what we want, now is there?” he said silkily, close enough now so that his knees were bumping hers and the brim of his hat shadowed her upturned face.
Roxanne lifted her free hand in automatic reflex, putting it against his chest in an instinctive effort to preserve what little space she had left, and opened her mouth to inform him in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t that kind of girl. Fortunately, she remembered in time that she was, for the duration of her vacation, anyway, exactly that kind of girl. The problem was, she had no idea what that kind of girl would do now, with six gorgeous, well-muscled feet of cowboy all but pressing her up against the bar.
“Well…um….” She stared up at him, her head tilted back, her hand resting lightly against his broad chest, her mind working frantically.
He was so close she could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek, so close she could feel the brush of his shirtsleeves against her bare arms. The look in his deep blue eyes was confident and cocksure, as tempting as sin on a hot Saturday night. The heat of his body was an almost tangible thing, reaching out to curl around her like the loop of an expertly thrown lasso.
Her heartbeat quickened in response, sending an answering heat surging through her, making her nerve endings sizzle with a heady combination of panic and excitement as she tried to decide what her next move should be.
None of her carefully orchestrated plans for her fall from grace had included the possibility of falling quite so fast—and without any of the preliminaries he seemed so eager to dispense with. She’d expected at least a few minutes of getting-to-know-you pleasantries over that drink she’d intended to buy him. Maybe a dance or two to warm things up and put them both at ease. A little sweet talk and romantic nonsense to disguise what was really going on. Apparently, her good-looking, dangerous cowboy didn’t believe in wasting time with subterfuge or romantic nonsense.
So, how would a real good-time girl handle the situation?
Hold him off?
Or urge him on?
Tom stood stock-still, waiting, his hands on the bar on either side of her, the little half smile still turning up one corner of his mouth, an unholy gleam of masculine devilry and undisguised anticipation lighting his face, and watched the whirl of emotions parade through her big whiskey-colored eyes as she debated the issue with herself.
He knew he’d disconcerted her with his directness—that had been his intent, after all—and he had read, quite clearly, the first flash of instinctive, feminine outrage at his masculine arrogance and presumption. He also saw the flicker of uncertainty that replaced it, the swift calculation and consideration, the bubbling excitement beneath it all that got his own juices flowing fast and hot…and, then, suddenly, surprisingly, the unmistakable glint of steely-eyed resolve.
Tom bit back a curse and prepared to be slapped down—verbally, at least—for daring to presume too much, too soon. Any man with good sense knew the high-spirited ones, be they equine or human, didn’t take kindly to being rushed. And no woman, high-spirited or not, reacted favorably to the assumption that she could be too easily had. Even when she could be.
“You’re absolutely right,” she said briskly, surprising him again just as he was about to pull back and regroup by asking her to dance—and pretending that’s what he’d meant all along.
“Ma’am?” he murmured vaguely, stalling for time while he tried to figure out what he’d been right about.
“No sense wasting time when we both know what we want.” She turned slightly and set the bottle of beer on the bar behind her with a decisive little click. “Let’s get to it,” she said, and slid off the bar stool into his wide-open arms.
Tom reacted automatically, shifting his weight backward, lowering his hands from the edge of the bar to catch her as she all but fell into his embrace. He bracketed her hips in his wide palms, holding her upright, meaning only to steady her until she found her balance before he let her go again. But she was a warm, fragrant armful of woman, sleek and sexy and soft.
Incredibly soft.
Everywhere.
Her hair was soft against his jaw.
Her breath was soft against his neck.
Her breasts were soft against his chest.
And he was suddenly, incredibly, excruciatingly hard.
Everywhere.
The unexpectedness of it caught him completely off guard. The intensity of it short-circuited his brain, urging him to bypass the teasing, testing first steps of the mating dance they’d been doing in favor of the pure, primal male instinct to dominate and possess a willing female. Between one breath and the next, he forgot he’d been going to ask her to dance, forgot they’d only just met, forgot he didn’t even know her name. Instinctively, without conscious thought or premeditation, he tightened his hands on the curve of her hips, pulling her solidly against his suddenly aching erection.
Roxanne gasped and her eyes widened, the pupils dilating until they all but obscured the golden brown of her irises. But she didn’t stiffen. She didn’t pull back. She didn’t move by so much as a fraction of an inch. And she didn’t look away.
Couldn’t look away.
They stood there in the noisy honky-tonk in front of the long, busy bar, chest to breast, belly to belly, groin to groin, and stared at each other as if they were the only two people in the place. The heat sizzling between them built exponentially, second by second, growing higher and hotter and more intense, until it was zigzagging back and forth like lightning on a stormy summer night. No words were spoken. None were needed.
He wanted her.
She wanted him.
It was as simple, as basic, as elemental as that.
Obeying rampant male instinct and the hot female invitation in her eyes, he bent his head and kissed her. One hard, ravening, devouring kiss, unmistakable in its carnality and erotic intent, as intimate and intemperate as if they were alone in a quiet bedroom. She kissed him back the same way, deeply, avidly, instinctively, her mouth open, her tongue tangling wildly with his for a long, hot, mindless moment out of time. And then they drew apart a fraction of an inch, both of them flushed, both of them breathing too fast, and stared at each other for another long moment. His hands were hot and hard on her hips, holding her securely against him. Hers were curled around his biceps, her shiny red nails pressing into the unyielding muscle beneath his pale blue shirt. Questions were asked and answered, decisions made as they stood there, silently staring into each other’s eyes.
“Are you sure?” he growled, low, just to make certain he was reading her right.
“Yes,” she murmured breathlessly, and then, more firmly, “Yes, I’m sure,” she said, and nodded her head for added emphasis.
Incredible as it seemed, she’d never been more sure of anything in her entire life. There wasn’t a shred of doubt in her mind. Not a smidgen of hesitation. Not a second thought to be had. The earlier niggling fragment of panic had receded into absolute nothingness, wholly replaced by reckless excitement and wild anticipation for what was to come. She’d been waiting for this moment, fantasizing about it, her whole life. She wasn’t about to chicken out now that the fantasy was within her grasp.
“Yes.” The word was an affirmation—and a vow.
“You’ll leave with me now?” he said, giving her another chance to come to her senses. “Just walk out of this bar with me right now? This minute?” His gaze was still inexorably locked with hers. His erection was unmistakable, pressed firmly against her pubic mound. His fingers bit into her hips. “Even knowing we’re going to end up naked and sweaty ten minutes after you do?”
She nodded again. “Yes,” she said, her tone unequivocal and rock-steady, despite the erratic fluttering of her heart and the rush of heat that flooded her body at his words and the feel of him against her.
“Then let’s get the hell out of— Damn!” The word was a hot expulsion of air against her lips. “I don’t have a room. I was planning on hitting the road later tonight so I didn’t book a room.”
And all the nearby hotels and motels would already be chock-full of the cowboys who weren’t hitting the road until the next morning.
“Damn,” he said again, his brows drawing together as he struggled to think through the thick cloud of lust in his brain and come up with an alternate plan.
There was always the front seat of his truck, but that didn’t seem quite gentlemanly. And, besides, the way he was feeling, he was going to need a lot more than the front seat of a pickup to maneuver in, even if it was the biggest damn model Chevy made. Maybe he could work a trade with one of his buddies, or offer a little monetary incentive to someone to give up their room or… Hell, if there were absolutely no other accommodations to be had—and he was pretty sure there weren’t—he was hot enough to forget his gentlemanly scruples in favor of the front seat or the sleeping bag stashed in the bed of his pickup or an empty stall at the—