Some Like It Sizzling

At Judd’s obvious interest, Lucy felt bolder than ever. She shot him what she hoped was a sexy look from where she lay on the floor. “You can’t do it from up there.”

He knelt down. “How about from here?”

“I think you’ll have to come closer.”

In a blink he was only inches away from her, effectively pinning her to the floor. She could feel the heat radiating from his body, and she could even smell the subtle scent of soap and shampoo, mingled with his own unique scent that made her dizzy and giddy all at the same time.

“I should tell you, as a rule I don’t sleep with guests at the ranch.”

The breath went out of Lucy’s lungs. “I’m the exception?” she whispered.

“You’re my weakness.”

He leaned closer, his hands sliding around her waist. He kissed her, creating swirling, tingling sensations all through her.

She could only hold on to him for dear life and pray that she’d always remember how this felt, because Judd had surely ruined her for anyone else.

Dear Reader,

I’m thrilled to introduce to you my first book for Harlequin Temptation, Some Like It Sizzling. Writing for Harlequin is a dream come true for me. Ever since I was a preteen girl sneaking my mother’s romance novels off the shelves to read, I’ve loved the kind of stories I now have the opportunity to write.

The idea for this story came to me one sizzling-hot summer day when I let my mind wander. Maybe it was the heat, but suddenly I found myself wondering what might happen if a woman came home to find a gorgeous stranger handcuffed to her bed. How would she react? Who would this stranger be, and how would he have ended up on her bed?

Oh, the possibilities! My imagination ran wild, and I ended up with Lucy and Judd’s story. These two lovers quickly worked their way into my heart and took on lives of their own with their sexy antics at the Fantasy Ranch. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did, and I hope their romance turns your cold January into a sizzling one!

I would love to hear what you think of the story. You can write to me at Harlequin Enterprises Ltd., 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada or visit my Web site at www.jamiesobrato.com.

Sincerely,

Jamie Sobrato

Some Like It Sizzling

Jamie Sobrato

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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To my wonderful husband, Rich Sobrato. Without your unflagging optimism and encouragement, I never would have fulfilled my dream of becoming an author. I owe you a lifetime of steamy love scenes.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Epilogue

Prologue

“…SO THEN I took off my dress and hopped into the fountain.”

Lucy Connors leaned forward in her chair, hanging on her friend’s every word, unable to resist the lure of Claire Elliot’s tale. “What did he do?”

“He took off his shoes, jumped in—” Claire paused, stirring cream into her coffee “—and we made wild passionate love right there in the middle of the park.”

She had a more exciting love life than Lucy could ever hope to have. Handsome men, scandalous rendezvous, extravagant weekend-long dates—Claire was a walking nighttime soap opera. Even her blazing red hair suggested a wildness that Lucy’s mousy brown mop couldn’t hope to match.

At least Lucy had her fantasies…She closed her eyes for a brief moment and imagined herself, wet and splashing in a park water fountain late at night with a gorgeous stranger. Of course, her gorgeous stranger would be wearing a Stetson, and he’d be tugging off a pair of cowboy boots and a faded pair of jeans to hop into the fountain with her.

Mmm…

Then reality came crashing in. She hadn’t gotten within five feet of a man fit for a fantasy since the last time the UPS guy came to her door and had her sign for a delivery. Lucy’s eyes popped open and she glared at the remains of her salad.

Claire frowned and reached across the table to take Lucy’s hand. “Oh, sweetie, don’t feel bad. You’ll be having wild passionate sex again soon.”

“Again?” Her past sex life could have been better described with words like “predictable” and “safe”—never wild, and rarely passionate.

Claire gasped. “Don’t tell me you’ve never had—”

“Not wild and passionate. No.”

“Not even once?”

“Do fantasies count?”

“You’re worse off than I thought. You need to let loose! You’ve got this hot fantasy life and you’ve never once acted on it.”

Lucy glanced around, hoping no one had overheard. She lowered her voice to say, “It’s not that I haven’t tried. But after you-know-who giggled when I did my striptease for him…”

Claire rolled her eyes. “He was a pig.”

Nodding in agreement, Lucy gazed out the window next to their table and watched wilting business people hurrying to and from their cars in the oppressive Phoenix heat. Was there a single man in this entire city who could be happy with plain, boring, old her?

Their waiter appeared at the table. “Should I bring dessert now?” he asked Claire.

“Yes, please.”

“Dessert? I’m too stuffed for dessert.”

Claire dismissed her protest with the wave of a French-manicured hand, and the waiter cleared their lunch plates and left.

When, moments later, the entire staff of the restaurant converged on their table singing “Happy Birthday,” Lucy understood. Their waiter set a small strawberry and chocolate torte ablaze with candles in front of Lucy.

When the singing stopped, the restaurant staff dispersed and Claire said, “Make a wish!”

She produced a camera and aimed it at Lucy, then started snapping photos of Lucy’s startled expression.

It wasn’t exactly her birthday yet. That wasn’t until tomorrow, but this was her last chance to celebrate with her best friend before Claire had to leave for out-of-town business meetings over the weekend.

Lucy closed her eyes, made her wish and blew out the candles. She had learned long ago not to make outlandish birthday wishes. Better to wish for something sensible, something safe, something that could possibly come true. And after last year’s disaster, the safest, most sensible wish she could produce was that she never get dumped by another fiancé at her own birthday party.

“Come on, give me a hint about what you wished for,” Claire said. “If I guess it on my own it can still come true.”

“Who made up that rule?”

“I did, just now.”

“Trust me, you don’t want to know what I wished. You’d be disappointed.”

“Oh, sweetie, you just don’t seem happy. Where’s the spark in your life? The fun?”

“Um, I like my job,” Lucy offered lamely.

But becoming a travel agent hadn’t made her life more exciting, the way she’d hoped it would when she’d changed careers a year ago. She just didn’t know how to lead an exciting life the way Claire did. Lucy had been playing it safe for so long, she couldn’t remember how to take a risk.

Claire got that little crinkle between her eyebrows that always meant she was cooking up trouble. “I dare you to do something totally wild, totally un-Lucy-like, in honor of your birthday.”

Lucy’s stomach flip-flopped. “No way. I know better than to accept one of your dares.”

Claire gnawed on her lower lip, which had somehow managed to remain uniformly crimson throughout lunch. After a few moments of devious thought she said, “We’ll see about that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Claire glanced at her watch and her eyes grew wide. “I have to be at a meeting downtown in thirty minutes.” She stood, dug her wallet out of her purse, and put enough money on the table to cover both their lunches. “I’m sorry I have to rush off. I’ll talk to you tonight before I leave, though, okay?”

She headed for the door, but a few feet away from it she paused, turned, and flashed Lucy a thoroughly wicked grin. “Your birthday present—I almost forgot!”

“What?”

“It will be waiting for you on your bed when you get home.” Claire turned back to the door and hurried out.

Lucy waved at her friend’s retreating back. Waiting for her on her bed? Claire knew where Lucy kept her emergency key, so she guessed her friend had bought her something too large or cumbersome to carry around. Probably that new comforter set she’d been eyeing in the Spiegel catalog.

She smiled and took a tiny bite of her birthday cake. Yes, the pink rose comforter set would be the perfect birthday gift, and Claire always knew just what to give.

The sweet dessert brought her taste buds to life. She closed her eyes and moaned. Oh, she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d tasted it. Just for today, she’d allow herself to eat the entire miniature cake. Yes, and that would even fulfill Claire’s dare!

She was doing something totally wild and un-Lucylike already, with Claire barely out the door. Her friend would be proud.

1

HE WAS HALF NAKED and handcuffed to her bed. Lucy stared at the sleeping cowboy, unable to move or to even utter a cry of protest.

Everything else about her Friday had so far been normal. She’d put in a twelve-hour shift at Sunny Horizons Travel Agency dealing with frantic last-minute vacation planners and all the other customers her coworkers didn’t want to handle. She’d had lunch with Claire—the one bright spot in her day—and she’d stopped at the bank machine and the gas station on her way home. Now it was time to relax and watch TV, maybe balance her checkbook and do some laundry.

But…there was this stranger wearing a Stetson and silver handcuffs. Where had he come from and what was he doing on her bed?

For one horrifying moment Lucy wondered if she’d somehow stumbled into an intimate scene about to unfold in someone else’s apartment. Muscle-bound men didn’t fall asleep on her bed, and she didn’t own a pair of handcuffs.

But it was her bed, and her room, and her apartment, she assured herself as she looked around at the familiar setting. That didn’t change the fact of the slumbering, handcuffed cowboy.

Long muscular arms stretched over his head and a white Stetson tipped forward covered his face. Impossibly wide shoulders tapered to a smooth torso that begged to be touched by a woman’s hands. Faded jeans hugged narrow hips and enveloped bulging thighs. The picture was made complete by a pair of white snakeskin boots, accented by what looked like silver spurs.

In the agonizing moments it took her to recover from the shock, a voice in Lucy’s head screamed, Call 911! Yet she stood in the doorway, paralyzed, unable to look away. Somehow, by some bizarre stroke of luck, here was her fantasy come to life—a real, live, hunk of a cowboy in her bedroom at her mercy. Her tired body was suddenly awake and on alert, her libido kicking into overdrive and sending tingles to places that had been dormant for months.

Her heartbeat thudding in her ears, she willed herself to run, but she couldn’t move.

If she hadn’t felt so numb, she might find some humor in the bizarre scene, but she’d spent the last two hours at work dealing with the very angry Mr. Dorfler, whose vacation on the Family Fun Ship had been marred by a belligerent cruise ship employee in a Loopy the Cat costume. Now all she really wanted was to slide into her fuzzy pajamas and to watch TV reruns of I Love Lucy.

Something, some important fact she seemed to have forgotten, was nagging at her. And then she remembered…Claire had said she’d leave Lucy’s birthday gift in her apartment.

It will be waiting for you on your bed….

Suddenly it all made terrible sense…and she was going to kill Claire Elliot.

Easing out of the room for fear of waking the cowboy before she knew for sure that he was indeed her gift and not some masochistic intruder, Lucy rushed to the phone in the kitchen and hit the auto-dial button for Claire’s number. The phone rang, and her friend picked up after two rings.

“Are you insane?”

“Hi, Luc. I presume you’ve found your birthday gift.” Claire’s self-satisfied smile was apparent even over the phone.

“If you’re speaking of the Western-style gigolo or whatever he is, I found him.”

Her friend’s raspy laughter came across the phone line loud and clear. “He’s not a gigolo, but I’m sure he’d be willing to accommodate a pretty girl like yourself during his off hours—”

“Claire!”

“He’s your escort to the ranch. Didn’t he explain that?”

“He hasn’t quite had a chance yet, since he’s currently sawing wood in my bedroom.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s asleep! Now, what’s this ranch you’re talking about?”

“Oh, dear. I didn’t realize you’d be working so late. I had him arrive there at five o’clock,” Claire said, ignoring Lucy’s question. “The poor guy’s been handcuffed to your bed for over three hours—and what did you think of the handcuffs, by the way? Those were my idea.”

“What ranch?” By the time she got the words out, a horrible thought had occurred to her. The Fantasy Ranch. The infamous adults-only resort several hours out into the desert where party people like Claire loved to vacation. Rumors of the wild parties and sexual escapades that took place at the resort circulated constantly around Phoenix. Just last month there’d been a story in the gossip pages about a party at the ranch that had ended with a fight between a popular movie actor and the paparazzo who’d caught him on camera literally with his pants down.

They’d gotten a fax at the travel agency several weeks ago saying that the ranch’s end-of-summer celebration was fast approaching. It would be just like Claire to book her a surprise vacation at such an outrageous place.

Claire sighed over the phone. “I wish I could go with you. That was the plan, but these weekend meetings came up at the last minute—”

“We can go on a trip together anytime. When you get back we can plan that trip to Hawaii we’ve been talking about. In the meantime, I’m just going to spend the weekend watching reruns—”

“No, you’re not. As your boss, I order you to take the trip as planned. Just go with Buck instead of me. You wouldn’t believe what I had to go through to get him for you.”

Lucy felt her insides go all jiggly as she considered the possibility of going off to a resort—an adults-only resort at that—with a complete stranger. “But I—”

“No arguments. You’ve said yourself that you don’t want to spend the rest of your life with no one but your cats to keep you warm at night. This is your chance to learn how to loosen up and have fun. In fact, I dare you to be a little naughty for once in your life. And you’d better not show up at work for at least another week.”

Lucy blinked in shock as the line went dead. She hit redial several times, but the line was busy. Claire had hung up on her and left her to deal with a stud named Buck. She should have never, ever told that awful woman about her secret cowboy fantasy.

After taking a deep, calming breath she crept down the hall to the bedroom again and peered around the edge of the doorway. He was still asleep—dead asleep by the sound of his slow, steady breathing.

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. What was she to say? “Hey there, cowboy, come here often?” Or maybe, “Excuse me, could you please get your boots off my bed?” There just wasn’t an appropriate opener for this situation.

She allowed herself to take in the whole of him lying there with his well-tanned torso exposed, hard muscles forming a ripple effect on his abdomen, the muscles of his chest and arms bulging slightly as they strained from the handcuffs. His arms were up behind his head, his wrists clasped to the headboard with the cuffs that were looped around a wooden spindle, and the sexy thatches of dark hair under his arms were exposed. Lucy had never realized body hair could be so…arousing.

But mostly she just marveled that such a gorgeous man—gorgeous even with his face mostly hidden by the hat—was lying on her bed. When was the last time that had happened? Well, never. She did a quick mental inventory of all her past boyfriends, all four of them, and realized that none had been this attractive. More often than not, they’d been nice guys, but never drop-dead gorgeous. It just wasn’t a quality she looked for in a man.

Not that Lucy had minded dating average-looking men. In fact, she preferred it that way. Attractive men were dangerous, arrogant, shallow, too aware of their power over women. They got what they wanted too easily, and they never noticed plain, boring women like Lucy Connors. Even if they had, she was immune to their charms.

Then why did it feel as if her whole body sighed when she took in the sight of the half-naked Buck on her bed? Why did it feel as if her pulse had centered itself between her legs? And why was there a thin film of perspiration breaking out on her upper lip?

Lucy glanced down at herself and suddenly felt self-conscious in her buttoned-up white blouse and brown tweed skirt. She looked like an uptight bore. Her chest tightened ever so slightly as she admitted that she was exactly what everyone thought she was—a woman who didn’t have the slightest clue how to have fun.

Claire’s words echoed in her head. I dare you to be a little naughty for once in your life.

Forget Claire. She and her best friend were just different, that’s all, and she didn’t have to change who she was to suit that woman. No, if she wanted to spend the weekend in her flannel PJs, eating carrot sticks and unsalted, unbuttered popcorn, and watching TV as she caught up on her laundry and maybe balanced her checkbook, then that’s exactly what she would do. Claire wasn’t going to lose respect for her just because she refused to run off to some ridiculous hedonistic resort with a male bimbo named Buck.

Lucy made up her mind. She wasn’t going to accept Claire’s silly dare. But that didn’t change the fact that she still had to get rid of Buck. She took a step into the bedroom, then hesitated. She couldn’t wake a gorgeous guy like that wearing her wallflower work outfit. No, she would slip into something a little less boring while he was still asleep, and he’d never know the difference. When she woke the sleeping stud, at least she would do it with her womanly ego intact.

She tiptoed several feet without making a sound, but the closet across the room seemed a mile away; her chest of drawers wasn’t any closer. She couldn’t let a little thing like that stop her, though, she reminded herself as she took one more tentative step and sighed with relief when Buck continued to snore softly.

She did a mental inventory of her wardrobe, wondering which outfit best suited the occasion. What she realized immediately was that she owned a dizzying array of beige garments, and almost nothing that was appropriate for waking up a stud-muffin. She stopped in her tracks in front of the closet. There sat a black suitcase with a hot pink bow on top and a small note card tucked under the bow. Lucy bent and plucked the card out, recognizing her name written in Claire’s handwriting. She opened the envelope to find a card within that read, “This is everything you’ll need for the week, except an outfit to travel in. That, you’ll find hanging on the back of the bathroom door. Just wear it!” The words “wear it” were underlined twice. Claire had signed the note, “Love, C.”

Lucy eyeballed the suitcase warily. Where her tastes ran toward conservative styles and neutral colors, Claire had a penchant for outrageous platform heels and leopard-print undergarments. It was best not to look at the contents of the suitcase right away, not when she had Buck, who could wake at any moment, nearby.

She hurried across the room as silently as possible and slipped into the bathroom, gently closing and locking the door behind her. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears. When she finally turned on the light, the outfit in front of her was worse than she could have imagined.

And she couldn’t wait to try it on.

Two minutes later Lucy’s work clothes were lying in a heap on the bathroom floor and she was peering over her shoulder at the reflection of her butt in a pair of skintight black pants. As many other shocks as she’d received this evening, perhaps the greatest one of all was the realization that she didn’t look half bad in the outfit Claire had picked out. In fact, she might even say she looked…darned good. All those years of eating wheat bran and steamed veggies had paid off.

But whether or not she could walk out of the bathroom and allow another human being to see her like this was a different matter. She finished fastening the tiny eye-hooks on the front of the stretchy red top—red, a color she never wore—and slid on the black platform sandals that turned out to be a lot more comfortable than they looked, then took another look at herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door.

Okay, she wasn’t exactly blessed by Mother Nature in the chest department, but still…She inspected herself further. Not bad for an outfit that made her look like a groupie hoping to sneak backstage at a rock concert. Her hair, however, was all wrong.

She reached up and removed the pins that held her French twist in place, then ran her fingers through her light brown hair until it fell around her face in waves that hung to her shoulders. She’d never liked her hair much, especially not the mousy color that made her about as noticeable as white wallpaper, or the flyaway curls that, on bad days, gave her the appearance of having wispy little horns, but with the groupie getup, she had to admit that the tousled look went quite nicely.

She wasn’t wearing a spot of makeup, but there was no time to fix herself up any more than she already had, especially when her makeup collection consisted mostly of ointments and facial cleansers—not tubes of lipstick with names like Scarlet Passion.

She had a cowboy to awaken. But as she took a deep breath and stepped out of the bathroom, her throat seized up and she felt her knees begin to buckle. What could she possibly have been thinking? She couldn’t wake up this strange man and let him see her like this.

She heard Claire’s voice again. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life with no one but your cats to keep you warm at night. Lucy loved her cats, but they didn’t make great bed partners. Aside from their more obvious shortcomings, Romeo hogged the bed and Juliet liked to deposit dead, mangled insects on Lucy’s pillow—her feline version of fancy hotel chocolates.

With that depressing thought, she decided the least she could do for herself was be proud of the way she looked in her new outfit, even if it was only for the couple of minutes it took to get Buck out of the apartment.

Her confidence somewhat renewed, she couldn’t help pausing for a moment to marvel again at the male form in all its glory. Why did such gorgeous men have to exist, to remind plain women such as herself of all they couldn’t have? She decided it would be wise not to spend much more time contemplating the unfairness of it all, but she still couldn’t stop staring. What she really wanted was a closer look.