One Hot Texan
Jane Sullivan
HE NEEDS A WILLING WOMAN…Rebel Cole McCallum is back home, but not by choice. If he doesn't get married soon, he's going to lose his inheritance. But who would want to marry a complete stranger? Lucky for him, he has his pick of women. What this bad boy didn't plan on, though, was choosing the least likely candidate…and finding her irresistible.SHE'S WILLING TO OBLIGE…Wallflower Ginny White is ready to break free of her prissy reputation. When she discovers sexy Cole McCallum has returned, she knows he can teach her a thing or two. She's sure she's hit the jackpot when he asks her to marry him, even if it's only temporary. Six months is more than enough time to make this one hot Texan hers…!
“Cole? What’s the matter?”
“Ginny, this is…this is your first time.”
“Yes. I know.”
He slipped away from her. “I feel like somehow I’ve pushed you into this.”
She couldn’t believe it. Was this Cole McCallum talking? Where was the cockiness, the self-assuredness, the arrogant overconfidence she’d come to know so well?
“Cole, I want this. I want you. Don’t you know that?”
“You say that now, but are you sure?”
She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Just kiss me.”
After a moment of hesitation, he lowered his mouth to hers in a soft, gentle kiss. Ginny wanted more. Much more.
She grabbed his shirt, and pulled him down to her. It was a kiss so hot and wild and intense that Cole couldn’t do anything but go along for the ride. Finally she pulled away, still gripping his shirt.
“Ginny? Are you trying to tell me something?”
“Yes, damn it! What am I going to have to do to convince you? Rip your clothes off? Rip my clothes off?”
Cole blinked with surprise. Then a smile spread slowly across his face. “Can I have both?”
Dear Reader,
Do you remember the girl in your high school class who didn’t talk much, who was smart but socially inept, the one who the boys didn’t even know existed? Do you remember the boy with the streetwise attitude who was sexy as sin, who drove the teachers crazy at the same time he made the girls swoon? What if these two people were to meet again ten years later and sparks suddenly flew?
As a writer, nothing is more fun to me than to put a hero and a heroine together who are complete opposites, then watch the fireworks. On the surface, it seems as if Cole McCallum and Ginny White are the most unlikely couple ever to share a kiss. But looks can be deceiving. Is it possible that the good girl and the bad boy are perfect for each other?
I had a wonderful time writing my first Harlequin Temptation novel, and I hope you enjoy it. Visit my Web site at www.janesullivan.com, or write me at jane@janesullivan.com. I’d love to hear from you!
Best regards,
Jane Sullivan
Books by Jane Sullivan
HARLEQUIN DUETS
33—STRAY HEARTS
48—THE MATCHMAKER’S MISTAKE
One Hot Texan
Jane Sullivan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Mom and Dad, who always believed I could do it.
Contents
Chapter 1 (#u64eb0cfe-fd35-5304-95e9-97f16a91b290)
Chapter 2 (#u20128499-5c7a-5ba9-bcb2-901dbbcbb6c6)
Chapter 3 (#u4c828cce-d1f4-5db2-abe8-3cb69f69480d)
Chapter 4 (#uad87b561-0496-5ddc-bc02-2a9240b300db)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
1
THE CLOSER Cole McCallum came to the city limits of Coldwater, Texas, the more he wanted to swing his classic Porsche around in a tire-squealing one-eighty and head back to Dallas where he belonged. He thought he’d seen the last of this godforsaken place, only to have fate step up and slap him in the face one more time.
His first introduction to Coldwater had been eleven years ago, when he’d been forced to leave Dallas and come here for his senior year of high school. His father had been thrown in jail for writing one too many hot checks, and his mother hadn’t been around since he was seven years old, so a family court judge had ordered his custody turned over to a grandmother he barely knew. He arrived with a chip on his shoulder the size of a concrete block. Throw in a pair of skintight jeans, a black leather jacket and a go-to-hell attitude, and the uptight citizens of Coldwater had naturally assumed he was the root of all evil. He didn’t let them down.
Out of pure mischief, he committed a few minor infractions around school during his first few weeks, then dated a few of the more kiss-and-tell girls. Gossip took care of the rest. For the next year he got blamed for everything from graffiti on the water tower to Angela Putnam’s period being late. And he didn’t care enough to try to set anyone straight. Only his grandmother had known better, but even her reputation hadn’t been able to salvage his. With the exception of the girls who swooned at his bad-boy image, the townspeople would have voted him most likely to turn up on a post-office wall. And that’s why, at eighteen, he’d burned rubber on his way out of town, catching the best view of Coldwater he’d ever had—the one in his rearview mirror.
And now he was going back.
He followed the gentle curve of the two-lane blacktop, passing tin barns and mobile homes alternating with fields of cotton and corn and an occasional paint-starved farmhouse with a pickup truck out front. This corner of nowhere was home to people who didn’t know there was a world beyond it. But he knew. He knew how a kid from nothing could leave a place like this and make something of himself. At the same time he burned with anger at how everything that same kid had fought so hard to gain could be ripped out from under him in the blink of an eye.
Cole still remembered how it felt to stand on that cold Dallas street in the middle of the night, soot clinging to his skin and heat from the massive blaze fanning his face, watching his half-finished real-estate renovation project—the one that could have made him a millionaire—light up the Dallas skyline like the fires of hell.
And watching his dreams go up in smoke with it.
He came around a bend and headed into the main part of town. He passed Blackwell’s Pharmacy, A New You Dress Shop and Cut & Curl, where a handmade sign advertised twenty percent off acrylic nails on Tuesdays. When he reached Taffy’s Restaurant, he pulled into a parking space next to a slick new pickup. It belonged to Ben Murphy, though he wouldn’t have known that if not for the ancient hound dog hanging his head over the tailgate.
At least the old man had shown up.
Cole stepped out of his car, went to the back of Murphy’s truck and scratched the old dog behind the ears.
“Hey, Duke. I figured you’d be long gone by now.”
The dog licked his hand, and Cole smiled ruefully. Duke was far happier to see him than Murphy was going to be.
He gave the dog one last pat on the head, then turned toward the sidewalk. In the beauty-shop window next door, he saw a skinny brunette with a headful of rollers staring at him. She tapped a big-haired blonde on the shoulder and mouthed, Cole McCallum. The woman spun around, and when she caught sight of him her eyebrows flew halfway up to her hairline.
By the time he reached the door to the restaurant, the beauty-shop window was filled with half a dozen women in various states of beautification, from sopping wet hair to kinky hair to hair sprouting crinkles of silver stuff that looked like aluminum foil.
He couldn’t resist. He turned toward the window and gave the ladies a great big smile.
A dozen eyes widened in unison. In the next second the women turned to each other, their mouths moving at the speed of light, probably repeating legends about him for the gospel truth whether they were actually true or not. Around here, any stranger made people stop and stare. But Cole McCallum, who was once rumored to have made it with the entire cheerleading squad in one night, warranted an all-points bulletin. And no doubt the things they’d read about him lately in the Dallas Morning News had only fueled the gossip.
He went into the restaurant and spotted Ben Murphy sitting in a booth by the far window. The chattering din of the restaurant fell silent as patrons peered over their newspapers or stopped mid-bite to watch him walk across the room. The only sound he heard was a hushed, rapid-fire argument behind the counter, where a trio of waitresses gave him sidelong glances as they tried to determine which took precedence when it came to waiting on a particular table—seniority or station assignments.
Cole slid into the booth across from Murphy and was greeted with a deadpan stare. The old man’s jaw was set in stone, his blue eyes unreadable. All seventy-two of his years were etched into his face, solidified by the harsh Texas sun. He held a toothpick in the corner of his mouth, and Cole couldn’t remember a time he’d seen him without one. Murphy was the closest thing to a grandfather he had by virtue of the fact that he’d married Cole’s grandmother. That was where their relationship began—and ended.
A waitress appeared at the table, and it took Cole a moment to realize it was Mary Lou Culbertson, stuffed into a baby-blue waitress uniform that had probably been a really good fit ten years and twenty pounds ago. She cocked one hand against her hip and slid her other hand along the top of the booth behind him.
“Hey, Cole. Long time no see.”
“Mary Lou.”
“I read about you in the papers. You had a pretty tough time of it, didn’t you?”
“It’s over.”
“Whatcha doin’ back in town?”
“Taking care of a little business.” He flashed her a smile. “How about a cup of coffee?”
“Sure.” She purred the word, as if he’d just asked her to get naked in the back seat of his car. As she sashayed toward the coffeepot, Murphy raised an eyebrow.
“Still charming the ladies, I see.”
Cole didn’t reply. Instead he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out several legal-size sheets of paper. He opened them up and tossed them on the table.
Murphy eyed the papers. “I wondered if you’d be back. Cutting it a little close, aren’t you?”
“According to Edna’s will, as long as I’m married within six months of her death, then stay on the ranch with my wife for six months, the deed goes to me. The way I figure it, I have until Sunday to move in.”
“You thumbed your nose at this six months ago. Said hell would freeze over before you got married and came back to live at the ranch.”
Yeah, and six months ago he’d had money in the bank with big payoffs on the horizon. Now he had exactly nothing. He shrugged offhandedly. “People change.”
“Some do. Some don’t.” Murphy chewed his toothpick. “And some become hotshot real estate investors who solve their problems with a book of matches.”
Murphy’s words slammed into Cole, making anger surge inside him. He struggled to keep his voice in check. “Guess you didn’t read the paper two days ago. My partner was convicted. I wasn’t.”
Murphy shrugged. “So you had a better lawyer.”
A hundred nasty retorts welled up inside Cole’s mind, and it was all he could do to contain them. Nothing ever changed in this town. Nothing.
When he left Coldwater at age eighteen, he’d started renovating tiny, dilapidated houses, making a little money here and there and then rolling it over into bigger and bigger investments. Over the years, he amassed a large portfolio of rental property and a huge stash of cash.
Then, in a move that raised more than a few eyebrows, he and a partner bought Seven-Seventeen Broadway Avenue, a huge turn-of-the-century apartment building on the outskirts of downtown Dallas. The condition of the building left a lot to be desired, and the area was practically an abandoned ghetto, but the building had a period charm unlike any Cole had ever seen. Because of nearby renovation projects along with the growing desire of young urban pioneers for downtown addresses, he decided to take the risk and create luxury condominiums, hoping the yuppies would bite and other investors would follow suit.
Then came the fire.
Cole thought it was the worst thing that could possibly happen, until the blaze was ruled arson and he and his partner became prime suspects. Investigators speculated that they’d gotten concerned that their huge investment in such a questionable area wasn’t going to pay off after all, so they’d torched it for the insurance money.
Cole had spent his last dime on the best attorneys he could buy, trying to convince a jury that he’d had nothing to do with the crime, all the while assuming his partner hadn’t, either. Then it turned out the guy had a mountain of gambling debts Cole hadn’t even known about, which had driven him to set the fire to try to collect the insurance money.
The fury Cole felt the moment he realized his partner’s betrayal was superseded only by the gut-wrenching defeat he felt when he looked at that fire-ravaged lot. Because the fire had been deliberately set, the insurance company hadn’t paid a dime, and Cole was left with nothing but a huge stack of attorney bills and a reputation that was in the toilet. Never mind that he’d been exonerated. The press had been quick to proclaim his alleged guilt on page one, then bury his innocence on page sixteen, and all the doors he’d worked so hard to open in the last ten years had suddenly slammed in his face.
Then he remembered his grandmother’s will. He had one last shot to pull himself out financially and get back on top again, and he intended to take that shot—even if he had to spend another six months in Coldwater to do it.
“So where’s the little woman?” Murphy asked. “Don’t recall hearing anything about you getting married.”
“She’ll be here Sunday.”
Cole held his breath, afraid Murphy was going to ask him more questions about his wife. Instead, he moved his toothpick to the other side of his mouth and gave Cole a warning stare.
“Part of the deal is that you work on the ranch.”
“I’ve done it before.”
“And hated every minute of it.”
Cole couldn’t argue with that. Still, he’d worked hard on the ranch the year he lived there, and Murphy knew it. Cole would have shot himself before giving the old man the satisfaction of telling Edna he wasn’t pulling his weight.
Mary Lou put a cup of coffee down in front of Cole with a provocative smile. As she walked away, Cole shoved the cup aside.
“Edna’s will allows me a monthly salary and the use of the foreman’s house for the six months.”
“That’s what it says.”
“Just wanted to make sure we’re on the same track.”
“We are, unless you’re forgetting who decides whether you’ve stuck to the terms of the will. If you so much as forget to show up for work one day, I can call the whole thing off. What makes you think I’ll cut you any slack?”
Good question. Cole knew Murphy didn’t much like him showing up at the eleventh hour, because it meant another six months before the fate of the ranch would be decided. If Cole didn’t inherit, Murphy would. Fortunately, Cole knew the ranch meant nothing to Murphy without Edna. And since Murphy had been financially well-off long before he and Edna got married, the money the ranch would bring at sale meant very little to him, anyway. But carrying out the stipulations of Edna’s will meant everything to Murphy, whether he agreed with them or not.
“Because you’re a fair man,” Cole said. “Edna always said so.”
Murphy’s mouth twisted with irritation, and Cole knew he’d hit him where it hurt.
“Edna let her heart rule her head,” Murphy said. “She knew her son was worthless, but his son—she had hope for him. Said all her grandson needed was a good woman, an honest job and something to work for, and he’d turn into a man she could be proud of. Instead you’ve spent the last year scraping to stay out of jail just like your old man.”
Cole forced his expression to remain impassive, but he hardly felt that way inside. He remembered that day eleven years ago when a Dallas judge finally tossed his father in jail. At seventeen, Cole would have preferred to have been on his own, but the court hadn’t seen it that way. His grandmother had agreed to take him in, and after a few rocky months, Cole made a surprising discovery—that at least one person in the world actually thought he might amount to something.
He knew she’d taken him in out of family responsibility, and in the beginning things had been pretty shaky. He remembered the day he arrived, so full of attitude that, looking back, he was surprised she hadn’t kicked him right out the door. Instead, she’d fed him a hot meal, given him a clean bed to sleep in, then told him that no matter what his father had done, he wasn’t his father and there was no need to follow in those footsteps.
In the coming months, no matter how many times he mouthed off, no matter how many times he screwed up, even though he could tell she was disappointed, still every day was a new day. Finally the days got better. She’d given him love and affection for the first time in his life, and when she died she left him everything—with a few strings attached. As her only living blood relative, the fact that she’d willed it all to him hadn’t been a complete surprise. The terms of the will had.
“Now as for me,” Murphy said, “I think Edna was dreaming. I think you’re heading down the same road as your old man. Sure, you do things a little bigger and flashier, but the end result is the same. This is just a little detour along the way, like a trucker stopping to gas up. When you’ve got what you want, you’ll be on the road again.”
He stood up and tossed a five on the table, then lowered his voice. “One more thing. I made sure that nobody but you, me and the attorney who drew up the will knows anything about the provisions Edna outlined. If word gets out that she’s trying to turn her no-good grandson into a hardworking family man, she’s going to look like a fool, and I’ll be damned if that’s going to happen. If I think for one minute that you’re telling people things they don’t need to know, I’ll pull the plug on this deal so fast it’ll make your head spin. Now, do we understand each other?”
Cole nodded.
“See you Sunday. Looking forward to meeting the wife.”
Cole watched him go, then sat back in the booth with a heavy sigh. Murphy was right about one thing. A year from now, when he sold the ranch and banked the money, his grandmother was going to look down from heaven and be sorely disappointed. But for all her good intentions, she hadn’t understood that she could make him play the part of a hardworking husband, but she was never going to turn him into one.
This time last year, the mayor of Dallas himself had applauded Cole’s efforts to revitalize a run-down area of town. Dallas Monthly had listed him as one of the twenty hottest bachelors in Dallas, which had given him so much instant celebrity that he couldn’t even stop at 7-Eleven for a Big Gulp without a woman shoving her phone number into his pocket. And he’d been on the verge of making more money than he ever dreamed he would see in a lifetime. With the profit from the sale of the ranch, eventually he’d be able to get all of that back and then some. Why, then, would he want to waste his life away, saddled with a wife and kids, on a ranch in the middle of nowhere?
He stood up to leave, smiling broadly at the waitresses behind the counter. He added a quick wink, then listened to them chatter like a bunch of chipmunks as he walked out the door. He decided he would head over to the Lone Wolf Saloon on Highway 81. The place would fill up in an hour or so, providing him with the biggest assortment of women he was likely to find under one roof on short notice. He’d get a booth in the corner, order up a long neck, then sit back and do some serious shopping.
He had until tomorrow at midnight to find himself a wife.
VIRGINIA WHITE turned her 1993 Celica off the two-lane highway into a gas station, swung around the pumps and parked near the bathrooms on the west side. She grabbed the big shopping sack from the passenger seat beside her, hopped out of her car and got the bathroom key from the attendant.
She unlocked the bathroom door, hoping to find it clean, at least, only to see a stopped-up toilet, a wall of graffiti and half a dozen dead crickets on the floor. For a moment she wished she’d gone home to change clothes, but it was twenty-one miles from the outlet mall back to Coldwater. If she’d done that she would have lost her nerve altogether and ended up staying home.
She locked the door and nudged the crickets behind the toilet with the toe of her canvas shoe. She shimmied out of the dumpy flowered dress her mother had bought her at a garage sale last summer and stuffed it into the trash can. She removed her white cotton bra and disposed of it, too, then pulled out of the sack the one part of her purchase that she’d barely had the nerve to buy—a black lace push-up bra with a front clasp, dainty satin straps and enough padding to stuff a mattress.
Cheap women wear bras like that, her mother had always said. Cheap little hussies who are looking for trouble.
Virginia put it on, then turned to the mirror and froze.
Cleavage. For the first time in her life, she actually had cleavage.
She stared at the cheap little hussy in the mirror and held her breath, her heart beating double time, waiting, waiting…
Finally she slumped with relief. Okay. God hadn’t struck her dead. That was a good sign. Maybe her mother didn’t have half the pull with the Almighty that she’d always led Virginia to believe, even though she’d been up there with Him now for over three months, consulting with Him in person.
Virginia pulled a pair of jeans from the sack and wiggled into them, thinking maybe they looked pretty good for her first pair. At $12.99 they hadn’t eaten her whole paycheck, and they had a little strip of elastic in the back so, even though they were sort of tight, she’d still be able to breathe.
Next she pulled out a brown short-sleeved cotton shirt with little horseshoes on it. Very Western. She put it on, leaving the top two buttons undone. On second thought, she unbuttoned a third one, then spread the edges of the shirt apart to reveal a hint of her newly enhanced bustline. She froze again, holding her breath, waiting for the inevitable. But it never came.
Maybe God was fresh out of thunderbolts.
She pulled a pair of plain brown cowboy boots from the sack and tugged them on, knowing they couldn’t possibly be leather for $17.99, but figuring they looked the part, anyway. Turning to the mirror, she ran a brush through her hair, wishing for the umpteenth time in her life that she’d been blessed with wavy blond tresses instead of the limp brown mop she’d gotten stuck with. Then she pulled a tube of lipstick from the sack. It wasn’t the cherry red she’d planned on getting, but it wasn’t baby pink, either. She spent a good five minutes nose-to-nose with her reflection in the mirror, dabbing at her lips, telling herself it was just like kindergarten and all she had to do was color inside the lines.
She smacked her lips together, then backed off from the mirror for an arm’s-length exam. Okay. Not bad. Truth be told, though, she didn’t much care what she looked like.
As long as she didn’t look like Virginia White.
A few minutes later she was back on the blacktop, moving down the road. She rolled down the windows and jacked up the radio, singing along with Shania Twain. The crisp breeze lifted her hair off the back of her neck. The sun had just set, filling the countryside with the muted shades of twilight. It would be dark by the time she reached her destination.
Happy birthday, Virginia, she told herself. It’s time to go live it up.
Tonight she was giving herself a long overdue gift. She was going someplace where there were hundreds of people she didn’t know. People to whom her name meant nothing. People who wouldn’t automatically dismiss her because she was the daughter of the town recluse, or because she didn’t dress right, or because she was just a painfully shy nobody who’d never learned how to be anything else.
While she’d been working at the library after school to help support her and her mother, other girls were chatting on the phone, painting each other’s nails and talking about boys. While she was paying bills and balancing the checkbook, other girls were making out in the back seats of cars. While she was living with her mother, taking care of her various ailments and catering to her whims, other women were getting married, making love and having children.
Sooner or later she would save enough money for college, and then she’d start a whole new life. But bank tellers didn’t make much, particularly when they worked at the First State Bank of Coldwater, Texas, where raises came around about as often as Halley’s Comet. So it could take a while, maybe even a couple of years, and she couldn’t wait that long to start grabbing some of the fun and excitement the rest of the world took for granted.
She kept singing along with Shania, letting her foot get heavy on the gas pedal until she teetered on the edge of the forty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit. Then, just as she was starting to feel pretty cool, she topped a hill and her destination came into sight, and she felt self-conscious all over again.
The Lone Wolf Saloon was nothing more than a gigantic, flat-sided metal building with its name on the side in red-and-blue neon. But looks were deceiving. From what Virginia had heard, it was sitting smack-dab in the middle of the fast lane of life, offering a wild, rowdy evening of decadence to every fun-loving person within a thirty-mile radius.
The gravel parking lot was nearly full. Virginia found a space between a pair of spit-polished, fresh-off-the-lot pickup trucks. She turned off the engine and sat in silence for a moment, hearing her mother’s voice reverberating inside her head.
Places like that ought to be outlawed. They’re sinful, that’s what they are. Sinful.
She took a few deep, calming breaths, telling herself that if going out and having a good time was a sin, hell would be so full by now that there wouldn’t be any room for her, anyway.
She grabbed her purse, eased out of her car and locked it behind her. She toddled across the gravel parking lot as best she could in her new footwear and made it to the front door. She squared her shoulders, bracing herself against the unknown, but still she was unprepared for the sensory overload that assaulted her the moment she opened the door.
The music, played by a country-western band gyrating with wild enthusiasm on a rainbow-lit stage, hit her eardrums at approximately a hundred decibels above the supersonic range. Every chord, every drumbeat, every twang of the lead singer’s voice hummed through her body like an electrical circuit gone haywire. A beer. That’s what she needed.
She headed toward the bar, passing table after table crowded with people and littered with beer bottles and ashtrays. The entire place seemed to be in motion, from the slow rhythm of interaction between men and women, to the sway of denim and leather on the dance floor, to the slither of waitresses from one table to the next. Every molecule of air was drenched in cigarette smoke, giving the room a surreal, otherworldly feel. Virginia had a thought about secondhand smoke, then chastised herself. She’d spent twenty-four years breathing the right air, so one evening of sucking in a few carcinogens was hardly going to matter.
She found an empty bar stool and climbed onto it. The bartender, a brawny beast with biceps the size of telephone poles, approached her. He wore a single gold earring that glinted under the neon lights surrounding the bar.
She cleared her throat. “A beer, please?”
“Any particular kind?”
Virginia froze. “In a bottle?”
The bartender gave her a sarcastic little smile and walked away, leaving her feeling dumb as a rock. To her relief, though, he returned a moment later and slapped a bottle on the bar in front of her. “Three bucks.”
She gave the bartender three one-dollar bills, then picked up the beer. It felt ice-cold. She sniffed it tentatively, then put the bottle to her lips and took a sip. She swallowed, and her eyes started to water. It was like drinking a rancid, extra-fizzy soda, but she managed to get it down without it coming back up. Buoyed by that small victory, she took another sip, this time a bigger one, and felt it burn all the way down her throat.
Okay. That wasn’t so bad. And because she was still among the living, she decided maybe God was taking the weekend off.
She took mini-sips of the beer and turned around on the bar stool to watch the crowd. Nobody seemed to notice her, which was pretty much par for the course. She was one of those people who didn’t speak up, who blended into the woodwork, who got lost in a crowd of two. It had been that way all her life, and she didn’t expect things would change overnight.
As long as they changed eventually.
The couples on the dance floor moved with intricate little steps and whirls, their feet always falling in just the right places. Then a dozen or so people lined up to do a little group dance, where everybody seemed to know just where to step to avoid kicking the person in front of them.
And everywhere, people were laughing.
Pretty soon Virginia started to loosen up, and by the time she’d drained the bottle, she felt warm and a little woozy. She ordered another one, thinking if one made her feel good, two would be even better.
Then the band played a soft, soulful number. Couples inched closer to each other, body-to-body, moving together as one. Virginia felt as if the world had suddenly paired up two by two and she was the odd woman out.
She rested her elbow on the bar, her cheek against her palm, watching all the lucky women who knew what it felt like to ease next to a man, tuck their heads against a broad shoulder and move to the music, letting the rest of the world slip away. A wave of longing swept through her that was so powerful she thought she’d faint from the feeling.
Not once in her life had a man so much as touched her. She’d never been on a date, never been kissed, never chatted with a girlfriend about boys. She’d never had a man look into her eyes with desire or tell her she was beautiful. She wasn’t, of course. They didn’t come any plainer than Virginia White, so she had to face facts. She was going to need a little extra something that didn’t involve a traffic-stopping body or a Miss America smile.
Maybe it was all in the way a woman moved. That was apparently what a platinum blonde on the dance floor right now thought as she undulated against her partner. Making love standing up. That’s what it looked like. Not that Virginia knew the details of such a thing, but even a cloistered nun could see what that woman had in mind.
Virginia couldn’t say she blamed her.
If she’d been dancing with a man as sexy as that woman’s partner, it might make her hormones shift into overdrive, too. He was tall, well over six feet, moving to the music as if he’d been born to do it. Virginia inhaled the sight of him, her gaze traveling from his rock-solid shoulders, to his narrow waist, to his hips and thighs swaying rhythmically inside a pair of snug, well-worn jeans. Thick, dark hair brushed the back of his shirt collar, and she watched as the blonde eased her hands upward and threaded her fingers through it. Virginia wondered what that would feel like. She wondered what all of it would feel like—dancing, touching, even kissing. She blushed at the very thought of it, but that didn’t stop her mind from wandering into previously uncharted territory. Then he turned, and she had a sudden, stunning view of an incredibly handsome face.
She blinked. It couldn’t be.
Cole McCallum.
She felt a hot rush at the realization of just who it was she was looking at. It had been a lot of years since she’d seen him, but he wasn’t the kind of guy you easily forgot. She’d been a freshman when he was a senior, but still she’d fantasized about him, even though good girls weren’t supposed to have the hots for bad boys. Not that it would have mattered which way her hots were directed. A guy like Cole McCallum would never have been interested in a shy, dumpy little wallflower who would have gone into cardiac arrest if he’d so much as glanced in her direction.
Maybe it was a good thing he’d never looked her way. If there was one thing she’d learned by keeping her mouth shut and her ears open, it was that Cole’s good looks and lady-killing smile were nothing more than bait for any unsuspecting girl who happened to wander into his web.
The band wrapped up the song and Cole left the dance floor, the blonde clinging to him like moss on a tree. Age had only improved him, turning a cocky, hell-raising, sexy-looking teenager into a smooth, confident, sexy-looking man. She couldn’t say for sure if the hell-raising part still applied, but she doubted that inclination had left him entirely.
Virginia caught the bartender’s eye and ordered another beer, and before long the room began to spin in a most pleasant manner. She closed her eyes and listened hard, but the alcohol had chased away her mother’s voice. She drained the beer and set the empty bottle on the bar with a definitive clunk. Warmth coursed through her all the way to her toes, and she sighed with contentment.
For the first time in her life she felt free.
Nobody was standing over her shoulder passing judgment. Nobody was telling her what to think. Nobody was soliciting thunderbolts from the heavens as a punishment for the slightest transgression. She was in charge of her own destiny and answered to no one.
She watched Cole dance with another woman, following his tall, gorgeous body like a moth follows light. Beer number three hit home, and she started to think that maybe there wasn’t that much difference between her and those other women he seemed so interested in. It was possible, wasn’t it, that she might even have some qualities they didn’t?
A boldness she’d never felt before unfurled inside her like a tight rosebud opening to the sun. As the minutes ticked by, she started to feel less like a wallflower and more like a woman who could rule the world. She rose from her bar stool, wobbling a little, but never losing sight of the opportunity that was staring her right in the face.
Maybe a bad boy like Cole McCallum was exactly what this good girl needed.
2
COLE TOOK a sip from his long neck, settled back in his chair and surveyed the situation. It didn’t look good.
The Lone Wolf was filled to capacity, teeming with Friday nightlife. He’d been here several times before, years ago. Even though he’d been underage through most of that time, he’d never had any trouble getting in the door. Even at seventeen he’d looked twenty-one, standing six-foot-two with an attitude even taller, tempered by a killer smile he’d learned early to use to his advantage. And he’d be willing to put it to good use right now, if only he could find that one special woman who wouldn’t mind being married for six months and then disappearing.
In the glove compartment of his car was the necessary prenuptial agreement that would allow him to sidestep Texas community property laws, along with the phone numbers of a couple of the airlines so he could snag some last-minute tickets to Vegas tomorrow night. But the woman…now that was going to be a bigger problem than he anticipated.
Not that he didn’t already have a few candidates. Within ten minutes of his arrival, three ladies had made themselves at home at his table. The first had been Tonya Jenkins, a bleach blonde who’d graduated from Coldwater High the same year he had and now lived in Tyler. She wore a denim miniskirt and fringed leather vest that closed over her ample breasts with a single tie—without the benefit of a shirt beneath it. Everything about her was excessive, from the height of her oversprayed hair to the makeup she’d applied with a steamroller, to the way she kept running her bloodred fingernails up and down his arm. He remembered now it was because of Tonya that he’d developed such an aversion to pushy women.
She grabbed his hand. “C’mon, Cole. Let’s dance.”
She had that look of hot anticipation on her face that told him if he so much as raised an eyebrow, she’d have her skirt up and her panties down in a heartbeat.
He maintained an easygoing smile. “Think I’ll sit this one out.”
“But you danced with Shelly and Tiffany.” She pressed that cherry-red bottom lip of hers into a full pout, and he could tell his mission tonight was going to be a much bigger challenge than he’d anticipated.
He’d tried to look up some of the women he knew in Dallas to see if any of them might be interested in a temporary marriage, but without exception they’d moved on to other eligible bachelors months ago when they discovered he had an arson accusation hanging over his head. So he jumped into his car and headed here, figuring a local girl might make a better candidate anyway. Someone from around here would be more likely to submit to life on a ranch for six months, while the women he knew in Dallas would last about a week before they burst into tears and rushed back to the city for a trip to Neiman Marcus and lunch at the Palm.
The downside of marrying a girl from the Coldwater area was that it pretty much insured that Murphy would find out the marriage wasn’t the real thing. But according to the provisions of the will, as long as Cole got married by midnight tomorrow night and he and his bride spent six months on the ranch as man and wife, Murphy couldn’t pull the plug on the deal just because they weren’t committed to a lifetime relationship. At the end of that time period, Cole would sell the ranch, give his new ex-wife twenty-five thousand dollars for her trouble, then take the rest of the proceeds and get on with the life he was meant to live.
He surveyed the women at his table. Shelly was a definite possibility. She was decent looking, with platinum blond hair and a pair of breasts that were beyond belief. A few quick questions had netted him the answers he needed to move forward. No, she wasn’t married; no, she wasn’t thinking of leaving town anytime soon; and yes, she was a spontaneous person. Unfortunately she seemed about as bright as a two-watt bulb.
Tiffany, on the other hand, had at least a few gears turning upstairs. She had dark, silky hair, a pair of mile-long legs and seemed to be open to new adventures, but at the same time she was quick to say she’d just come off a nasty divorce. Marriage to a man with an ulterior motive might not sit too well with her.
The more he looked at them, though, the more he sensed a harshness about them that turned him off—a shadowed, wary look in their eyes that said they’d been around the block a time or two and could easily shift into ball buster mode if need be. Could he spend six months in the same house with a woman like that?
And then there was Tonya.
He checked his watch. Time was running short, and his options were few. He had to make a decision pretty quickly, because if one turned him down, he’d need time to talk another one into it. But which one first? Would they think it was strange if he asked them to draw straws?
“Excuse me?”
He looked up from his beer to see a woman standing in front of his table. Just barely a woman. He couldn’t say for sure she was even of legal age to be there. She wore a shirt with little horseshoes all over it, and her jeans were a deep indigo blue with a loose, crinkly fit. If she added a straw hat and a bandanna, she’d look just like Dale Evans.
Her brown eyes shifted back and forth as she systematically disintegrated a balled-up cocktail napkin, and he got the feeling that if he so much as said boo she’d go running for the hills. He pictured her going out with guys who wore sweater-vests and had her home by ten o’clock—the kind of date she could bring home to Mom for Sunday dinner. But here she was at a raunchy country-western bar on a Friday night looking as out of place as a sparrow in a flock of peacocks.
Then she fixed her gaze on his, and he felt a twinge of apprehension. She took a deep, shaky breath, looking as if she were about to faint.
“Would you like to dance?” she asked.
Oh, boy. He did not need this.
Before he could say anything, though, Tonya snickered a little, then leaned forward, her forearms on the table. “A little out of your league, aren’t you, honey?”
For a minute Cole thought the woman might go running for the hills after all. Instead she stood her ground, but her slightly panicked expression said it was a hard-won battle.
Tonya smelled blood. “Don’t you have a church social to go to? Or how about a bingo game? I hear it’s twenty-dollar jackpot night down at the VFW Hall.”
To her credit, the woman didn’t respond. She weaved a little, and Cole wondered if maybe she hadn’t had one beer too many. Then she lifted her chin, and in a shaky voice she asked him again if he’d like to dance.
The other women exchanged glances, laughing behind their hands. God, he hated this. There was nothing worse than an arrogant shrew like Tonya picking on somebody who didn’t have the guts to give it right back to her. The woman’s eyes were getting a little shiny. If he didn’t do something, in just a few seconds Tonya was really going to have something to laugh about.
He sighed inwardly and gave the woman a big smile. “Sure, sweetheart. I’d love to dance.”
In unison, three female jaws hit the ground. He rose from the booth and took the woman’s hand, then parted the crowd and led her to the dance floor.
“Look out, Cole,” Tonya called. “She’s obviously a loose woman. Liable to ruin your reputation.”
The other women laughed, but Cole ignored them. He heard more snide remarks, which he likewise ignored. One quick dance, and then he could return to the business at hand.
The band was playing a mournful somebody-done-me-wrong song just perfect for slow dancing. When they reached the dance floor he pulled her around to face him. She froze, her eyes wide.
“You want to dance, don’t you?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Then what’s the matter?”
She mumbled something he couldn’t make out.
He leaned closer to her. “What?”
“I—I said I don’t know how to dance.”
Great. Now he was a dance instructor.
He thought about excusing himself and heading to the bar for another beer, but then the catcalls would only get louder and she’d probably end up crying, and he figured nobody ought to have to go through that. She stared at him, her liquid brown eyes making her look like a baby doe who’d wandered into a cougar’s den.
“There’s nothing to it,” he told her, stepping closer. “Just put your arms around my neck.”
When she didn’t move, he took her hands and draped them over his shoulders. She circled them around his collar, her touch featherlight. He slipped his arms around her waist, and she inched closer to him. He started to move a little, letting her get the feel of it, but she was as stiff as a fence post. It was like dancing with a two-by-four.
“Loosen up, sweetheart.” He flattened his palm against the small of her back and moved it in slow circles. He worked his hand up and down her back, rubbing the tension away, at the same time easing her closer.
“Good. That’s good. Now all you have to do is follow me. Just listen to the music and move along with it.”
Slowly she started to get the hang of it. As inept as she was, he had to admit it was a welcome relief from Shelly and Tiffany. To them, dancing was nothing more than vertical foreplay. They moved their silicone-amplified figures all over him as if they expected him to drop to the floor and have sex with them on the spot.
Not this one. She was soft and round and warm as toast, and he had the feeling that if he squeezed her too hard she just might break. She had hair the color of a paper sack, but it was the color God gave her and full of shine, and when he brushed his fingers over it, it felt as soft as dandelion fuzz.
“Am I doing it right?” she asked, staring at his chest.
“You’re doing just fine.”
“I don’t want to step on your feet.”
There wasn’t much of her, so he probably wouldn’t know it even if she did. “You won’t step on my feet. In fact, I can’t even tell this is your first time dancing.”
To his surprise, she inched closer and rested her cheek against his shoulder. Her head fit perfectly into the crook of his neck. As they moved to the music, he dipped his head a little and caught the scent of peach shampoo instead of being assaulted by a wave of cheap perfume. She sighed gently, and the last of her tension seemed to drain right out of her, leaving her warm and pliant in his arms. He ran his hands along her spine, down to the stretchy waistband of those oddball jeans of hers, then up to her neck, and she shifted beneath his hands and melted into him. It had been a long time since he’d danced with a woman who wasn’t auditioning for a roll in the hay, and it felt…nice.
Nice enough to be married to her for six months?
The thought came into his head in a flash, and just as quickly he sent it packing. She’d be horrified at the very thought of a temporary marriage. Women like this one met their soul mates in the church choir, dated for five years, then planned a wedding complete with doves, rice bags and a silver punch bowl. They did not sign a prenup, get married at the Elvis Memorial Wedding Chapel in Vegas, then spend their six-month anniversary getting a divorce.
After a couple of minutes the song wound down. She looked at him, blinking as if she’d just awakened from a very pleasant dream. He had the fleeting thought that he might be wearing the same expression.
He started to move away from her, thinking maybe he ought to suggest that this wasn’t the place for a woman like her, when suddenly she took a double handful of his shirt and pulled him against her. She closed her eyes. “Kiss me.”
“Excuse me?”
“Kiss me.” A note of desperation crept into her voice. “Please?”
Cole stared at her, dumbfounded. But after the initial shock wore off, he realized that the thought of fulfilling that request wasn’t entirely without appeal, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why. His taste in women ran toward the experienced type, women who gave a lot but didn’t take too much and knew how to say goodbye before breakfast.
So why wasn’t he pushing her away?
A pink flush rose on her cheeks, and her chest heaved gently as she looked at him with pleading eyes. She wanted this badly. He was no stranger to women’s desires, but something told him there was more involved here than a little elemental lust.
“Look, sweetheart, maybe you’d better—”
“Would you do it for a hundred dollars?”
“What?”
“I—I hear you’re worth it.”
He almost laughed, but she sounded so serious that he caught it before it came out. “So you know who I am?”
She nodded.
Cole sighed. More proof that his legend lived on.
He took her by the shoulders and looked at her as platonically as he knew how. “Now, look. I’m not arguing the value of my services, and I don’t remember a time in my life when I turned down easy money—”
“So you’ll do it?”
“No!”
She sighed, then circled her gaze around the room. “That’s okay, I guess. There’s bound to be somebody else here—”
Cole clamped his hand onto her forearm and hauled her off the dance floor, pulling her toward the opposite side of the room. When he reached a secluded spot next to the bar, he backed her up against the wall beneath a neon beer advertisement.
“Now, listen up! It’s not a good idea to go flashing a bunch of cash in a bar full of drunk cowboys, offering to pay them to do something that’s liable to turn into something else!”
“Something else?”
Good God. How had this woman survived life so far? He stared at her pointedly.
She looked away. “Oh. That.”
“Yes, that, maybe whether you want it or not. You don’t want to tangle with some of these guys, especially the closer it gets to closing time.”
Closing time. It was a little after eight now. He’d better get a move on if he expected to make a decision on a fiancée, or it was going to be a really short engagement.
“Maybe it would be best if you headed on home,” he said. “The later it gets around here, the rowdier it gets. It’s not a good place for a nice girl—”
“Don’t say that!”
Cole stepped back, startled. Those soft brown eyes were suddenly shooting fire.
“I’m not a nice girl! I mean, I am, but I don’t want to be!” She glanced at the bartender, a six-foot-three, two-hundred-pound slab of beef who was simultaneously drawing a beer and eyeing a brunette whose tank top was working overtime trying to contain her generous upper body. “That bartender is a possibility, I guess. Maybe I’ll ask him—”
“No!”
Cole pulled her around, wondering if her problem was confined to naïveté or whether there was an unhealthy dose of insanity thrown in. “I don’t get it. Why in the world would you pay a man to kiss you?”
She shrugged a little and looked at her feet, which she didn’t seem to be too steady on at the moment. “Because I want to know what it feels like.”
For a minute Cole wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. Then all at once the truth hit him like a brick to the side of the head. “You’ve never been kissed before?”
She continued her examination of those weird-looking boots of hers, her cheeks the color of ripe strawberries, and he had his answer.
Good Lord. How had this happened? How did any woman get through puberty and adolescence and into adulthood without so much as a kiss? Sure, she was plain, but he’d seen far less attractive women who’d managed to hook a man. How had things gone so wrong when it was so easy to make them right?
Then he pictured her sidling up next to that bruiser of a bartender and making him the same offer. Either the man would laugh his head off and humiliate her or take advantage of the situation in ways Cole didn’t even want to think about.
“I heard something once about six cheerleaders,” the woman said, her blush deepening. “I figured one little kiss wouldn’t be a big deal.”
Damn, was that story carved in granite somewhere? If so, it was time he found a stick of dynamite and did away with it permanently.
“Two things,” Cole told her. “First of all, don’t believe everything you hear. And secondly, a kiss is a big deal. Especially if you’ve never done it before.”
Those liquid brown eyes came up to meet his. They weren’t exactly beautiful—nothing about her was—but something about the way she stared at him made his throat feel tight and muddled up his thinking. Her lips parted slightly, and she touched the tip of her tongue to her lower lip, leaving it damp and glistening. There was nothing deliberately seductive about it, and maybe that’s why it was so…seductive.
Pay attention, Tonya. You’re about to get an eyeful.
“Kissing is like dancing,” he told her softly, moving his hands up to cradle her face. “You just do what comes naturally.”
She stared at him with that look of terror again, swallowing as if there were a golf ball lodged in her throat. He thought of getting it over with quickly to put her out of her misery, but then again, if she was after a hundred-dollar kiss, he figured that’s what he ought to give her.
He brushed his lips against hers. Her cheeks were tense, her jaw fixed, her mouth a firm, unyielding line.
“Relax,” he said. “This is supposed to be fun.”
He met her lips again, but this time he persisted, fixing his mouth firmly over hers until she had no choice but to give in. He stroked his thumbs along her cheekbones, feeling skin as soft as powder.
Then he wrapped his arm around the back of her neck and cradled her head in the crook of his elbow. He tilted her backward slightly, and at the same time he brought his other hand down to circle her rib cage just beneath her breast.
She gasped a little at his touch, parting her lips at the same time, and he took the opportunity to delve deeper. He teased the tip of his tongue against her lips in gentle exploration, then slipped it into her mouth and twined it softly with hers. He could feel her surprise, as if she’d never imagined kissing could involve something like that. But a moment later she slid one hand around his neck and the other over his shoulder, pulling him closer, asking for more, as if she’d just tasted an unknown delicacy and couldn’t get enough of it. Her eager response sent a jolt of awareness through him, and all at once he realized that if she’d never been kissed, then that meant she also hadn’t—
No. He’d never made love to a virgin, and he wasn’t about to start now. Too damn much responsibility there. But kissing one? Now that was another thing entirely. A thing he hadn’t realized could be quite so…enjoyable.
He moved his hand to the small of her back and pulled her tightly against him, her breasts crushed to his chest, heat coursing from her body to his. He thought he heard a catcall or two in the background, but he ignored the crowd and the raucous music and the flashing lights around them, making sure that from now on she’d know exactly what a hundred-dollar kiss felt like.
Then her knees buckled a little, and out of fear that she might actually pass out, he finally pulled away, his arm still wrapped around her back holding her snugly against him. Slowly she opened her eyes, wearing a glassy-eyed, thoroughly kissed expression that sent a shock wave right to his groin.
“I lied,” she said. “I don’t have a hundred dollars.”
“Then I guess I’ll have to take the kiss back.”
He pressed his lips to hers again in an impulsive reprise of the already thorough kiss he’d just given her. A quick start of surprise on her part immediately gave way to surrender. By now she had one kiss under her belt, moving her ahead in the amateur ranks, and this time she met him with far less fear and far more enthusiasm.
Finally he pulled away. She closed her eyes and let out a rapturous little sigh, her arms still draped around his neck. She was an amateur, yes, but he hadn’t expected her to have so much potential. Warm, willing and totally untouched—what would it be like to find a woman like that lying naked in his bed?
If he married her, he could find out.
No. That was crazy. Just kissing her had probably put him in danger of her daddy coming after him with a shotgun, and the last thing he needed right now was a major complication like that.
“Look, sweetheart. I think it’s time for you to—”
All at once her eyes sprang open, her expression becoming tense, her eyes growing wider by the moment.
“What’s the matter?” Cole asked.
She backed away from him, one hand on her stomach, the other clutching his arm. Her eyes glazed over, and her face turned as pale as an eggshell. He’d seen that look before.
“How many drinks did you have?”
“Uh…two. No. Three.”
“Is that three more than you’ve ever had before?”
“Uh-huh.” She wobbled a little, hunched over, and in her next breath everything that had gone down tonight came right back up.
VIRGINIA DECIDED there was nothing quite so inelegant as sitting on the bathroom floor of a sleazy country-western bar, hugging a toilet and staring at a wall full of graffiti describing sex acts she didn’t even think were anatomically possible. She’d barely gotten the little paper sanitary thing down on the toilet seat before she’d thrown up all over again.
She folded her arms on the edge of the toilet and rested her forehead against them, wishing the bumblebees in her stomach would head back to the hive. God had evidently gotten more creative than in the Old Testament days. What did He need with a thunderbolt? All He had to do was get her to toss down three beers and throw up at Cole McCallum’s feet. She may not be dead, but she certainly wished she was.
She couldn’t believe she’d had the nerve to ask Cole to dance, much less what came after. Of course, she had to admit that right now the majority of her courage lay in an unmentionable heap on the barroom floor. That explained her actions. But why had Cole taken her up on it?
The only reason was that he was exactly what she’d always heard—a wild, sexually insatiable animal who didn’t care where he got his kicks. Logically, that made sense. Somehow, though, the kisses hadn’t felt that way at all. They had felt warm and wonderful and exciting, and she’d wanted them to go on forever.
But maybe that was part of the game he played. He was gorgeous and charming and highly talented in the kissing department, and that’s what made him so dangerous. He’d grown into a man with ten years more experience in compromising women, and in that time he’d obviously sharpened his tools to a fine edge.
Men are after only one thing, she heard her mother saying in that chastising voice that had reappeared in her head about the time she headed for the bathroom. And once they get it, they’ll be gone.
She had to admit that her mother was somewhat of an expert on that subject. Virginia had never known her father. Her mother had—for one night. And her whole life Virginia had been a daily reminder to her mother of the mistake she’d made in trusting a man, and she never missed the opportunity to warn her daughter not to follow in her footsteps.
Virginia flicked a cigarette butt off her thigh and got up, thinking maybe it was finally safe to move farther than arm’s length away from the toilet. She left the stall, wobbled to the mirror and stifled a scream. Her hair hung in limp strings, her lipstick had melted away, and every fleck of color had fled from her face. She looked like a bag lady with anemia.
Then she had a terrible thought. What if Cole was still out there? The last thing she wanted to do was humiliate herself all over again by tripping over her own feet or teetering back and forth like an acrobat on a high wire.
The only way she could hold on to her last few shreds of self-respect was to walk out to that bar, preferably in a straight line, find her purse if it hadn’t been stolen, then go home and forget this night had ever been. And if she saw Cole, she’d simply say good-night calmly and offhandedly as if none of this—from his earth-shattering kisses to her involuntary recycling of three bottles of beer—had been any big deal at all.
3
“YOU SHOULDN’T have let your girlfriend drink that much.”
Cole glared at the bartender. “She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Whatever. I just want her out of here. Puking customers are bad for business. Where does she live?”
“I never met her before tonight. I have no idea where she lives.”
The bartender slapped a purse onto the bar in front of Cole. “Find out.”
Cole spit out a disgusted breath and unzipped Virginia’s purse. He hauled out a notepad, a checkbook, a pink plastic thing containing feminine hygiene products and one of those little blue-and-white packets of tissues. Finally he located her wallet and pulled out her driver’s license.
Virginia White. Seven-fourteen Oakdale. Coldwater, Texas.
Damn. Coldwater was a good twenty miles from here. The chances of her making it home without ending up in a ditch or wrapped around a tree were approximately zero.
“What are you doing with my purse?”
Cole looked up to see Virginia staggering toward him. She was even paler than before, her eyes heavy-lidded, and she seemed to be having a hard time focusing.
“You live in Coldwater?” he asked her.
“Yeah.”
“That’s twenty miles from here. You can’t drive home.”
“Of course I can drive home.”
She grabbed for her purse, but Cole pulled it out of her reach. He fished out her car keys and stuffed them into his pocket.
“What are you doing?”
“Any woman who can’t hold three beers ought to have her license revoked.” He reached into his other pocket, extracted some change and slapped it into her palm. “There’s a phone by the front door. Go call someone to come get you.”
She stared at him blankly.
“A friend? Relative?”
She shrugged.
“You mean there’s no one you can call?”
“It’s no concern of yours. Now, may I have my keys?”
She was right. It was no concern of his. She wasn’t his problem. So why didn’t he just order another beer, forget he’d ever met her and move on to more important matters?
She held out her hand, her mouth a firm line of determination, but he could tell from her bloodshot eyes and the way she swayed like a willow in a light breeze that she’d be lucky to make it to the front door. A tiny shred of decency he would have sworn he didn’t have nagged at him like an itch in the middle of his back he couldn’t quite reach.
Cole rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, then let out a disgusted breath. He crammed her belongings into her purse and thrust it at her. “Come on. We’re leaving.”
“What?”
“I’m taking you home.”
“That won’t be necessary. I said I’m quite able to drive.”
“Yeah. Right into a telephone pole.”
“No. I’m an excellent driver.” Her testiness almost offset the drunken slur in her voice. “I made a hundred percent on my driver’s test when I turned sixteen.”
“You think a cop’s gonna care about that when he stops you?”
“I have a perfect driving record. I’ve never had an accident. I’ve never even had a parking ticket.”
Cole wanted to beat his head against the bar. “You’re full of alcohol!”
“Not completely.”
She was right about that. “You’re still drunk, though. Believe me.”
“Yes. Well. Comparatively speaking, that would simply make me a mediocre driver. The road is full of mediocre drivers. Do they take every one of them to jail?”
He’d already determined she was both naive and insane. Now he could add illogical to the list.
She held out her hand. “My keys?”
“Fine.” Cole pulled her keys from his pocket and slapped them into her hand.
“Thank you very much,” she said, with a queenly nose-in-the-air thing that really irritated him. She swung her purse over her shoulder in a wild arc, the momentum practically knocking her over. She righted herself, took a deep breath and started for the door.
“Have a nice drive,” Cole called. “Of course, the minute you’re out the door I’m calling the cops and giving them your license number. And after you walk that little white line, you’ll spend the night in the drunk tank.”
She turned around, her eyes wide. “Drunk tank?”
“Yeah. Right after they strip-search you.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Strip-search?”
“Don’t worry. If they get too carried away, you can always sue. You have a good lawyer, don’t you?”
She squeezed her eyes closed and slumped with resignation. “What about my car? If you take me home, it’ll still be here in the morning.”
“That’s your problem.” Cole put a firm hand against her shoulder and turned her toward the door. “I’ll get you home in one piece. Past that, you’re on your own.”
Shelly’s, Tiffany’s and Tonya’s eyes flew open with disbelief as he passed by their table, his arm wrapped around Virginia’s shoulders, dragging her along. He took her to his car, unlocked the passenger door, then shook a finger at her. “Don’t you dare throw up in my car.”
“I won’t.”
Her words said she wouldn’t, but her sickly expression said it was a distinct possibility. That would be the last straw, of course. If she messed up his car, he wouldn’t think twice about tossing her out on the side of the road and letting the buzzards have at her.
He opened the door. She collapsed on the seat, but that’s as far as she got. He picked her legs up, stuffed them into the car and slammed the door.
He slid behind the wheel and jammed the key into the ignition. He was saving her from driving drunk. That was a good deed. Good deeds were supposed to make a person feel wonderful.
Yeah. Right.
He checked his watch. He had only a few hours left. He didn’t need someone throwing a wrench in the works, and he had a feeling Virginia White had a whole toolbox in her hip pocket. He intended to dump her at home, turn around and head back to the bar.
Twenty minutes later he pulled up to 714 Oakdale, a tiny white clapboard house on a tree-shaded street. It was one of those houses that had been born ugly, with a flat elevation, an aluminum storm door and casement windows. Still, it was well-kept, with a neat St. Augustine lawn, a bed of pink petunias and a wreath beside the front door. At least somebody was trying.
Virginia had fallen asleep about two minutes after getting into his car, and she still slept, breathing gently, her hands clutching her purse, her lips parted. A stray strand of hair lay across her cheek. She looked peaceful. Innocent. Helpless. The kind of woman he vowed he’d never go near again.
No lights shone in any of the windows. She lived alone, he guessed, or she’d have called someone to come pick her up. He slipped her keys out of her hand and unlocked the front door. He came around the car and pulled her out. He tried walking her toward the porch without much success, then gave up and picked her up. He climbed the porch steps with her in his arms, nudged the storm door open with his foot and flipped on the living-room light with his shoulder. He carried her into the first bedroom he came to, those goofy boots of hers banging against the door frame. He dumped her on the bed, then yanked her boots off.
A quilt lay folded at the end of the bed, and he pulled it over her. She turned on her side, squirmed around for a minute, then hugged the pillow and played dead. And dead was just how she was going to feel in the morning.
Cole went into the living room. The house was stuck in a time warp. Green shag carpet, heavy gold drapes, brown plaid furniture. But even though it was probably the dreariest decor he’d ever seen, the inside of the house was as clean and well-kept as the outside had been.
He decided he’d lock up behind him and stick her keys in the mailbox. He found a magnetic notepad stuck to the refrigerator and wrote her a message to that effect. He put it on the kitchen table and started to walk away when he noticed several envelopes and their contents scattered on the table. He saw utility bills, pay stubs, several credit card bills and a letter. He picked up the letter. It was from her landlord. She was a month behind.
He retrieved her purse from her bedroom, pulled out her checkbook and flipped it open to see a balance of sixty-two dollars and seventeen cents.
He went to the kitchen and looked through the rest of the mail. A bill from a funeral home. A whopper. Fishing through a few more papers on the table, he found a program from the funeral of Margaret White, age sixty-two, who’d gone to meet her maker about three months ago. And judging from what he’d seen so far, she didn’t have a father, either.
Growing nosier by the minute, he dug deeper and found a college catalog from the University of Texas at Austin. Several banking and finance courses were circled, but looking at her checkbook, she hadn’t paid a dime for tuition for next semester. The course bulletin was a dream book, nothing more.
As he put the pieces of her life together, he started having second thoughts about her suitability as a wife. With her abysmal financial condition, would she really be so horrified at the prospect of a temporary marriage if he made it worth her while?
She might be the kind of woman who met her soul mate in the church choir, but after Cole divorced her in six months she’d still have the opportunity to find Mr. Right wherever she wanted to look. Daddy didn’t appear to be around, so he wouldn’t have to worry about turning a corner and finding himself looking down the barrel of a shotgun. She was a little on the plain side, which distressed him a bit, but kissing her hadn’t been half bad. Maybe a woman who wasn’t obsessed with her looks would be a pleasant change. For his own sanity he needed a halfway intelligent woman, and her college aspirations said she probably fit that description. And as far as college tuition was concerned, she’d probably jump at the twenty-five thousand dollars he was willing to give her for taking six months out of her life to become Mrs. Cole McCallum. And best of all, she was naive and innocent, which meant he’d be able to control the situation and call the shots. It just might work.
Cole smiled. It looked as if the good deed he’d done tonight had paid off, after all.
VIRGINIA BLINKED her eyes open and was met with early-morning sunlight filtering through her bedroom curtains. She lay motionless, a little disoriented. A few seconds later her senses woke up, and she let out a low, agonized groan.
A bass drum was playing inside her head, boom-boom-booming in sync with the rhythm of her heart. She tried to move, but every muscle ached, and when she swallowed her mouth was dry as parchment.
Then she felt something. A gentle tap on her shoulder. A pause. A harder tap.
A man’s voice.
“Virginia. Time to get up.”
Her eyes sprang open. She flipped over like a hotcake on a griddle and found herself staring directly into the eyes of Cole McCallum.
With a strangled scream, she pushed herself to a sitting position and backed against the headboard. She almost screamed again as she realized he was wearing nothing but a towel draped around his hips. His dark hair was damp and slicked back, and droplets of water clung to his shoulders.
“Wh-what are you doing?” Virginia sputtered.
“Thought I’d catch a quick shower. But don’t worry. I left you plenty of hot water.”
She couldn’t think. She couldn’t even breathe. But her eyes were in fine working order, roaming over Cole’s body like those of a hungry diner checking out a smorgasbord. Her gaze traveled from his strong, sculpted shoulders, to his broad chest tapering down to a narrow waist, to a sharply defined set of abdominal muscles that made her think of a statue she’d once seen in an art-history book. She stared in awe at every inch of tanned skin, every ripple of muscle, every sexy bit of him that showed beyond the towel. For a split second her mind wandered to what lay beneath the towel and she wondered if it was perfection, too, then chastised herself for even thinking it.
Cole gave her a lazy smile. “I haven’t had my body examined this closely since my last doctor’s visit.”
Virginia jerked her gaze away, feeling a hot blush rising on her cheeks. She’d just been surprised, that’s all. That’s why she’d stared. The man was clearly some kind of exhibitionist. Why else would he enjoy parading around nearly naked in front of a total stranger?
“I—I’d appreciate it if you’d put some clothes on.”
He backed away a step or two, then turned and walked casually to a chair in the corner where his clothes lay.
“Better turn your back, sweetheart. I’ve been known to send a woman or two into shock.”
Virginia turned away and focused on the ceramic butterfly music box on her nightstand, trying to keep her thoughts north of Cole’s waist and south of his knees. Behind her she heard the faint thud of a damp bath towel hitting the hardwood floor. She told her heart to settle down, but it clearly intended to ignore her brain and beat her chest to death. She imagined him pulling his long, lean legs into those tight, faded jeans he’d worn last night, easing them up over his thighs and…and other things. Finally she heard a zipper, and she took a breath for the first time since she’d averted her eyes.
“All clear,” he said a moment later, and she turned to see him shrugging into his shirt.
She peered at him tentatively. “Have you been here all night?”
That smile again. “I guess you don’t remember, do you?”
Slowly the memories came together, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle scattered about. Moving to music. Cole’s arms wrapped around her. Her head on his shoulder. A long, incredible kiss…then another. And then…
And then the getting sick part. No wonder she felt so awful.
Then she remembered him saying something about key possession and drunk tanks and strip searches that was all a little fuzzy but retrievable, but as she played out the rest of the evening in her mind, panic set in. The last thing she remembered was being in Cole’s car, driving home. Past that, she drew a blank. She glanced to the bed beside her and saw rumpled sheets and blankets.
She wasn’t the only one who’d occupied it.
As she put two and two together and it started to look an awful lot like four, her heart shifted into overdrive. “Where did you sleep?”
He glanced at the bed beside her, then smiled. “You really don’t remember, do you?”
She ducked her head, feeling that long-lost color returning to her cheeks. Could she actually have become a fallen woman and remembered nothing on the way down?
“Cole?” she said, barely able to croak out the words. “Did you…last night…?”
He buttoned one cuff, then started on the other. “Did I what?”
“You know…” She gestured toward the mussed blankets.
“Ah. You want to know if we made love.” He shrugged. “Would it be a problem if we had?”
Oh, God. Virginia’s hand flew to her mouth, and she squeezed her eyes closed. Every warning her mother had ever issued her came back in a huge rush of condemnation, and she thought she was going to be sick all over again.
A little music, a little fun and a lousy beer or two. That’s all she’d wanted. Then, like some kind of naive fool, she’d allowed herself to fall into the hands of a man who practically made it a profession to rip the reputation out from under any girl he came in contact with. Embarrassment welled up inside her, then took a sharp turn toward anger.
“You—you had no right to do this!”
“No right to do what? As I recall, you were the one flashing cash around last night, looking for a good time.”
“A kiss! That’s all!”
“Now, didn’t I tell you that sometimes you get a whole lot more than you bargained for?” He lifted an eyebrow and dropped his voice. “I’m one of those guys you don’t mess with around closing time.”
“But I wasn’t of…of sound mind,” she argued. “I’d had far too much to drink—”
“Whose fault was that?”
“And then…and then you dragged me home—”
“Saving you from driving drunk, if you’ll remember.”
“And then you did…did this,” she went on, waving her hand wildly over the scrambled sheets and blankets. “And I didn’t even know it!” She buried her head in her hands. She’d done it now. What had probably been heaven last night had bought her a one-way ticket for the other direction.
When she glanced up, his teasing smile had faded. “Is that what you really think, Virginia? That you passed out and I took advantage of you?”
“You were standing in my bedroom half-naked! What else am I to think?”
“Use some common sense, will you? You’re wearing the same clothes you were wearing last night. I’ve undressed a lot of women in my life, but I can’t say I’ve ever put any of their clothes back on.”
She looked at herself and for the first time she realized that her blue jeans, horseshoe blouse and push-up bra were still intact. A little wrinkled here and there, but intact. Only her boots were missing.
“And where I come from,” he went on, “we always undress when we take showers.”
“You could have dressed in the bathroom!”
He gave her a cocky grin. “But that wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun.”
She glared at him, starting to get a little fed up with his attitude. He thought this was funny. She didn’t see anything funny about it.
“Don’t worry. Your virtue was safe last night. See, I’ve got this weird sexual preference. I prefer my women conscious.”
She had to admit he was probably telling her the truth. If he’d made love to her, chances are she’d have remembered. Thinking about the way he kissed, she was pretty sure he could drag a woman out of a coma if he set his mind to it.
She closed her eyes, and for a brief moment she was back at that bar last night, standing under that neon beer sign with the music pulsing through her, and Cole was kissing her. She had no idea a simple kiss could feel like that, except that there was nothing simple about it. Sensations had bombarded her from all directions, turning her insides to mush and making her feel all dizzy and disoriented. She remembered the way Cole had smelled, that warm, musky, man smell she’d never experienced before because she’d never gotten close enough to a member of the opposite sex. She remembered that boneless, melting feeling that had taken over her body as he crushed her breathlessly against him, and the way he tasted when he slipped his tongue into her mouth and she found out firsthand what all the fuss was about French-kissing. Just thinking about it made her cheeks burn, and she turned away from him, knowing she was blushing. Just once in her life she wished she could keep her circulatory system from betraying every embarrassing thought she had, particularly where Cole was concerned.
She’d asked for a kiss, and he’d delivered. Boy, had he delivered. Thankfully, it appeared that was all he’d delivered. She sighed with relief, feeling as if her one-way trip to hell had just been canceled. When she finally got around to doing that, she swore it would be with a man she loved and a man who loved her, too, even if it took forever to find him. A man she was married to, for heaven’s sake. She’d never make the same mistake her mother had. Never.
She inched her gaze around. “But if we didn’t… I mean, if all we did is sleep, then what are you doing here?”
Cole sat on the chair and pulled his boots on, then stood. He sauntered to the bed where Virginia sat. He towered over her, and she had to tilt her head to meet his gaze.
“I have a proposition for you.”
Virginia closed her eyes. “Oh, God.”
“Take it easy, sweetheart. Not that kind of proposition.” He sat on the bed next to her. She instinctively shrank away from him, and he slumped with frustration. “Are you always this uptight?”
“Yes! When I find a naked man in my bedroom who won’t go away, yes! I get a little uptight!”
“Is that what you really want? For me to go away?”
“Yes!”
“Sorry. That’s not an option.” He checked his watch. “Look, Virginia, I’m a little short on time here, so I’m going to get right to the point. Listen up and try to follow, because I don’t want to have to explain it twice. My grandmother died six months ago. She had a ranch about fifteen miles south of Coldwater that she willed to me, but she attached a few conditions. Part of the deal is that I have to be married and live on the ranch for six months before I get the deed, because she had this crazy idea that I needed to get married and settle down. Are you following me?”
Virginia’s brain still felt fuzzy. “Yeah. I think so.”
“Living on the ranch for six months is no problem. It’s the other thing. The marriage thing.”
She stared at him blankly.
“If I’m going to inherit that property, I need a wife, and I need one now.”
He took a deep breath, then rubbed his hand across his mouth as if he’d give anything to hold back the words that were getting ready to come out.
“What I’m trying to say is…will you marry me?”
4
THE MOMENT Cole said the word marry, whatever fuzziness Virginia still felt from her encounter with three bottles of beer last night was knocked right out of her. She sat up suddenly, staring at him with utter disbelief.
“What did you say?”
“It’ll be a business arrangement. That’s all. None of this till death do us part stuff. We stay on the ranch six months, I get the deed, then we get a divorce. That’s it.”
It was as if Cole were speaking a foreign language. The words themselves came through clearly, but she was having a really hard time comprehending them.
“And there’s something in this deal for you, too,” Cole went on. “Good thing, considering how broke you are.”
Virginia’s brain went on red alert. How did he know that? “Broke?” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. “I’m not broke.”
“Your bank balance is approximately sixty-seven dollars. You’ve got bills up to your eyeballs and a landlord breathing down your neck. And I don’t see you getting out anytime soon on that lousy salary they pay you at the bank.”
“How do you know—?”
He gave her a knowing look, and all at once she thought about the stuff on her kitchen table, the bills, her check stubs. And then there was her purse. He’d already helped himself to that at the bar. Apparently he didn’t think twice about rummaging through it again, and the thought of it infuriated her.
“You went through my things? While I was in here passed out, you looked through my whole house?”
“Not the whole house. I’m still not sure whether you wear briefs or bikinis.”
Virginia gasped even as her face reddened with embarrassment. “Get out!”
Cole didn’t budge.
“Get out of my house! Now!”
He regarded her for a long time, his dark eyes grim and calculating. Finally he held up his palms in resignation.
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