by Cat Johnson
“Where are you from?” It came out sounding more like an accusation than a question as Jenna took in his western style shirt, denim jeans and cowboy boots. Before she’d heard him talk, she had assumed it was some sort of costume required by the bar for the staff or something.
“Not from here.” He grabbed another dripping glass from the rack and dried it with a tattered, white towel.
Jenna wasn’t about to be dissuaded so easily by his vague, evasive answer. “Yeah, I gathered that. So where exactly are you from?”
He smirked but made no move to end Jenna’s suspense.
“Texas,” a cocktail waitress answered for him, to the cowboy’s obvious chagrin, before she added, “and I need another pitcher of beer with three cold mugs.”
The unhappy Texan went to fill the pitcher, and Jenna took the opportunity to question the waitress further. “He doesn’t happen to know anything about rodeos, does he?”
The waitress cackled. “Him? Nah. Don’t think so. The word is he used to work on the oil rigs.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.” Jenna’s heart fell. Oil rigs. She knew even less about them than horses, so giving her fictional cowboy that profession was out, particularly in light of the Texan bartender’s lack of helpfulness so far.
The cowboy returned with the waitress’ order, grinning. “Sorry, darlin’, but not all cowboys ride bulls, or even horses for that matter.”
With a long look that took the man in from the top of his dark head to the tips of his booted toes, Astrid jumped into the conversation. “You must know something about the rodeo. I mean, there are lots of bulls and horses in Texas, right?”
He laughed, a low, rumbling sound, and Jenna, stifling a groan, watched her friend melt a little bit more over him. The reason Astrid had planned girl’s night out in this testosterone pit was becoming quite apparent. She was on the prowl tonight.
“I’m sure I know more than the two of you ladies, but no, I don’t know enough to have her quoting me on her little white napkin there.” He hooked a thumb in the direction of Jenna and her pen, which was poised and ready for action above the aforementioned cocktail napkin.
Criticism of her research style aside, Jenna decided if he knew anything about rodeo, it would be better than what she knew, which was nothing. “What was your name again?”
“Tex.”
She raised a brow. “Seriously?”
“Yup.” Somehow that one syllable became more like three as he drew it out, long and slow.
“Okay, Tex, I’d be happy to leave you a very generous tip if you’d be willing to give me just a few rodeo details I can use in my book.”
As Astrid leaned further over the bar like a magnet drawn to a big, tall, sexy hunk of metal, Jenna considered throwing her friend into the bargain along with the tip in exchange for some rodeo facts. She was fairly certain Astrid, looking starry-eyed and practically drooling, wouldn’t mind.
Tex. Jenna would have to consider naming a side character that. Perhaps Buck Wild could have a best friend.
The man in question pulled a pen from behind his ear, grabbed another cocktail napkin, and scribbled something. He shoved it across the bar and went to help a customer.
Astrid slapped one hand down hard onto the bar top and spun to face Jenna. “Oh my God! If he gave you his phone number, I’m going to scream. How come the cute ones always like you best?”
If that were true, then how come Jenna was alone? Very, very alone. Oh yeah, because all men sucked, that’s why. Even the tall, dark and Texan ones, she was sure.
Jenna glanced at the napkin in her hand and shook her head. Astrid’s hissy fit was for nothing, because all she’d gotten from Tex was one word.
Google.
Hmm, who knew cowboys knew about Internet search engines, even a behemoth like Google? Maybe cowboys weren’t as backwoods or backwards as she had thought.
Jenna shoved the napkin at her friend, shot a less than friendly glance in Tex’s direction and mumbled, “Smart ass.”
Already eyeball-deep into a huge crush, Astrid grinned. “Yeah, he is and I think I like it. Damn, I wish all these people would leave him alone so he’d come back.”
So did Jenna, because she still wasn’t convinced he hadn’t ridden a bull or two himself and if so, she’d get it out of him even if she had to sacrifice Astrid’s dubious virtue to do it.
With a sigh, Astrid gave up firing dirty looks at the patrons who were keeping Tex from her and turned back to Jenna. “So what do you want to do for your birthday next week?”
Jenna groaned. “Ignore it.”
“Oh, come on. It’s a milestone. We have to do something.”
“Thirty-five is not a milestone.” Thirty, yeah, that had been a big one. Forty, God help her, would be even worse. But thirty-five she was willing to ignore. “I’ll be away, anyway. Remember?”
Astrid wrinkled her nose, but Jenna wasn’t sure if it was related to Tex’s persistent absence from their end of the bar, or over Jenna’s impending trip during her birthday. “Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten. Where are you going again?”
“A romance writer’s conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma, of all places. What the hell could there possibly be to do in Tulsa when we have a break from the convention stuff? It’s going to be such a bore.” Jenna rolled her eyes.
Aside from the movie Oklahoma, which she was pretty sure had also been a musical, she knew nothing about the state except that it was in the middle of the country somewhere and she’d have to suffer through the airport security lines to get there.
“Oh my God! Jenna!” Astrid’s hand clamped down on Jenna’s forearm as she squinted at something over Jenna’s shoulder.
“What?”
Astrid was ready to bubble over. “Take a look at the television behind you.”
Jenna spun around just in time before the station cut to a commercial to see a graphic on the screen advertising—oh my God was right—next week’s bull riding competition in Tulsa. “Holy crap.”
She turned back as Astrid grinned. “Looks like you just found something to do in Tulsa next week, and you’ll be able to do some in person rodeo cowboy research at the same time.”
Jenna considered her good fortune. It really was serendipity, but one question remained. “What does one wear at a rodeo?”
“How about a cowboy?” Astrid’s face shone with an evil grin before she perked up like a dog that had just been shown a bone. “Um, Jen. Don’t be mad, but our dates just arrived.”
Managing to swallow the sip of her drink she’d just taken instead of choking at that revelation, Jenna set her glass on the bar none too gently and narrowed her eyes at her supposed friend. “What do you mean our dates?”
“Surprise?” Astrid’s smile wavered a bit at Jenna’s lack of enthusiasm.
Jenna opened her mouth, about to let Astrid know exactly what she thought of the surprise, when she was frantically shushed.
“Shh. Listen. I found them on a matchmaking site online and they’re perfect. Just go with it, okay?” Astrid hissed, before swiveling on her stool to face the two smiling men approaching them.
With a groan Jenna also turned on her barstool, but to face the bar instead of the two unwelcome dates. She raised her nearly empty glass in the air.
“Another drink please, Tex. Better make it a strong one.” Catching one of the guys checking out her ass perched on the stool, Jenna had a feeling she was going need it.
Chapter Three
Airport security at Newark Liberty International was worse than she remembered, even worse now than it had been immediately after the 9/11 attacks as new and more ridiculous restrictions on air travelers were instituted daily. No liquids. No shoes. No coats. By the time Jenna got through the metal detector she was barefoot and practically topless, self-consciously wearing nothing but tight sweatpants and a thin, too small t-shirt after having had to remove her zip-up jacket and put it on the conveyor belt along with her shoes and bag.
The Transportation Security Admi
nistration guard, who took much less time studying the x-ray image of her carry-on bag than he did her boobs, asked, “So what’s a pretty girl like you still doing single?”
He stared pointedly at her ringless finger as if the fact she wasn’t marked as married with a ring meant she was available and would drop her pants, bend over the conveyor belt, and do him right there behind the x-ray machine.
Resisting the urge to cross her arms over her chest beneath the lascivious leer of the grinning guard, Jenna lied while grabbing her belongings as quickly as she could without looking like a terrorist fleeing security. “Actually, I don’t wear any jewelry when I travel, and I’m not exactly single. I left my engagement ring at home. I’m on my way to meet up with my fiancé. He’s a rodeo cowboy and he’s entered in a bull riding competition this week in Tulsa, Oklahoma.”
Always throw a few real facts in with your lies to make them more believable.
Good thing Jenna was a writer and could come up with these ridiculous stories on the spot. Creativity came in handy at the oddest times. If this guy, by some strange twist of fate, was a rodeo fan and asked her which bull rider was her fiancé, she was totally screwed. Maybe she hadn’t thought this out too well. Though, by the looks of him, he was not a rodeo fan.
It seemed as if threats of the unnamed though possibly large and menacing, bull riding cowboy fiancé a thousand miles away weren’t going to deter the guard’s advances. In spite of the growing number of travelers waiting impatiently on line behind her, he was still not letting her go. Thankfully, Jenna’s cell phone rang.
“That’s my fiancé now. I have to get this. Gotta go.” Jenna forced a smile and struggled to locate her phone in the outside pocket of her bag while she padded as quickly as possible away from the security checkpoint Barefoot still, she made her way to a chair around the corner and out of his line of sight to put her jacket and shoes back on as Astrid’s voice came through the phone.
“How’s the trip so far?”
Jenna groaned. “I just this minute got through security. And I’m telling you right now, next flight I’m going to wear the wedding band my grandmother left me in her will because apparently single women are fair game for being hit on by the TSA.”
“Jenna! You got picked up at security? Sometimes I really hate you. Do you know that?”
“Astrid, are you insane?” Jenna still couldn’t shake the sense of being violated from the encounter with the slime bag agent and Astrid was jealous?
Finally fully covered and feeling a bit more sheltered and more than relieved that the stripping portion of the trip was over, at least for this leg of the journey, Jenna glanced up at the gate numbers and started the walk to hers. Locating her gate not too far down the row, Jenna settled into an empty vinyl chair for the hour plus wait until her flight boarded.
Still sounding unhappy, Astrid went on anyway. “Whatever. Did Tim from the other night call you?”
Given that Jenna had, unbeknownst to Astrid, given him a fake phone number the answer to that question was easy. Pulling her laptop out of her carry-on, Jenna prayed for wireless Internet so she could check her email while she answered Astrid with as much innocence as she could muster. “No. Did…um, what’s his name call you?”
“Jeremy. And no.” Astrid let out a big sigh.
“Don’t tell me you liked him,” Jenna accused.
“Yeah, kinda. Why?”
“Why?” The man hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off of Jenna’s boobs and butt and he was supposed to be Astrid’s date, that’s why. But Jenna couldn’t exactly tell her friend that so she threw out her next best piece of ammunition. “For one thing, Jeremy pretty much came right out and suggested the four of us go back to his place and have some fun.”
“So?”
“So, I don’t think he was suggesting we play Scrabble. Astrid, they were looking for some sort of swinging, group sex, orgy thing!” Jenna lowered her voice as she noticed the dark-suited businessman seated across from her seem a bit too interested in the conversation.
“No. I don’t think so.” Astrid hesitated for a second. “You think?”
“Uh, yeah, I do. And besides that, there is no way the two of them work on Wall Street. I’m sorry, but men who make the kind of money they were pretending to make do not wear cheap polyester jackets. And those shoes!” Jenna may not know a lot about a lot of things, but she knew clothes and shoes.
Astrid sighed. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Damn. Where are all the good guys hiding? I probably should have waited around for Tex to get off work instead. He may only be a bartender but at least I knew that upfront.”
Jenna hated to encourage Astrid’s flirtations with any man any further, but going home with Tex would have been a better plan than picking up two guys on the Internet and inviting them out for drinks. Then maybe, if Astrid were dating Tex, Jenna could at least get some good cowboy dialogue out of listening to him talk.
“Oh well. I better get back to work. The evil witch is roaming about and I don’t want her to catch me on the phone on a—horror—personal call!”
Jenna smiled, thankful for not the first time that she didn’t have a boss to report to. But if she didn’t get this new book written, that might not be the case for much longer. Saying goodbye to Astrid, Jenna connected to the airport’s wireless Internet and scrolled through the emails that had accumulated since the night before.
Amid the junk, one email stood out. Romancing the Romance Reviews. RRR was infamous for being tough. Swallowing hard, Jenna clicked the email open, tapping her foot against the leg of her chair, as the browser seemed to take forever to load. Finally, the review was in front of her.
Jenna skimmed the summery of the plot from her last release, heading straight to the end. That was always the most important part to read, the reviewer’s opinion, which is when Jenna blurted out a loud “What?” that had the businessman across from her raising an eyebrow.
Jenna read through the review again, and then again, but it didn’t change anything. The reviewer found the story “fairly entertaining” and the characters “moderately compelling”, but none of that mattered because trumping all the not so complimentary compliments was the one devastating line that overshadowed the rest.
Unfortunately, I cannot give Ms. Block a rave review nor recommend this book to others because of my disappointment with the sensual scenes, what there were of them, which bored me nearly to tears.
As Jenna sat in stunned silence, contemplating if her agent had read this review and was ready to dump her because her sex scenes were “boring”, an announcement cut through the air.
“Attention all passengers on Flight 921 to Tulsa. The flight’s departure has been delayed for an indeterminate amount of time.”
Can this trip get any worse? Honestly, what else could possibly go wrong?
A shadow fell across Jenna’s laptop, blocking out the light from the overhead fluorescent bulbs. Her gaze traveled up from the brown scuffed shoes, to the gray polyester pinstripe suit held up by a black belt, and ending finally at the horrendously bad toupee.
“You traveling alone, sweetie?” The man displayed yellowed teeth with his cheesy, leering grin.
Jenna stifled a groan. She’d had to ask, and now the answer was obvious. Yes, this trip could indeed get worse. Apparently her hell had only just begun.
———
“Holy fuck.” Mustang hissed in a breath as the woman laying between his splayed thighs scraped her teeth none too gently one last time up his now spent cock. His body twitched as the pleasure and pain mingled and became nearly, but not quite, unbearable.
“Jeez, you can say that again.” Slade laughed next to him, looking at his own half of the pair of eighteen-year-old best friends they’d picked up. They’d found the girls at a bar after stopping in town to rest for the night.
Slade’s girl rolled off him to lie on her back, panting from the wild ride Slade had provided. Her silicone-filled tits stood straight up, saluting the ceiling
of the trailer.
Mustang glanced down at his portion of the matching set as her mouth finally released him with an audible pop and lounged on her side. Eyeing her torpedo-like boobs as they defied gravity, he wondered if the two friends had gotten a two-for-one deal on their breast implant surgery.
His quarter of their cozy foursome began running her fingernail over him, playfully tracing the line of hair that ran from his stomach straight down to the organ she’d gotten intimately familiar with over the past hour. Practically purring, she asked, “You ready to go again, cowboy?”
Mustang glanced down at Junior, who was curled up in pretty much a fetal position at the moment after the tongue lashing he’d just received. Mustang considered himself in good shape, but damn…
“A man needs a little bit of recovery time. You gotta give me a few minutes, darlin’.”
Mustang searched his memory for the brunette’s name. He knew one was Candy and one was Destiny. Destiny had dark hair because both words started with a “d”. That meant Slade’s girl, the blonde, was Candy.
“That’s okay. You can watch for now,” Destiny suggested with a smirk.
Mustang watched, not understanding what she meant until she crawled over Slade and settled herself in between her best friend’s legs. Her hands parted the flesh there. What Mustang knew was a very talented tongue shot out to thrust into her friend, causing the other girl, who Mustang noticed for the first time had blond hair on her head and black hair on her bush, to jolt and then do some purring of her own.
Next to him, Slade’s brows shot up to his hairline. Eyes never leaving the two females on the bed, Mustang said, “You know, Slade. I liked your idea about trying to find twins, but there’s no way sisters would do that.”
If they did, there’s no way he’d want to be around to see it. That would be too freaking weird.
After a few speechless moments during which both he and Slade watched the girl-on-girl action with rapt attention, Mustang sat up. “Well, that’s it. I’m ready to go again.”
