“Y-yeah,” she stammered, then more loudly, “Yeah, Dee Dee, it’s me.”
A pair of three-inch heels and a stretch of bare leg appeared in Forrest’s peripheral vision, then Dee Dee was squatting down on the ground beside them, balancing a huge vase of roses on her knees. She stuck her face in the space between theirs, looking at first one then the other. She beamed a smile bright enough to snag a job for a toothpaste commercial. “Aren’t you two a little old to be wrestling around on the ground?” she chided teasingly.
Slowly Forrest released his hold on Becky’s wrists and levered himself to his feet. His gaze on Becky’s, he reached down and offered her his hand. “I was just teaching Becky a new self-defense technique.” He kept his gaze on hers, daring her to disagree with him.
“Y-yeah,” she stammered, accepting the hand up. She made a show of dusting off her jeans and shirt. “That was a good one, Woody,” she improvised. “Caught me totally off guard.”
Dee Dee giggled and stood, too, easing up beside Forrest. “You’ll have to teach me that move, Forrest.” She shifted the vase to her hip and balanced it there, so she could free a hand to loop through his arm. She snuggled close, pressing one of her 36DD’s against his arm as she looked up and batted her false eyelashes at him. “A girl never knows when she might have to defend herself against an aggressive male.”
Becky huffed a disbelieving breath. “As if you’d put up a fight,” she muttered under her breath as she stooped to scrape her hat from the ground.
Forrest carefully peeled the woman’s fingers from around his arm and stepped away, separating himself from her. “Sure, Dee Dee. Anytime.” He nodded toward the vase of roses. “What have you got there?”
Dee Dee smiled up at him. “Roses. For Becky,” she added with a can-you-believe-it arch of one brow, then turned to offer them to her.
Becky accepted them with a mumbled thanks, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. I’m gonna kill you, Miss Manie, she threatened silently.
Dee Dee edged closer, her gaze straying to the card buried among the roses. “Everybody at the shop is just dying to know who sent them.”
Sure that Dee Dee had known all along that Miss Manie was the one who had ordered the flowers, Becky looked up at her in surprise. “You don’t know?”
“Uh-uh. The order arrived by special courier earlier this morning. There was an envelope with instructions and cash inside, but there was no name anywhere and the enclosure card was sealed. Not that we would have looked,” she added quickly, glancing up at Becky, all innocence. Then she turned her gaze on the card again, eyeing it like a druggy would his next fix. “Aren’t you going to open it?” she asked hopefully, then flapped her hand, and laughed. “Well, of course you’re not! Your hands are full.”
Before Becky could stop her, Dee Dee had plucked the small envelope from among the roses, slipped a nail beneath the flap and was pulling out the enclosed card. She quickly scanned it, her eyes widening. She lifted her head to stare at Becky in surprise. “Oh-h-h, my!”
Forrest moved closer, his curiosity overruling good sense. “Who sent them?”
Dee Dee fanned her face with the card. “I don’t know, but I sure would like to meet him.” She lifted a questioning brow at Becky. “Is he as good in bed as he is with words?”
Becky snatched the card from Dee Dee’s hand, then gave the woman a nudge with her elbow. “I don’t want to keep you, Dee Dee. I’m sure you’ve got other deliveries to make. Thanks for bringing the flowers out.”
“Yeah,” Dee Dee said, casting a regretful look Forrest’s way, “I do have a few other stops to make.” With a sigh, she turned for her van, churning her hips from side to side—for Woody’s benefit, Becky was sure. When she reached the van, she turned and waved at him. “Now don’t you forget that you promised to teach me that self-defense move,” she called.
“I won’t, Dee Dee.”
“Tramp,” Becky muttered under her breath.
He turned to look at her. “What?”
She shifted the vase in her arms. “I said, cramp. Holding these roses is making my arm cramp.”
Reminded of the flowers, Forrest shifted his gaze to them. He wanted to ask who they were from, what the card said. But he knew who’d sent them. Becky’s fiancé. And he didn’t think he wanted to know what the card said. Not after witnessing Dee Dee’s reaction to it.
And after feeling Becky lying beneath him, her breasts pressed against his chest, the thought of her in bed with another man...well, it just plain made him sick.
He nodded toward the flowers. “Better get ‘em in the house before the wind beats all the petals off,” he said gruffly. He stooped and scraped his hat from the ground where it had fallen and settled it back over his head, then headed for his horse. “See you later,” he mumbled miserably.
“Hey! What about lunch?” Becky called after him. “I thought you were starving?”
He stopped beside his horse and gathered up the reins. Swinging up into the saddle, he muttered, “Not anymore,” and turned the gelding for home.
Four
“Was he there when the roses were delivered?”
Becky stuffed an armload of quilts into a box and pressed them down with a little more force than necessary. “Oh, he was there, all right,” she replied dryly as she stretched to grab a roll of packing tape from the floor.
Miss Manie closed the top of the now empty cedar chest and dusted off her hands. “What was his reaction?”
Scowling, Becky fought with the strip of tape she’d dispensed. “He climbed on his horse and left.”
“Perfect.”
“Perfect?” Becky echoed, frowning as she slung her hand, trying to shake loose from the sticky tape.
Chuckling, Miss Manie snipped the strip free from the roll, then unwound the mangled tape from Becky’s fingers. “Yes, perfect,” she repeated. She gestured toward the box. “Hold the lid down,” she instructed, “and I’ll tape it shut.”
Becky pressed her hands against the lid. “What’s so good about him leaving? I thought the idea was to keep him around so that I could make him jealous?”
With a soft creak of her knees, Miss Manie straightened and brushed the back of her wrist across her forehead, pushing back her gray hair. “That was just the first stage of our plan. Now it’s time for stage two.” She waved her hand at the box they’d sealed. “Just set it there by the door with the others.”
Struggling to lift the cumbersome box, Becky eyed Miss Manie warily. “I don’t think I want to know what stage two is.”
“You want Forrest to fight for you, don’t you?”
Becky shoved the box on top of the growing pile by the door. “Fight who? A shadow?”
“Never you mind,” Miss Manie said, wagging a stern finger at Becky. “It’s the intent we’re after, not the act.”
Weary of talking about the mess she’d gotten herself in, Becky glanced around the nearly empty room. “What’s next?”
Miss Manie looked around, too, and bit down on her lip to stop its quivering.
“Aww, now, Miss Manie,” Becky soothed, moving to wrap an arm around the older woman’s shoulder. “You’re not going to cry, are you?”
Miss Manie gave a quick sniff. “Piddle. Why would I cry? It’s just an old house.”
Becky chuckled and gave her a squeeze. “A house that you’ve lived in—for what?” she asked, peering curiously at the woman. “Forty years?”
“Forty-nine, but who’s counting?” Miss Manie waved away Becky’s offer of sympathy. “We’ve done enough packing for one day. Any more, and there won’t be a thing left for that new husband of mine to do when he arrives.” She headed for the doorway. “Come on out to the kitchen and we’ll have us a cup of herbal tea while I go over the steps for stage two.”
Becky followed, her steps heavy with dread. “This isn’t going to be like step one, is it? Where you send me flowers and I have to say mushy stuff to you on the phone?”
Miss Manie turned, frow
ning her disapproval over the top of her bifocals. “No. In this step, you take a much more aggressive role ” Pushing her glasses up higher on her nose, she turned back to the kitchen. “It’s time you started teasing him a little.”
Becky stumbled to a stop, her stomach doing a slow flip. Tease him a little? Her? She hurried to catch up.
“Miss Manie, you wouldn’t have a beer stashed somewhere in the house, would you?” she asked hopefully. “I think I’m going to need something a little stronger than tea before I can listen to your plans for stage two”
Forrest stood in his office, his hands braced low on his hips, staring angrily at the same wall of pictures he’d been staring at earlier that morning. Dammit! It just wasn’t fair. All these years he’d spent living nght next door to Becky, and he’d never once looked at her as anyone but a kid sister.
No, he corrected, pursing his lips. Not a kid sister. And that was the problem. He’d never thought of Becky in the female context, at all. He’d always looked at her more like a kid brother.
He’d wrestled with her, camped out with her, given her her first taste of beer, things he would’ve done with a kid brother, if he’d ever had one. Never once in all those years had he ever really thought of her as a female.
But now he did.
His cheeks puffed as he blew out a long, shaky breath. And what a female. He’d never suspected that underneath that tough exterior Becky might be soft and curvy. But she was. And in all the right places, too. He let his head fall back with a groan, recalling the feel of her beneath him. The swell of breasts. The twin knots of aroused nipples. The flat plane of her abdomen. The hard rise of her feminine mound.
He groaned again, digging his fingers through his hair. He had no right to think of Becky in that way.
She belonged to another man.
And Forrest Cunningham never trespassed on another man’s territory.
“We’ll make camp here.”
Becky pulled her horse to a stop beside Woody’s and looked around. Moonlight spilled over the landscape, revealing a clump of squatty mesquite trees growing near a buffalo wallow. “Looks good to me.” She slipped down from her horse and reached up to untie her saddlebags.
After hobbling her horse, she stripped off her gear and crossed to where Woody had already dumped his. “You want to gather the makings for a fire, or start the coffee?” she asked, dropping her saddle next to his.
Without looking at her, he mumbled, “I’ll take care of the fire,” then stalked off.
Becky watched him disappear into the darkness, disheartened by his foul mood. How in the world was she supposed to tease him, if he wouldn’t even look at her or talk to her? She’d thought this coyote hunt would be the perfect time to implement Miss Manie’s stage two, but there was only so much a woman with her lack of experience could do without a little encouragement!
With a sigh, she dug around in her saddlebags in search of the coffeepot. Using her boot as a rake, she cleared a small area for the fire, then measured grounds into the old blue enamel pot.
When Woody still hadn’t returned by the time she had the coffee ready to boil, she situated their saddles near the area she’d cleared and rolled out their bedrolls. She was smoothing lumps from Woody’s blanket when she heard his approaching footsteps.
She glanced up just as he squatted down to dump an armload of dead wood onto the circle of ground she’d cleared. Without a word to her, he slipped a burlap sack off his shoulder then turned the sack upside down, shaking dried cow chips over the wood. Rocking down to plant one knee on the ground, he leaned back, dug a hand into his jean pocket and fished out a butane lighter. She watched his thumb rake along the wheel and a flame jumped to life, illuminating his face.
His jaw was set hard enough to chip a tooth, she thought in frustration. But, Lordy, was he handsome. She watched as he leaned to touch the flame to the dry tender and chips, admiring the play of muscle across his back and along the length of his arm. The wood smoked for a moment, then caught. Within minutes, a fire crackled, turning his skin a burnished gold and putting a flush of red on the slash of his high cheekbones. Rugged, she decided and bit back a lustful sigh.
When the fire had burned down low enough, she set the coffeepot over it, then laid back on her bedroll, propping her spine in the curve of her saddle. Determined to put Miss Manie’s plan into action, she patted the bedroll beside her. “Pull up a chair and sit awhile.”
He glanced at her over his shoulder, then, with what looked like reluctance, moved to drop down beside her. He sat with his arms wrapped around his knees and stared into the fire, keeping as much distance as possible between them.
Becky frowned at his tense back. “Are you mad at me, or something?”
“No.”
“Then why are you being so quiet?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Don’t have anything to say, I guess.”
Determined to get things underway, Becky scooted closer to the fire, until her hips were in line with his. She picked up a rock and, thoughtful, drew circles in the dirt between them. “Woody,” she said after a moment, “I sort of have a problem.”
He twisted his head around to look at her, his forehead furrowed in concern. “Has Shorty drained your bank account again? No need to worry, if he has. I can float you a loan till payday.”
Becky shook her head, chuckling. “No. It’s nothing like that.” With a sigh, she tossed down the rock, and drew her legs up, hugging them to her chest as she turned her face to the fire. “It‘s—well—it’s just...”
“Just, what?” he asked in frustration.
She turned to look at him and was struck again by his handsomeness. She’d secretly loved him for seventeen years, both as a man and as a boy, but her feelings at the moment had nothing to do with a young girl’s crush, or something as hard to define as love. They were pure lust.
She had to swallow hard before she could force out the words she’d planned to say. “I’m a virgin.”
She watched every muscle in his face go slack, then he whipped his head around to face the fire again, his cheeks a flaming red. “A virgin,” he repeated slowly, staring at the fire.
“Yeah, a virgin.”
“When did being a vir—” His voice cracked on the word and he cleared his throat, tried again. “When did, uh, being a virgin become a problem?”
“Well, it never was before, but now that I have a fiancé, it is.”
“You mean,” he said slowly, turning to look at her, “that you and your fiancé have never—”
“No,” Becky interjected before he could say the words out loud. “We haven’t.”
“Does he know?”
“That I’m a virgin?” At his nod, she shook her head. “No.”
He inhaled deeply then exhaled a long, shaky breath. “Is that the problem? That he doesn’t know?”
“Well, sorta. See, he’s coming to visit soon, and I know that we‘ll—well, that we’ll probably do the big one,” she said, unable to bring herself to say aloud the words Miss Manie had instructed her to use, “and I was wondering if you could give me some pointers.”
Before she’d even completed the request, Woody was pushing out his hands and edging away from her. “No way. You’re asking the wrong person. You need to talk to some woman.”
“Who?” she cried in frustration. “My mother’s dead and there’s no one else for me to talk to. Besides,” she added, “I know all about the birds and the bees. What I need are some tips on how to please a man.”
“And you want me to give you those tips?”
“Why not? Heaven knows you’ve had enough experience.”
Another time Forrest might have felt a swell of manly pride at the comment, but at the moment all he could think about was the irony in Becky wanting him to teach her how to please her fiancé when all evening he’d been plotting the man’s death. “I don’t think so, Becky.”
“Why not? All you have to do is answer a few questions. What could be so hard about
that?”
“What kind of questions?” he asked uneasily.
“Like, what turns a man on.”
Groaning, he dropped his forehead against his knees.
Becky scooted closer, giving his shoulder a nudge with her own. “Come on, Woody. Just think for a minute. What things have women done to you that really turned you on?”
“Becky,” he complained, lifting his head to look at her. “I really don’t want to talk about this.”
“Please, Woody?” she wheedled. “You’re the only person I can ask.”
“What about Sterling? Why not ask him?”
Becky propped her chin on her knees and picked up the rock again. “I never see Sterling anymore,” she said miserably. “Not since he got married.” It was a lie, of course, but Becky figured another little lie couldn’t hurt her. Not when she was already doomed to hell for all the others she’d told Woody about this fiancé of hers.
Forrest stared at her bent head, knowing he was already lost. He never had been able to refuse Becky anything, especially when she looked as pitiful as she did now. “Oh, all right,” he snapped. “Ask me your damn questions.”
Becky dropped the rock and quickly scooted around until she was facing him, sitting cross-legged with her palms braced on her knees. “Okay. First question. What is the first thing that you notice about a woman?”
He took off his hat, and scratched his head, unable to look at her. “Her butt,” he mumbled self-consciously. “I like a woman with a tight butt.”
“Really?” she said in surprise. “Do I have a tight butt?”
He turned his face away, staring off into the darkness. “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “I don’t ever look at your butt. At least not like that.”
Becky choked on another laugh, then popped to her feet. She’d never seen Woody embarrassed before, and seeing him so now gave her courage she hadn’t known she’d possessed. She planted her hands on her hips and turned her back to him. “So look now.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Is it tight?” When he refused to look, she ordered sternly, “Woody!”
Billionaire Bridegroom Page 7
