And the last.
She pushed aside the thought. She would find someone else. Someone appropriate. Someone who would be content with small-town life and a small-town wife. Someone who wouldn’t always want more than she could give.
Someone who wanted to build a home and make babies and settle down.
Houston wasn’t the man for the job. He couldn’t be. He was too busy with his life. Too dead set on keeping his distance and his perspective and staying far, far away from Cadillac and his father’s memory. Too hell-bent on being the success on the bull riding circuit his old man hadn’t been.
She didn’t blame him. She knew what it was like to want something so desperately. Years ago, she’d wanted out of Cadillac, out from under the shadow of her perfect mother, away from the family business. Not because she didn’t like the nursery, but because she feared she wouldn’t measure up there any more than she’d measured up to her mother’s perfect image. She’d fallen short, and rather than risk the same failure with the Green Machine, she’d simply wanted out, to find her own place in the world, find something she was really good at.
She’d already done both, but she’d done them right here.
She’d stopped trying to run the place the way her mother and grandmother had, and started running things her own way. Thanks to Houston. She’d taken on the deliveries and expanded her services to include landscaping, and the business was prospering because of both.
She had her place, all right, and it was right here.
But Houston had found his place somewhere else. Everywhere else. Wherever the next ride took him.
They were different people going different ways.
The doors slid open and he took her hand and walked down the hallway. He unlocked her door, kissed her hungrily on the lips and turned to leave the way he had at the movie theater.
“Wait.” She caught his arm and he turned to face her. “Stay here tonight. With me.”
While she didn’t have a future with him, she did have the next few days, and she intended to make the most of them. When they parted for the second and final time, she didn’t want any fantasies haunting her from here on out. She wanted bona fide memories.
“I thought we were finished,” he said, but his look told her that he wasn’t any readier to call it quits than she was.
“We’re not even close.” And then she kissed him for all she was worth.
10
THE MOMENT SHE PULLED HIM into a kiss of her own initiative, Houston knew something had changed. There was a boldness about her, an urgency that he’d never seen before.
Actually only once before. When they’d touched for the first time so long ago.
But they’d been kids back then and there’d been an awkwardness about the whole thing that was completely missing now. Instead, they came together on a basic, primitive level that was unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. There was no planning or premeditation involved.
Just pure, wild, uninhibited lust, and something else he couldn’t quite name. Something he wasn’t ready to name. And both took his breath away as fiercely as the woman herself.
Her mouth ate at his, her touch greedy and hungry, and a groan rumbled from his throat.
She pressed herself against him, her breasts crushed against his chest, her soft curves molded to his hard body so perfectly that he had the fleeting thought that she’d been made for him and only him.
The thought sent a thrill coursing through him, followed by warning bells.
No ties. No commitment. No.
He wasn’t the man for her. He was temporary, and when it was all over and done with, he would leave the way he always did. Because Houston had been moving for so long, that he wasn’t so sure he could stop.
Even if he suddenly wanted to.
His arms tightened around her and he took the lead, the sudden need to brand her with his kiss and his touch more urgent than anything he’d ever felt before. He buried his hands in her hair and tilted her so he could take the kiss deeper. While he was here, he wanted—no, he needed—to pleasure her so thoroughly that she’d forget every man in her past except him.
So that when he was gone, she wanted no one but him.
A crazy feeling for a man who made it a point never to feel possessive of any woman. He’d never let himself get that close, never let a female get under his skin and into his head and threaten his priorities.
Except once.
The morning of their graduation when he’d planned to blow off the ceremony and head down to the creek, and he’d wanted her to go there with him.
The girl she’d been three days prior—before Sharon’s death—would have jumped at the chance to thumb her nose at convention. The girl she’d become had merely shaken her head and turned him down.
She’d turned away and then he’d turned away, and they’d both gone their separate ways.
But for those few seconds before they’d parted, he’d read a wealth of emotion in her expressive eyes. She’d even opened her mouth to say the words before she’d thought better of it.
She’d stayed silent and he hadn’t pushed her because they’d both known that it had been for the best that she’d kept her mouth shut. Because if she’d said the words, it might have changed everything. He’d been young and foolish and so deprived of emotion his entire life. Hearing the words, seeing them in her eyes, would have been enough to make him stay.
At the moment, the notion didn’t seem all that unpleasant. Years of kissing and touching and having hot, wicked sex with the most sultry woman he’d ever met definitely held more appeal than a snorting, smelly bull hell-bent on castrating him.
The sex. He knew it was the excellent, grade-A sex. It was so good that it distracted him and made him think crazy things.
Like maybe, just maybe, hanging around town and taking Miss Marshalyn up on her offer wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe he could build himself a little house as bright and as sweet-smelling as the old woman’s. Maybe he and Sarah could make a real go of it together. Maybe it would be different for them than it had been for his own parents. Maybe he wouldn’t miss the rodeo circuit and come to resent her because she’d been the one to hold him back.
“You’re the spitting image of your pa. The spittin’ image.”
Hank Brister’s voice echoed in his head and conjured memories of all the other times he’d heard the exact same thing. The words had challenged him to prove he was different from his pa, and he’d done so. He was nothing like his old man and he never would be, and that’s why he would keep moving when the time came, keep riding, and never look back.
But right now… Need gripped him. Fierce. Demanding. Overwhelming.
He kept eating at her lips as he slid his hands down under her bottom and lifted her. She wrapped her legs around him, her naked sex settling over the hard bulge in his jeans. He kicked the door shut and carried her over to the bed.
Once she was settled on the mattress, he followed her. He kissed her roughly, deeply, as he shoved the skirt down her thighs. He worked at her shirt next and then her bra, until she was naked beneath him. And then Houston did what he’d been wanting to do since the moment he’d rolled back into town.
He pleasured her in any and every way he’d ever dreamed of, and he took his own sweet time doing it because this wasn’t about fulfilling the list anymore. This was about fulfilling his own need, and he aimed to take all that he could for as long as he could, because he knew it would end all too soon.
In half a week, the day after Miss Marshalyn’s party, he would say goodbye to Sarah Buchanan for the second time.
The last time.
THEIR WILD LOVEMAKING in San Antonio ended all too quickly for Sarah. After a long, sleepless night and breakfast in bed, they were on their way back to Cadillac and the real world. Houston dropped her off at the nursery with a rough kiss and a look of promise that told her he would definitely see her later.
She held tight to the excitement swimming inside her and refu
sed to think beyond the next night. And the next. But over the course of the next couple of days, she came to realize that it wasn’t just the nights she enjoyed, but the days, as well. Houston showed up each afternoon to help her around the nursery. He moved plants and watered inventory and hoisted the heavy bags of topsoil she’d had delivered from her supplier in Austin. The bags had been selling almost as fast as she ordered them. She even had to dip into the stack she’d set aside for the new landscaping jobs she’d landed, thanks to Esther Clooney’s yard.
They not only worked side by side, but they talked, as well. She learned more about his life outside Cadillac and, in turn, she told him about her life here. About how she’d settled down for her grandmother’s sake and tried to do right by the old woman. He talked about all the purses and titles he’d won and how he was this close to taking another victory in Las Vegas the week following Miss Marshalyn’s party.
He was leaving. Tomorrow. His plane flew out of Austin the day after Miss Marshalyn’s party, which was tonight. And Sarah had no doubt that he would be on it.
The truth niggled at her, but she forced it aside, determined to concentrate on the here and now and simply live for the moment. Something she hadn’t done in the twelve years since she’d taken herself down the straight and narrow and safe path toward Good Girlsville.
Something she would never do again.
She glanced toward the front of the nursery where Houston was rearranging a row of the new large potted palms she’d ordered for the courthouse landscaping project she’d been offered just yesterday. They were huge and heavy, but he moved them with an ease that sent a burst of admiration through her. And a jolt of excitement.
Muscles flexed and sweat ran down his forearms as he maneuvered the large pots, scooting them this way and shimmying them that way. Her gaze hooked on his hands—large, strong hands that had stroked her to an amazing climax near the crack of dawn the other morning when he’d rolled over her and into her, waking her from her sleepy haze in the most pleasurable of ways.
The door chimed, the sound jerking her from the memory, and she turned to see Imogene Asbury walk inside. The young woman glanced around as if looking for someone. Sarah killed the spray and was about to call out when large hands caught her shoulders from behind and steered her around.
“Hide me.” Houston’s deep voice echoed in her ears.
“What are you doing?” She tried to turn, but he kept her directly in front of him.
“I don’t want her to see me.”
“Who?”
“Imogene. She’s here for me.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she’s been following me around since Cheryl Louise’s wedding. It seems Miss Marshalyn told her hairdresser, who told her friend, who told Imogene’s mother that I wanted to take her out. Since then, she’s been following me around, trying to make a date. Just get rid of her, would you?”
“Get in the back storeroom and I’ll see what I can do.”
Sarah gave Houston time to take cover before she pasted on her best smile and picked her way past rows of plants toward Imogene.
“Have you seen Houston Jericho? Mrs. Morgan over at the bed-and-breakfast said her husband had told her that his friend’s wife had spotted him here the other day.”
“You just missed him.”
“Darn it. I really need to talk to him. See, there’s this date,” she started, before shaking her head. “Never mind. If you see him, could you just tell him that I’m looking for him? Here’s my number.”
Once the bell had chimed again and the door had closed, Houston walked out of the storeroom. “That was close.”
“Here you go.” She handed over the paper. She watched him glance at it before stuffing it into his pocket. An image rushed at her. Of Houston talking and laughing with Imogene, and a pang of jealousy went through her.
She stiffened and frowned, the emotion extremely unsettling to a woman who’d made up her mind to feel only lust for the man in front of her.
Her grip on the water hose tightened.
“Thanks. That was close. She almost caught me yesterday. I barely made it out of the diner without attracting her attention.”
“How long have you been avoiding her?”
“Since Miss Marshalyn put out the word that I’d come back home to settle down and find a wife.”
“But you’re not the least bit interested in settling down or finding a wife.”
“You’re telling me.”
“So why don’t you just set the record straight? Just tell her you don’t want a date.”
“I couldn’t do that. She might cry. I don’t do crying women—hey!” he sputtered as she turned her hose on him and gave him a good squirt in the face. “What was that for?”
For making me feel so possessive and jealous and threatened.
“For leading that poor girl on.”
“I’m not leading anyone on. I never told her I would go out with her.”
“You never told her you wouldn’t.”
“I haven’t talked to her since the sixth grade, and that was just to ask her to switch desks with me so that I could get away from Carol Ann Busbee, who kept blowing kisses at me every time I looked at her.”
“You should go after her and straighten this out right now.”
He fixed his gaze on her for a long moment as if he was trying to figure something out. Then his lips curved into a grin. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were jealous.”
“I am not jealous. I’m practical. Hiding is just plain ridiculous.”
“I don’t know. I sort of liked ducking down behind you. The view was pretty good.”
Her heart kicked up a notch and she turned the hose on him again for a quick spurt.
“Hey, stop that. You’re getting me all wet.”
As if she hadn’t noticed. His white T-shirt, now practically transparent, stuck to him like a second skin, revealing every bulge of muscle, every ripple of smooth sinewy flesh as he reached up and wiped a hand over his wet face.
“You deserve to get soaked. That poor girl obviously likes you. You should go after her and set the record straight.”
“I’d rather stay right here and enjoy the view. You look good wet.”
“I’m not wet.”
“Not yet.” Before she could draw her next breath, he snatched the water-hose nozzle from her hands and waved it threateningly. “If memory serves me, you not only look good wet. You look good soapy, as well.”
His last words conjured images from their shower encounter, when she’d been covered with nothing but slick soap and water and him.
But this was different, she reminded herself as her ears tuned to the sound of a passing car. They weren’t in the privacy of her house or hidden away in a storage closet or off in the next town in some dark movie theater or in a fancy hotel hours away.
They were right here in a public place, in the bright light of day, where any of the fine, upstanding citizens of Cadillac could happen upon them at any time.
Twelve years of pretending, of hiding, kicked in and stirred her panic, because Sarah Buchanan truly had morphed into the good girl she’d spent so much time pretending to be.
“We don’t have any soap,” he continued, “but I guess I could settle for one out of two.”
“Don’t even think about squirting me,” she told him, despite the thrill that rushed through her. She frowned. “I mean it.”
The devil danced in his gaze as he eyed her. “What will you give me if I don’t squirt you?”
“What do you want?”
“You.”
“That could be arranged.”
“Right here, right now. Naked.”
“Later, in the bed—” she started, the words fading in a sputter as water rushed at her face in a quick spurt. She wiped at her face and cracked an eye open to see him smiling at her.
“Wrong answer,” he told her. “Now, let’s try it again. I want you right here, right now. N
aked.”
“But someone could walk in—” Another burst of water came at her, this one aimed at her chest. The liquid turned her pale pink T-shirt nearly transparent, her lace bra clearly visible beneath. Her nipples pebbled, poking through the lace pattern to press against the material.
“Wrong answer, Belle,” he said again, his voice drawing her gaze. He wasn’t smiling at her. Instead, his eyes had darkened into a smoldering look that told her he was done with the teasing. “That’s the point. Anyone could come in and then they would know what we’ve been doing this past week. Would that be so terrible?” When she didn’t answer, disappointment flashed in his gaze, as if he were hurt that she wanted to keep their relationship a secret. As if he wanted the world to know that she was his and he was hers.
As if.
It was a foolish notion, yet she couldn’t help the surge of warmth that went through her, followed by the desperate urge to erase the hurt from his expression. She licked her lips, and the simple act seemed to heighten his arousal.
“I want you,” he said again, his voice rougher, pained even. “Right here, right now.”
“You forgot naked.” The light in his gaze fed the desire inside of her until she wanted him so much that she forgot everything except the need inside her.
She grasped the edge of her T-shirt. The wet material slid up her abdomen and the undersides of her breasts before catching on her fully erect nipples. Excitement blossomed, making her pulse quicken and her body ache.
“I’m stuck,” she murmured, as if it were some terrible dilemma that she couldn’t quite solve. In truth, she wanted to turn him on so fiercely that he felt the same emotion that suddenly raged inside her.
She tugged this way and that, the material rubbing a delicious friction against the ripe tips. A few more delicious seconds and she managed to pull the material up and over her head. Her fingers went to the front clasp of her bra. The fastening strained then snapped open and the cups fell away. She unfastened her khaki slacks and pushed the soggy material down her legs. With her fingers hooked around the straps of her panties, she shoved them all the way down and stepped free. “How’s this for an answer?”
The Fantasy Factor Page 13
