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.
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