by Joanne Rock
He nodded. Harrumphed. “We’re still doing a real date.”
“Great.” She stood, shuffled her bale of hay back into place, and wished she were back in bed with Jesse instead of agreeing to something he didn’t want. Back in bed where things were less complicated, where she didn’t have to face all the churning emotions over what should have been a simple, sensual encounter.
“You and me. Alone. Very romantic.” He shoved to his feet and tossed the bales of hay back onto the pile with so much force there was dried grass flying out of the stack in every direction.
“You’re terrified, aren’t you?”
His jaw flexed again. “I can’t wait.”
Yeah, right. She struggled not to roll her eyes as he walked back toward the barn where he parked his motorcycle. She struggled even harder not to feel the hurt welling up inside her.
As he reached the barn door he shouted the final instructions in this morning’s list of commitment demands. “I’ll pick you up tonight at seven.”
* * *
“SEVEN O’CLOCK TONIGHT?” Greta parroted back Clint Bowman’s dinner request as the tall, attractive-for-no-good-reason cowboy lounged against her doorjamb. She hadn’t seen him since he’d given her a ride and tried to coerce her into a date.
And although she hadn’t been expecting him this afternoon, she’d known even before she opened the front door who would be on the other side. The man had major chemistry even though he wasn’t classically handsome like Jesse. She could feel Clint Bowman even before she laid eyes on him and she didn’t like it one bit.
How could she be attracted to someone so rough around the edges?
Clint smoothed the brim of his hat with one hand while he held the Stetson in the other. “That’s the time I heard Jesse and Kyra agree on for dinner. I was pulling in with my truck just as Jesse jumped on his bike to leave.”
“And that was at nine o’clock this morning?” she prodded, hating to think Jesse had spent another night with his too-cute business partner and that she’d somehow misunderstood Clint’s story.
Then again, Greta was having more and more trouble even coming up with a mental image of Jesse lately so she had to question how much the news truly bothered her. The only man she ever seemed to see in her mind’s eye these days was the rugged male wrapped in muscles who stood on her doorstep.
Nodding, he stared at her hastily tied bathing suit cover-up as if he had a good idea what she was wearing underneath it.
Nothing.
“I get to the Crooked Branch right around nine every day to work with Kyra’s horse.” His knowing gray eyes fairly crackled with heat by the time he met her gaze again. “But what do you think about dinner? You still in the market to make Jesse sit up and take notice?”
Clint’s hot stare made her knees weak. Her breasts tightened beneath her cotton beach robe. Her body definitely wanted this man.
Fortunately her brain knew better. She’d always avoided men she couldn’t control. And she especially avoided men with whom she couldn’t control herself.
Greta had the feeling Clint Bowman fell neatly into both those categories.
“I’m in.” Maybe all she needed was to see Jesse again and remind herself how perfectly he fit her vision of high-class suburban lifestyle. Besides, Jesse possessed an innate chivalry toward women that assured her he would never turn into the verbally abusive sort her father had been. “But how will we know where to have dinner?”
“Why don’t we meet at the ranch right about seven, too? We can always follow them to whatever restaurant they hit. Shouldn’t be too much of a coincidence in a town this size.” His gaze dropped south again. “Did I catch you sleeping?”
And just like that, Greta was certain Clint knew she was naked underneath the yellow knit cover-up.
Her skin tingled from her ankles to her elbows, but it downright burned in all the best places in between. “Hardly.”
“Sunbathing?”
“No, I—”
“Not that a woman ever needs an excuse to run around the house naked as far as I’m concerned.” He flashed her a sexy, unrepentant grin as he replaced his hat on his head and backed toward his shiny blue pickup truck. “See you at seven?”
She had a good mind to say no. In fact, the sooner she put some distance between her and the cowboy badass who made her blood simmer, the better off she’d be.
But then how would she ever make Jesse notice her or rescue her from boorish guys like Clint Bowman?
“I’ll be there.” She draped herself in a little extra hauteur for good measure—and to help maintain some definite boundaries with Clint. “I just hope you can control yourself because my outfit tonight will make nakedness seem positively tame.”
“I’ll be the epitome of restraint.” He levered open his truck door. “But if lover boy doesn’t take notice by the time our last course rolls around, all bets are off.”
“Meaning you’re only going to be able to restrain yourself for so long?” Surely she was a sick woman that his wolfish look sent a little thrill through her when she was planning to seduce...her gaze gobbled up the curve of Clint’s oh-so-fine ass.
Wait. Jesse. She was planning to seduce Jesse.
“Meaning that if you’re still sitting with me at eight o’clock, I’m considering you fair game for dessert.”
He angled himself inside the truck cab and shifted into Reverse before she could think of a retort.
Damn the man.
But Greta had no intention of allowing Clint Bowman and his sexy-as-sin body tempt her away from her Great American Dream. The trick would be to intercept her quarry before seven o’clock tonight.
She hadn’t managed to survive on her own since she was fourteen without accumulating a fair amount of goal-setting skills.
And right now, she had one goal in mind to complete her mental vision of where she wanted to be in life, one man who would be the perfect counterpart to her suburban lifestyle complete with a rose garden and filled with voices raised only in laughter.
The most charming man she’d ever met.
Jesse Chandler.
* * *
A BLACK CLOUD seemed determined to follow Jesse around ever since he’d uttered the damning word commitment to Kyra.
That same day his jigsaw broke, spinning a piece of nearly completed crown molding into the blade sideways before it conked out completely. He’d ruined a detailed piece that would take hours to reconstruct.
Then his customer’s financing had fallen through for the first custom home he was supposed to have started on Monday, leaving him scrambling all afternoon to shuffle his spring schedule and fill the void.
Now as he sped up the rural county route toward the Crooked Branch on his Harley, it started to rain.
And then pour.
By the time he reached the ranch his khakis molded to his thighs like a wetsuit. Even worse, the rain hadn’t let up a bit so he wouldn’t be able to take them to dinner on the motorcycle.
If they wanted to go out for his first date as part of a couple in his entire lifetime, he’d have to ride shotgun in Kyra’s pickup.
The joys of commitment.
Jesse sensed the black cloud stalking him as he parked his bike in the barn and swiped the worst of the raindrops off the seat. No, wait.
That wasn’t just a dark mood stalking him.
Footsteps sounded behind him. Too close.
A black cloud in stilettos and not much else stood behind him. Greta Ingram appeared every inch the world-renowned cover model as she struck a pose in a tissue-thin scarf she’d knotted at her navel as if it was a dress.
Objectively speaking, Jesse knew she must look gorgeous, but all he could think in his current frame of mind was that she had to be damn near freezing.
He couldn’t afford the complication of her tonight. He barely knew what role he was supposed to be playing in Kyra’s life anyway. And he’d already spent enough time trying to send Greta a message she refused to hear. “We’
ve got to stop meeting like this.”
Her trademark full lips turned even more pouty. “Tell me about it. A barn is hardly my idea of mood-setting ambiance. What do you say we go back to my place for a few hours and I’ll show you some more of my yoga moves? I’ve been working on limbering up my neck muscles and you’ll never believe what I can reach with my tongue.”
She hovered closer, almost as if she was going to start teasing him with yoga tricks right here in the equipment storage barn.
“Greta, I can’t see you anymore. Ever.” He hated having to spell it out in such stark terms for her but her following him around had gotten way out of control. At one time her over-the-top antics might have swayed him, but he didn’t feel even remotely interested tonight.
Oddly, he could still only think of one woman naked today. Even after a night in Kyra’s arms Jesse could only think about her. Despite the hellish day he’d been having and the fact that he’d gone and devoted himself to some kind of relationship with her, he had thought about being with her nonstop.
Still, Greta looked at him like he’d lost his marbles. She put her fists on her hips and stood toe-to-toe with him. “Excuse me?”
“I’m seeing Kyra now,” he told her, amazed to discover the words didn’t feel as awkward as he’d feared they might. In fact, the declaration felt damn good. “And I know for a fact she’s not going to appreciate you following me around. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go meet her for dinner.”
Jesse saw the steam start to hiss from her ears, but he couldn’t find it in his heart to care anymore. He was still too caught up in the revelation that it hadn’t really hurt to talk about Kyra as his girlfriend.
What if he could pull through on this commitment thing after all?
He nudged around Greta, making his way toward the door. The rain had slowed, but it hadn’t stopped. Clint’s truck was pulling into the driveway, an odd occurrence for seven o’clock in the evening.
Or so he hoped.
The horse whisperer hadn’t seriously thought he could make time with Kyra behind Jesse’s back, had he? Before Jesse could think through what to do about Kyra’s admirer, Greta hustled around him to plant herself in his tracks all over again.
“What are you doing?” He held his hands up but he didn’t intend to surrender to this woman.
He was a committed man, damn it.
The rain pounded down on them. Jesse didn’t care much since he was already soaked. But Greta’s scarf turned X-rated within seconds. Not that he noticed.
She shouted at him through the rumble of thunder, her eyes lit by a fire within. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m putting up a fight!”
He hadn’t fully processed the comment when she grabbed him by the arms, plastered her wet body to his and fused their mouths in a no-holds-barred kiss.
11
KYRA SWIPED A brush through her hair and peered out the window just as the thunder started. The driveway was empty but she could have sworn she’d heard Jesse’s Harley rumble past a few minutes ago.
Would he be late for their first date?
Judging by how pained he’d looked as he issued the invitation earlier today, Kyra half wondered if he’d show up at all. But then, he had always kept his word to her, even while he was standing up his so-called girlfriends left and right. Would their new committed status relegate her to his “B” list of personal priorities?
She resented his attitude even while she wished he felt differently about her. He had no right to make her feel as if she’d somehow twisted his arm into a relationship. Sure she hadn’t shaken her age-old crush on him as easily as she’d once hoped, but she knew better than to ever hope for him to be a one-woman man.
Didn’t she?
Simmering with restless energy and more than a little frustration, Kyra marched out into the foyer and prepared to face her personal demon.
Aka her best friend-turned-lover.
She knew damn well she’d heard his motorcycle a few minutes ago. Was he dragging his feet in the barn because he couldn’t face his new ball and chain?
Throwing open the front door, Kyra didn’t move so much as an inch into the blistering rain before she saw him.
Or rather them—Greta and Jesse in a lip-lock as fierce as the storm pelting their shoulders with raindrops.
Of all the two-timing lowdown tricks...
What more proof did she need that he’d never be a one-woman man? He hadn’t even bothered to be sly about his indiscretion, opting instead to practically devour Greta whole while standing no more than two feet from Kyra’s front porch. And it didn’t really soothe Kyra a bit that the woman stuck to him was an internationally recognized sex symbol clad in an outfit that left her as good as naked.
“It’s a new commitment record for you,” Kyra shouted through the rainstorm, doing her level best to keep her voice calm. Practical. “I think you lasted almost six hours this time.”
So maybe sarcasm wasn’t exactly practical.
She was entitled to be a little peeved, curse his two-timing hide.
Jesse pried himself loose from Greta’s arms, but not without a struggle. The Wonder-bod nearly lost her outfit in the process—an outfit comprised of one artfully tied purple scarf.
But instead of appealing to Kyra by laying on the charm or spinning ridiculous tales to cover his hide, Jesse glared at Greta. “You’d damn well better come clean about this.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Kyra noticed Clint climb down out of his truck cab and stalk toward them. Impervious to the water, Clint’s Stetson shielded him from the driving downpour.
Greta shot Jesse the evil eye. “You’re not the man I met last fall. And I don’t have a thing to come clean about.” As Clint neared, she sniffed and straightened. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have plans for dinner.”
Jesse looked ready to argue the point, but Clint stepped in like a hero right out of an old Western. Offering Greta his arm as if she wore hoopskirts and a bustle instead of a silk scarf masquerading as a dress, Clint was every inch the gentleman.
And it was obvious from a lone protective hand around Greta’s waist that Jesse didn’t have a chance in hell of grilling her about the kiss that had just taken place.
Leaving him very much on his own to explain himself.
Not that Kyra needed whatever explanation he concocted for her benefit.
Determined to cut him off before he could suggest some lame reasoning for what just happened, Kyra folded her arms across her chest and stared him down. “I’d just like to point out that I thought we had enough of a solid friendship where we didn’t need to play games like this.”
Spinning on her heel, she ducked back onto her porch and inside the house.
“Oh, no you don’t.” Jesse followed her, dripping rainwater from khakis that clearly outlined his thighs. Outlined him. “Cowboy Clint might have spirited witchy Greta away so she didn’t have to deal with this, but you don’t have any choice but to talk to me.”
“I most definitely have a choice,” she argued, seeking refuge from those wet male thighs in the kitchen. She was not succumbing to anything charming, sexy or otherwise appealing about Jesse Chandler tonight.
The man was a first-rate cad. A cad with fire-engine-red lipstick smeared across his damned face.
He stomped his way into the kitchen, his wet socks squishing along the tiles. “On the contrary, we have a date tonight so I’ve already reserved this time with you. You can at least hear me out.”
“Well, guess what, Romeo? Necking with another woman on my front doorstep pretty much nullifies our date.” Kyra pulled a prepackaged dinner out of the freezer and attacked the shrink-wrap with a vengeance.
“That wasn’t necking. That was the attack of the wicked wedding-bell woman. She was making some sort of last-ditch play for me with the kiss and the crazy outfit—”
“What outfit?” Shredding the last piece of plastic from an ancient TV-dinner box, Kyra yanked open the microwave. “And
since when is a woman who values marriage some kind of villain anyway? You make her sound like a comic-book foe when maybe she’s just calling you to the carpet on your fast lifestyle.”
Jesse intercepted her meal before she could chuck it into the microwave. “How can you defend her after she practically suffocated me? In front of you, no less? She’s been following me around for months, Kyra. And you know I’ve told her the deal more than once.”
Kyra hesitated. Considering. She was being unreasonable and she knew it. But damn it, seeing Jesse kissing another woman had hurt her more than she could admit.
“I don’t think you can call it suffocation when you were standing there with your arms at your sides making no attempt to push her away.”
“She surprised me!”
Kyra tugged the Chicken Kiev with both hands, tossed it in the microwave and stabbed the keys to start heating her meal.
She needed to insert some space between them and move on. Even if the kiss wasn’t his fault, she was quickly realizing how much it was going to hurt when she had to let him go. Something she’d never really considered before. “Fine. I believe you. But please excuse me if I don’t feel like having dinner with you or being any part of a bogus committed relationship.”
“You are having dinner with me.” Jesse stopped the microwave, and inserted himself between Kyra and her chicken. “It’s not going to be out of a box from the freezer. And the commitment I made to you is hardly bogus.”
Kyra forced herself to quit grinding her teeth. But how could he say that to her when he’d already tangled himself up with another woman? Jesse’s whole life had been one entanglement after another. He probably didn’t know how to live any other way.
“It was a commitment based on sex.” Surely that wasn’t the premise for most healthy relationships.
“First of all, let’s not knock sex.” He stared at her with steady brown eyes that had a way of making her heart beat faster even though she was definitely still angry at him. “And second, there was more to it than sex and we both know it.”
