“If I considered darkening your door, I could be toting my daddy’s shotgun.” She knew she was crazy now, because she had no such weapon. Her father had never even owned one.
Jed made a face, feigning that he was wounded. “Just bring you and the keycard.”
“I won’t!”
Nonchalant, he hitched himself up inside the driver’s seat, closed the door and through the open window, chucked her under the chin. “You need the code.”
“Yeah.” She widened her eyes at him in outrage. “That’s why you won’t be seeing me.”
He tsked, the damn self-centered egotist. “Don’t worry. It’s easy to remember.”
“Get the hell out of my parking lot.”
“It’s Cara. The code is Cara.”
Momentarily shocked, she snorted. “You are crazy.”
“About you, yes ma’am. That’s why the code is C.A.R.A.” He turned the engine over and revved it in place. “Five o’clock. Adios, baby.”
Chapter Nine
Five o’clock Friday came and went.
At seven Saturday evening, Cara stood in her kitchen, loving the satin feel of her lick-me-head-to-toe imported lingerie and smiling into the phone. “Okay, Eva, I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”
“Deal. I’m so glad you’ve come back to Bravado to live. I haven’t had anyone to talk with or go out with,” replied her friend.
“We’ll make it a regular event. Thirty minutes. I’ll honk the horn.”
Cara hung up the receiver, triumphant she had finally persuaded Eva to go with her tonight to the local dancehall. Eva’s beloved husband had passed away eight months ago and, though she was Cara’s age and lonely as hell, Eva had not been out as a single female to anything half so much fun as the Two Step. Cara was grateful to Eva because she sure as hell was not going alone, especially if somehow the MacRaes learned she was there, catting around. She would not put it past them to show up and make a scene. Not after Jed had pointed out how the local men dealt with the male-to-female ratio.
Certainly not after Aunt Bree had confirmed how the shortage of females in Bravado had made the men fiercely possessive of those women they took a shine to.
“If the MacRae men like you after those two and a half days you spent with them,” her aunt had declared right after Jed left the store that morning, “the question you need to ask yourself is, did you like them right back?”
“I did,” Cara had told the lady who had had two loving husbands, each of whom had kicked the bucket far too young. “What I didn’t care for was Jed’s declaration that I was his.”
“Well, sweetie pie, for more than ten years, the men here in Bravado have been in competition for the few women who remain. Any new female who wanders in gets to be swept off her pretty feet. Ready or not. So if you are complaining about the odds, you’re the only man-loving woman in the world to do so. If you are complaining about what these males know about romancing a female, then you are welcome to try to educate them.”
“Train a man?” Cara had objected. “Impossible.”
“I have had two men in my lifetime, Cara,” the stunning forty-five-year-old redhead told her. “None of them was a saint when we first met. I loved every hair on their handsome-as-hell heads, but some things they must do to keep a woman by their side. You see, I am a firm believer that a man is a rough-hewn creature, put on this earth for a woman to sand down and polish to her liking.”
“What if you can’t polish a man,” or three? “to your liking?”
“Some men, like your ex, are not worth the trouble. Your job is to choose wisely in the beginning, then refine them.”
Choose wisely. I did not do that with Jeff. When I met him, I knew he was a tomcat. I thought I could change him, make him loyal. But my bigger misperception concerned his character. What I took for strength turned out to be his desire to control.
She glanced over the items on her kitchen countertop. All of them gifts. Each delivered by post or special courier, each day since her argument with Jed. Each item designed to persuade her to use the MacRaes’ keycard. One dozen blush roses. Two large verbena soaps from Grasse, France. Three bottles of bubbly prosecco from Verona, Italy. Just a few of her favorite things.
She stepped back.
I am going to go to the Two Step tonight with Eva and have a rip-roaring good time. Drink a little beer. Dance a whole lot. Forget the magnetic attraction that tempted me every hour of the past two and a half days to return to the Rocking M. Open the gate. Go inside and…
No. I can’t fall so easily into this. I can be impetuous. Look how easily I fell into Jed’s arms. And Harry’s. And Will’s. I fell for Jeff too quickly to really know him too, and look what happened there.
I need time.
Feeling smart and empowered, she strode for her bedroom to inspect her pink satin bra and panties in the cheval mirror. The lush fabric just barely caught her full breasts, her rosy nipples peeking over the petal-shaped cups. Her matching panties barely merited the name, so small, so damn comfortable, the soft crotch already damp with her desire for the MacRaes.
Damn, woman! Put on those jeans and t-shirt. Comb those curls over your shoulders and get the hell out of here.
You want a man to take off these sweet things and do you right or what?
Ohhhhh, she scolded herself. Incorrigible.
Cara said thanks to her dance partner, wiped the back of her hand over her brow and headed back to Eva’s and her table in the crowded hall. It might be a chilly April outside, but inside it was steamy August. The band was good. The beer cold. And the men?
She glanced around at the pack of good-looking male animals on the prowl.
Young, fit and on the hunt.
Cara laughed at her own conclusion. I can appreciate a finely turned-out man even if I only want three who…
Stop that.
Taking a quick drink from her beer bottle, she admired those on the dance floor. Eva was still out there kicking up the sawdust with her new ranch foreman. One of Cara’s other grade-school friends, Helen Wayland, visiting from Chicago, was finishing a fine Texas waltz with Cara’s carpenter, Terr Sommers.
Her attention drifted back to the excellent male pickings adorning this place. The men here in Bravado were definitely big, hot and ready for action. Muscles honed by work on the ranches or in the hard labor of building a prosperous community, tonight they were spit-polished, jeans pressed, hair combed back, broad black gambler’s hats in place, even as they spun one woman after another out on the floor.
Handsome in their Western duds. Hoping to be irresistible to some good lady soon. And maybe even permanently.
And the women? Nearly two to one, females’ favor. Dressed to charm, some wore cowgirl fringe and boots. Others donned what Cara would call Take-Me-Home-Tonight glad rags. Skirts to the pussy-line. Blouses cut to the nipple. Cara and Eva had gone for the hometown girl look, nothing fancy, all practical lightweight Saturday-Night-Out dance gear—tees and jeans. Even her aunt Bree had shown up with her friend who owned the shop next door, decked out in denim that she poured over her shapely forty-something figure. Then she had stood at the bar chatting with a few of the local men. But at the far tables, Cara noticed a few women who lived over in the next county. Shopping for our goods, are you, ladies?
Eva wove her way through the tables to sink into her chair. “I’m melting.” She wiped her brow with a paper napkin. “Haven’t had this much fun in ages.”
“So I see.” Cara waggled her brows. “How’s your foreman as a dancer?”
“Heath? Terrific. Who knew, huh?”
“Are you telling me you didn’t hire him for his agility on the dance floor?” Cara teased.
“Not me at all. Before Jose got so sick, he was up in Dallas on business, met him and hired him.”
Cara tipped her beer at Eva in a toast. “To smart men.”
“Amen.” Eva clinked bottlenecks with her. “So who’s your favorite dancer this evening?”
“
Tough to choose. They are each so good.”
“Thanks to their lessons.”
“Lessons?” Cara paused, her beer midway to her lips. “What lessons?”
“Oh I see.” Eva’s brilliant almond-shaped eyes went round. “No one has told you yet about their etiquette lessons.”
“Come on.” Cara plunked down her beer on the wooden tabletop. Empty peanut shells skittered away with the force. “The men here go to school?”
Eva giggled. “Saturday mornings in town.”
“This is beginning to sound like some Broadway play.”
“Whatever. We women benefit, big-time, I tell ya.”
“What are the subjects?”
“The men have choices what to take first. But they get manners, wine and food, dancing and—”
“Arguments,” came a booming voice over Cara’s shoulder.
The aroma of a male body in verbena surrounded Cara. A MacRae.
She spun in her chair, looking up into Jed’s compellingly handsome face. “You’ve taken a class in how to argue with a woman?”
“I did.” Warm seduction glowed in his beautiful jade eyes.
“How’d you do?”
“I failed.” He put his hand out. “Dance with me and I’ll take the test again?”
He was asking. Exactly as he should. She grinned, gladly took his hand and let him help her up.
Wondering how well Jed would strut his stuff, Cara grinned when the band leader asked everyone to gather on the floor. “Young and old, no need for a partner,” he urged everyone. When the fiddler and the accordion player stepped to the microphone, Cara chuckled, knowing exactly what dance this was.
“Aw no,” Jed objected as the band struck up the funny music, his hand on her arm. “I will not do that.”
“Of course you will.” She beamed at him. “I want you to.”
”I will not pretend I am a chicken.”
“It’s easy peasy,” she cooed to him as she pushed him into the big circle along with the others and lifted his arms, bending them to chest height so that he moved to the rough, fast-paced staccato. Everyone around them began to shake their arms and butts like chickens in a barnyard. Outnumbered, Jed flapped his arms like a great big fowl and joined in.
“See?” she encouraged him as he moved his body like a stick figure. “Doesn’t hurt. There you go, that’s right, a little more arm, a bit more booty there, MacRae.”
They did the old German dance with a hundred or more others, until only the best bucking, shake-a-tail-feather chickens remained on the floor.
Finally, when she and Jed got tagged out by one of the band members, she hooked her arm in his and led him back to the table.
“Not bad.” She admired him with wide eyes that rolled round and round over him. “Even big roosters like you can cut a rug.”
He hugged her like a bear. “Hell with that.” He was laughing and grabbing her around the waist to haul her back onto the floor. “I came to hold you close, baby.”
Lucky for ol’ Jed, at that moment the band began a slow number. And the warm glow that surrounded Cara as he took her in his arms had her reminding herself that she would best serve her own interests by remaining logical, even aloof. Aunt Bree might think a man who lusted after a woman could change easily when led properly, but Cara knew better.
Bree had enjoyed success in “hewing” her men to her standards. Cara had no such experience. And she knew suddenly, irrevocably in this charming moment in Jed’s arms, that she wanted this experience with him and his brothers to be right. Right for her. For as long as the four of them enjoyed each other in bed and out. Because if she didn’t get this right and learn how to be a woman who declared what she wanted with them, she would be soured on any relationship with any other man. And then she’d never learn. Never have. Never enjoy the body or the love or any kind of future with another one.
Jed’s hand was big and solid. The arm he curled around her waist drew her flush to him with such insistent grace, she had to bite her lower lip to keep from trembling with delight. The way he took them into the slow, seductive moves, his long legs against hers, his chest crushing her breasts and teasing her nipples, made her whimper.
“I missed you too,” he gruffed in her ear, a rough declaration only she could hear, but one she felt to the roots of her hair and the nails of her toes.
And he never missed a beat.
She happily surrendered to his rhythm. Jeff had hated to dance. She grinned.
“I can feel you smiling, baby. So damn if I don’t know we’re better.” He took them on a turn.
She leaned back to admire his striking eyes, his strong jaw and his sinfully beautiful lips. “We can get even better.”
“I said some bullheaded things the other day.”
“You did.”
“I want to make up to you for that.”
“I think,” she said as she shook back her hair and gave him a beaming smile, “you are already. Few men dance so well, Mr. MacRae.”
“Thank you, ma’am. I aim to please you.”
“You do. Who taught you?”
He looked suddenly caught out in a schoolboy prank. “Taught me? What?”
“How to dance?”
“Ah. Oh, well, our daddy was a good teacher. Mom too. But we…ah…took a few lessons to brush up.”
“Did you now?” She nodded, playing with him. “Where’d you take the lessons?”
His lips widened in a hearty grin. “Downtown.”
“This is like pulling taffy! Why won’t you tell me who your teacher is?”
“Secret.” He said it like it was gospel and led her around in a big turn.
Across the floor, Cara saw two large dark shapes step through the smoke of the dancehall. She smiled. “Your posse came with you?”
“Like the Three Musketeers.”
Harry and Will grinned at her, relief and wickedness in their eyes.
Goody. She loved being wanted. No bigger head trip in the world for a woman who loved wild men in bed with her.
She tingled at her self-realization. “Hmm. Maybe I’ll just have to ask your brothers for the name of your dance teacher.”
Jed chuckled. “You can. But it won’t do you any good.”
“No?” She arched back, her nipples drilling into his chest. “You think I don’t have ways to make any of you talk?”
“Oh baby, I do want you to try. When do you think you might grace us with the challenge?”
Chapter Ten
Cara hit the keypad, sitting back in Aunt Bree’s 4x4. Her own pickup was still here in the MacRaes’ maintenance barn, awaiting shipment of the old and rare replacement parts. Watching the giant iron gate draw open in the starlit night, Cara nodded to herself, secure in the instinctive knowledge that she understood full well what she did here.
She was accepting the unique invitation to make love to three men, brothers who had chosen her based on how they had felt about her when she’d been a kid. When they had been young men. When none of them had been disillusioned by the opposite sex.
Yet now they knew more about her. They knew she liked them. Was strongly attracted to them. Could enjoy sex with each of them. And she, in turn, had discovered that they were extraordinary in their agreement to share her. True, around other men, they were as possessive of her as stags in rut. The way they monopolized her on the dance floor tonight at the Two Step had been the finest example. But then, as long as they were gentlemen about it, she had no objections at all. It was heady, thrilling to be wanted and protected by three such vigorous, aggressive men.
“I’m ready for this,” she told herself out loud and was startled at her vehemence to say it. With a shift of the gears, she eased the truck inside the gate and, as if she were in some trance, took her sweet time moving up the drive.
The house was a long ranch, all on one floor. Fronted by white Hill Country stone, it shone brightly in the moonlight. Home, she mouthed the word and was stunned at that pronouncement too. Could it
be?
She turned off the engine and considered the possibility.
Time to learn.
Climbing down out of the truck, she reached over to grab her small overnight bag from the far seat, then walked up to the front door. Her hand up ready to knock, she noted the deep, elaborate carving in the front door. A Rocking M was emblazoned there in relief, large and impressive. Like its three owners.
She rapped on the door and heard deep voices approach.
When it swung open, there stood Jed, his hand out to draw her in. “Hi, we got worried.”
“I can see that,” she said as she checked the strained expressions of Harry and Will. All three of them looked fresh from the shower, wet dark hair, fresh clothes, barefoot. Her body understood why they had done it, and she felt a frisson of expectation that they had prepped for her arrival and their private party. But she had things to do here before she began to make love to any one of them. She had to tell them who she was and what her boundaries were.
Here was a subject that held some of that possibility for her. “I said I would come. I wouldn’t tell you one thing and do another. Not who I am. I had driven Eva and me to the Two Step and had to take her home. Then I had to go back to my place and get some clothes.” For modesty’s sake when you three are not making love to me. Just like Jed had told her.
“Let me take that for you.” Harry came forward. “I’ll put it in your bedroom.”
“Mine?” she asked as Jed put a hand to her waist and led her past the big office in the front toward the big country kitchen and family room.
“It is yours,” Jed told her, his eyes mellow and so appealing.
Will walked beside them. “We built it hoping we’d find someone like you.”
“Kind of a Build-It-and-She-Will-Come philosophy?”
They agreed.
She inhaled. This kind of intimation drove her crazy and it had to stop. Now. When they arrived in the midst of the kitchen, she walked out of Jed’s and Will’s reach. “Can I have a drink?”
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