Had he already made up his mind about where he’d be investing his firm’s money before she could even sell him on the W+W?
Think again, Mr. Alexander.
“How’s the grub?” she asked.
“Hearty and appealing,” he said in an offhanded way that wouldn’t be so out of place in an old movie, either. “It’d bring back memories of my summer camp days if I had any.”
Right, she thought. This man had probably started interning at Fortune 500 companies when he was six, leaving his summers full.
She gestured toward the child-and-hay-choked wagon, which was ready to get underway on another trip to the stables. “I’d love to show you our horses, take you on a tour when you’re ready.”
He glanced down at his suit.
“Or,” she said, realizing he wasn’t really dressed for a ride, “maybe we could save the activities for another day?”
“Maybe that could be arranged.”
Was there a ring of reluctance in his tone? Had he come here just to appease her?
Again, she wondered if he’d already set his sights on another location, and her determination doubled.
“You came to Pine Junction at a good time,” she said. “During sunny days like these, we fish, ride and hike on my ranch. We’ve got the renovated barn, too, so we’ve got rainy days covered. It’s like a community hub where you could do crafts, activities, have dances….”
“Ideal.”
But, by now, he wasn’t looking at Nicki anymore.
Nope—his eyes were trained on something just behind her.
A smile stretched across Russell Alexander’s face—the kind of smile a man got when he was truly interested in something.
Or someone.
Candace joined them, all sunny and bright in her flowy dress. “The guest of honor,” she said a bit breathlessly.
“The honor’s mine,” he said, extending his hand for a shake, balancing his plate in his other hand.
Their grips lingered, and with one subtle look to Nicki, Candace let her know that she’d seen how a little extra “oomph” was required.
“I’m Nicki’s assistant,” Candace said. “It’ll be my job to show you around, if you have the time.”
Nicki smiled at the man just before Candace started to lead him toward a table so he could eat. All the while, she talked about the ranch and what she loved about it.
Impressed, Nicki let her teammate take over, knowing Candace would deliver a much-improved investment businessman back to her.
One who’d probably even be that much nearer to discussing a deal that would save her from dismantling the ranch piece by piece.
CANDACE WAS MAKING great headway—and, in spite of her best intentions, it wasn’t just of the business sort, either.
The moment she’d seen Russell Alexander step foot onto the ranch, her inner radar had started to beep in a spot that tingled inside her.
She liked how he carried himself. It reminded her of success, of the city, and she’d sorely missed both, even if she loved being out here with Nicki.
When, from across the way, she’d seen how Russell Alexander slightly tilted his body from Nicki while she’d made her pitch about the ranch, Candace had understood pronto that an opportunity was slipping away from the W+W, and fast.
She wouldn’t blow this opportunity. No, sir. But, little by little, as she small-talked with Russell Alexander, Candace realized that there was more than just ranch talk afoot right now.
He was enjoying her.
Maybe that could be a good thing, if she could steer that energy in the right direction.
She knew men like him; she’d dated some businessmen and spent a lot of time in high-reaching social circles at San Diego charity auctions and dinners with fellow graduates from her college business program. Sometimes she suspected that their interest in her was mainly due to the way in which she put visiting clients and prospective networking contacts at ease.
But, hey, if schmoozing and putting people at ease was her sole talent in life, she wasn’t complaining.
“So,” she said, resting her chin in her hand as she leaned her elbow on the table and he ate, “what have you been doing to have fun in Pine Junction?”
“I haven’t been here long enough to do much.” He had a way of talking… Confident but not arrogant. Somehow, he was a gentleman with a rough edge that lay more under his skin than on it.
Interesting.
“There’s plenty to do here,” she said, smiling.
As if wanting to cool herself, she raised a bottle of soda pop that she’d plucked from a bucket of ice at the end of the table. She placed it against her chest, right above the rise of her breasts.
She hadn’t meant it to be a come-on, but somehow, most things she did ended up that way. And when Russell Alexander’s deep gray eyes rested on that bottle, then rose to meet her gaze again, he was giving her that look she’d seen a thousand times before.
You coming on to me?
Shoot. She was here to sell the ranch, not herself.
His smile barely brushed his lips, and she knew exactly what he was thinking.
The girls at the Square W+W were using every trick in the book.
Double shoot. Candace casually took a drink of soda, shrugging, then said, “Maybe I should just let you eat, Mr. Alexander.”
“Russell,” he said.
“Russell.” That was a positive sign, showing he was still receptive. “If I’m nattering away too much, just let me know. We’re only excited about the possibilities here.”
“Possibilities.”
Okay. He wasn’t talking about business, was he?
It was just in the way he said it.
“Unless I’m wrong,” she said, “your company wants to invest in a property. It’s no secret.”
“You heard it through the grapevine?”
“Just one of the advantages of living in a small town.”
“Yes…one of them.” He smiled again—the barest of bare smiles.
He was making her wonder yet again.
Her pulse beat in her throat, adrenaline pumping. She’d left the city, but it seemed as if it’d come to her in the form of this man, and she felt as if a million lights had lit through her, making her glow like a skyline.
But…business before pleasure. She couldn’t mess this up for Nicki, and all the rest of the residents who depended on the ranch. Now that she thought about it, that included her for the time being.
“Okay then…” she said. “How would later today or tomorrow be for a horseback ride?”
He extracted an iPhone from an inside jacket pocket. With every movement, he made a vein in her neck pulsate. All she had to do was get a glimpse of his hands, with their blunt fingers. She could imagine how they’d feel running over her, skin on skin, tracing her stomach, then parting her legs…
Candace shifted, her clit stiff, just from the brief fantasy. She’d been like a nun out here in the country, mostly because she liked her guys cosmopolitan. She also hadn’t wanted to embarrass Nicki by being the “wild city cousin” and taking any man who caught her fancy to bed, even though, in her natural vivaciousness, she talked about it nonstop.
As she waited for Russell to finish checking his schedule, she glanced around for Nicki, who was talking with Cook at the barbecue area, sending a furtive glance at Candace every once in a while.
Candace gave her a sly thumbs-up and returned her attention to Russell.
He punched something into his phone, then peered up, watching her with a look that made her temperature rise, flames licking at her belly until desire melted down and coated her sex.
He spoke. “I’ve got teleconferences the rest of the day as well as…meetings. Other than that…”
The remainder of it hung there, ready for the taking.
“What would you think about a morning tour?” she asked carefully. “Tomorrow? Ten-thirty, say? Brunch afterward?”
He nodded, inputting the time into his phone
. “Let’s skip the horseback ride, though. I’ve been getting plenty of those.”
It was an outright reference to how he was checking out other locales for a dude resort.
Ruffled by that, she said, “Noted. But you’d better come here hungry.”
His fingers hovered above the phone screen, as if her words had the effect of her physically skimming her fingers over him—inappropriate, surprising, sultry. The lust flared in her again. But then he finished inputting and slid the phone back into his inner jacket pocket.
“Tomorrow, then,” he said, standing, grinning at her as if he appreciated everything she’d brought to the table.
It was only when he was gone that she started to second-guess herself.
Had she just gotten into a compromising situation? Had she somehow promised more than just a ranch tour?
She watched Russell go over to Nicki, who was standing by the dessert table. He shook her hand, then walked toward the house, where he’d parked his black Mercedes.
After he was gone, Candace sent Nicki a more emphatic, slightly hopeful, thumbs-up. Nicki’s answering smile made everything all right.
Candace rose from the table, intending to go over and give the total lowdown, but she stopped in her tracks as someone else approached her cousin.
And when Nicki, herself, turned around and saw Shane Carter, as if she had felt him even before he had arrived, Candace immediately changed direction and walked the opposite way.
She couldn’t help a huge smile. It seemed she had already closed one deal and, with any luck, her streak was only going to continue with Russell Alexander.
5
“HI, NICKI.”
Shane waited for her to turn around, and every second until she did slowed down like a drawn-out heartbeat inside of him.
He didn’t expect the crash of his blood when she met his gaze, the brutal, breaking wave of lust that beat in his chest, then whirled down to his gut. Even in a simple blouse that revealed her toned, tanned arms, plus the modest pants that hugged her long legs, she was enough to turn him on just as powerfully as she’d done last night in a corset and fishnet stockings.
She pushed back a hank of curly hair from her face, which was flushed either from the sun or…
The memory of last night?
If she was embarrassed about it, she recovered quickly enough, returning to the feisty woman at the Halloween party who’d given him as good as she’d gotten when he’d confronted her about duding out her ranch.
“Are you just here to put a heroic halt to all the evil change that’s overtaking Pine Junction?” she asked.
He propped his booted foot on a picnic bench, resting his arm on his thigh and tipping back his hat. “I was thinking about doing just that, but it appears the forces of evil have already vacated the premises.”
Glancing in the direction of where the suit—the tall man who’d stood out like a sore thumb—had disappeared, Shane didn’t say anything to Nicki about how Russell Alexander had tried to get a show-me-the-ranch appointment out of him, too.
But he did say, “You know that this Alexander guy is taking a look-see at other properties this afternoon, right?”
“Yes, I do.”
They went silent, and suddenly it wasn’t about dude resorts anymore. It was about what they’d done…what he’d said at the end of last night—a question Nicki hadn’t quite answered when he’d asked if she had any more fantasies.
A gaggle of children were chasing one another nearby, laughing and using squirt guns by the entrance to the old barn. Adult employees had relaxed now that the businessman had left, and some of them had even joined the kids in their games.
Shane kept his voice low. “About last night…”
“Yes,” she said, interrupting him, meeting his gaze head-on with her own.
She’d taken Shane off guard.
Yes, she’d said.
But yes to what?
His body already knew, and it was warming up, just like the low grumble of an engine in a car that was used to going fast, not driving slow.
Nicki crossed her arms over her chest as she continued, keeping her volume low, too. “Yes,” she said again.
“Yes?” he asked.
She looked at him as if he was a devil, and maybe he was—or, at least, he had a wicked talent for getting under her skin.
“Well,” she said, “I figure there’s no reason to be mad at you for last night. Candace and I straightened it all out. And I also figure that it’s high time I got out more….”
And he just kept on with the devilry, his skin on fire for her. “I’m still not sure what you’re trying to tell me.”
She huffed out a sigh. “For a man with all your experience, you sure aren’t connecting the dots very well.”
“Maybe I just want to hear you say what you have to say.”
“And what would that be? That you might not be in town all that long and we should—”
“I won’t be.” Not if he could help it. He didn’t want to spend more time than he needed to on that ranch.
He wanted to hear her say it.
“Do you want me to tell you that I had fun last night and I wouldn’t mind having some more?” she asked, braver now.
But her gaze was wide again, as if even she couldn’t believe that she was admitting to wanting another night with him.
“I want you to say all of it, Nicki.”
She was blushing again, and this time he knew that it wasn’t because she’d been under too much Indian summer sun.
He had some power over her, didn’t he? And God help him, but he liked the sense of that. In a life where he’d had precious little of it with all the problems that had befallen the Carters and all the responsibility that had fallen on him, warranted or not, he liked it.
He leaned forward, closer to her—close enough to smell the spring shampoo in all those curls he was dying to touch.
“Are you asking for your outlaw to come back to you tonight?” he said.
As she hesitated, her breathing suddenly uneven, he wondered if she wanted to lean over, sink against him, just as much as he wanted her to do it.
Then she burned him with that direct, light green gaze. “That’s what I’m asking. For…him…to come back.”
He wanted to reach out, run a finger over her arm, both of which had loosened away from her chest as she peered at him, in on the joke by now, obviously willing to tease him back. The quirk of her mouth even poked him in the heart ever so slightly.
But this wasn’t about hearts. It was about sex, giving a jump start to both her and him, then getting out of her bedroom before he stayed too long.
“If that outlaw of yours were to come back,” he said, “where would he meet you this time?”
She slid a glance toward the barn, then looked away as one of the kids broke away from the water fight and sprinted past them.
They stayed quiet until the child darted back to the action.
“Midnight,” she said. “That’s when I’ll be here.”
He didn’t say anything more, but he did take the risk on subtly running his knuckle over her arm as he walked away, watching as goose bumps rose over her skin.
She slowly drew away, then grabbed a dessert plate, as if suspecting that everyone was watching them. But when Shane looked around, they didn’t have anyone’s attention.
Her message was clear, though. This was to be a private assignation—a fling only for quiet, keep-to-herself Nicki Wade and him to know about while hiding the truth from everyone else.
Had she ever done something like this before?
It made him wonder just how well he actually did know his neighbor.
It, by God, even intrigued him.
He grabbed a plate, too, moseying over to the barbecue, already pretending he was disinterested in Nicki.
Pretending that he was something that he really wasn’t in everyone else’s eyes but hers.
WHEN NICKI FINALLY LEFT the picnic, she went straig
ht to the main house, where Zeke, one of her cowboys, had said he’d seen Candace heading earlier.
Indeed, she found her in her bedroom, sitting at an old cream-and-gold vanity table Candace had found at a yard sale last weekend. She’d discovered an old-fashioned ice-cream-parlor-type wire chair to go along with it, as well as a long, fog-traced mirror that she’d propped against a wall near her red-quilted bed. She’d purchased some sheer deep pink material from the fabric store to drape over the top of the mirror, and also bought a big Betty Grable poster to lord it over a corner of the room, giving the place some flair.
Somehow, in the short time Candace had been here, she’d decorated her domain with a far more invested hand than Nicki ever had done to her own room. But Nicki had never paid much mind to that kind of thing—she’d always been more focused on stuff like feeding the horses, blanketing and turning them out, cleaning the stalls, mixing the grain, working the stock… All that, plus learning how to balance account books that never seemed to find their equilibrium.
In the mirror above the vanity table, Candace saw Nicki standing in her doorway, and she turned around on that wire ice cream chair.
“Tell me you’ve got a date tonight.”
Nicki blinked. Was she that readable?
Candace laughed, leaning on the back of the chair. “I saw Shane walking over to you at the picnic.”
“And I saw you getting along with Russell Alexander.”
“He’s…an interesting man. And he put me on his calendar for a meeting tomorrow morning. I’m going to show him around the ranch.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
Candace faced the mirror again, and Nicki would’ve said her cousin looked smug except for the delighted, adorable way in which she plucked a tube of lipstick from her makeup tray, then used it to test the shimmery pink color on her lips.
“You did it, then,” Nicki said. “You reeled him in.”
Candace paused in applying the makeup. “Yes, I did.”
But the hint of regret—about the ranch going dude—was too much, and Nicki put the thought of seeing the W+W change so drastically aside.
“It looks to me like you’ve got those lipsticks lined up like bullets,” she said. “Is that going to be how you handle Mr. Alexander?”
Roped In Page 6
