Good Time Girl

by Candace Schuler

  “Dance, cowboy?”

  TOM FELT the old green monster rear up again as she melted into the arms of her partner, and deliberately tamped it down. She wasn’t really interested in that grinning idiot she was dancing with. She was only doing it tick him off and make him come to heel.

  “And I’ll be damned if I’ll dance to her tune,” he muttered, and slugged back a long swallow of the single Lone Star he was allowing himself for medicinal purposes.

  The rodeo doctor had given him a cortisone shot and a couple of pain pills to take later if his arm started aching. It hadn’t—the cortisone had worked just fine—but he didn’t want to complicate matters by adding too much alcohol to the mix, just in case.

  “What was that, darlin’?” The physically gifted buckle bunny who’d been trying to engage his interest since he walked in the place pressed her gifts up against his arm and giggled in his ear. “I didn’t quite hear what you said, sweetie. The music’s kind of loud.”

  He raised his arm to dislodge her and took another pull on his beer. “I said, nice tune,” he said.

  “Yes, it is.” She giggled again. “Would you like to dance?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Well.” She didn’t seem to know what to say to that.

  Tom took pity on her—and took the opportunity to get rid of her—by tapping a passing cowboy on the shoulder. “Hey, Rooster, I’d like you to meet— What was your name again, honey?”

  “Becky.”

  “Well, Becky, meet Jim Wills. You can call him Rooster, though. Everybody does. He’s a champion bull rider—took first place today in the bull riding event, didn’t you, Rooster?—and he’s one fine dancer, too.”

  “First place?” she said, her eyes lighting up as she turned her limpid gaze from Tom to Rooster. “Was that you?”

  Rooster stuck his scrawny chest out. “Sure as shootin’ was.”

  “He’s got a great big silver buckle to prove it, too,” Tom said. “He’ll probably let you look at it later if you ask him real nice.”

  Becky giggled and let Rooster sweep her onto the dance floor. The disparity in their heights put her overgenerous breasts nearly at nose level on Rooster, but neither one of them seemed to mind. Rooster liked women in all their myriad sizes and shapes, and Becky appeared more than satisfied to be dancing with a prize-winning bull rider.

  Grinning, Tom lifted his beer bottle to his lips for another sip just as Roxanne two-stepped through his field of vision, smiling up into the face of a grinning young stud who was holding her much too close. Tom barely restrained himself from biting the top off of his beer bottle.

  “WHY, that’s just so interestin’, sugar,” Roxanne heard herself say, and thought she sounded just like Scarlett O’Hara on the porch of Tara with the Tarleton twins. “I had no idea ridin’ bulls was such a complicated process. I mean—” she batted her eyelashes to distract him from the utter inanity of her conversation “—I knew it was dangerous an’ all, but I had no idea it was scientific. You’re so brave. And brilliant, too. A regular scientist. My goodness.” She lifted her hand from his shoulder and touched her fingertips to her temple. “It’s enough to turn a poor girl’s head, sure ’nuff.”

  Oh, my God, she thought, now I’m channeling Scarlett. If Tom didn’t step in pretty soon and rescue her, she was going to make him eat dirt when he finally did show up.

  “You’re just a double-edged sword, aren’t you, sugar?” she said to the cowboy, who seemed to have no idea that she sounded like a character from one the world’s best-known novels. “And you’ve been ridin’ bulls for—how long did you say it was?”

  “I started riding calves when I was two,” he said, and launched into a long explanation about how his daddy had followed the training apparently laid down by rodeo’s all-time greatest bull rider, Ty Murray. It included a regimen of fence walking, unicycle riding and sessions on the bucking machine that lasted into the wee hours.

  Thankfully, Roxanne didn’t have to say much after that. She just smiled until her jaw ached and silently cursed Tom for the no-good, low-down, good-looking, dangerous cowboy he was.

  “WHY DON’T YOU just go get her?”

  Tom stopped glaring at Roxanne and her dance partner long enough to turn his head and glare at Clay Madison. The young cowboy was decked out all in black—black hat, black shirt, black denim jeans—in an effort, Tom suspected, to capitalize on his resemblance to the Travolta of the Urban Cowboy era. “Mind your own damn business,” he snarled.

  “You know you want to,” Clay said.

  “What I want is to rearrange your pretty face for you.”

  “You’re welcome to try.” Clay seemed unperturbed by the implied threat. “Any place. Any time. We can take it outside right now.”

  Tom seriously considered it. Smashing anything right now would probably make him feel better. Smashing the face of the man who’d swapped spit with Slim while he stood there and watched would make him feel a whole lot better. But it would only be a temporary fix. Besides, Clay wasn’t the one who’d been doing the kissing. Regretfully, Tom shook his head. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said.

  “No,” Clay agreed. “It wasn’t.” He took a sip of his beer. “It was yours.”

  Tom wanted to argue with that. He really did. But the kid was right. It was his fault. Slim had only done what she’d done—what she was doing—because of what he’d said to her. Tom sighed, and went back to watching her whirl around the dance floor.

  She had switched partners and was doing the Schottische with one of the rodeo bullfighters, who was still in his clown get-up. Rumor had it that some of the buckle bunnies had a thing for the bullfighters, but had trouble telling who they were without the makeup and baggy pants. Apparently, this guy wanted to make sure he didn’t miss out on any chance for some action. Slim was batting her eyes at him, making him think there was a possibility he might actually get it.

  “She isn’t even remotely interested in him,” Clay said helpfully.

  “I know that,” Tom snapped. Why the hell wouldn’t this guy go away and leave him to stew in peace?

  “It’s all an act. She’s doing it to make you suffer.”

  “I know that, too.”

  There was a beat of silence as they both watched her partner spin her in a series of quick, showy twirls. Her ruffled white skirt flared high and wide, exposing the tops of a pair of lacy, white, thigh-high stockings and sleek bare thighs before it fluttered back into place. Both men sighed appreciatively.

  “Man, she really wants to see you crawl,” Clay said.

  Tom jerked his gaze away from Roxanne long enough to shoot the young cowboy a half irritated, half admiring glare. “How the hell do you know so much about women? A kid like you?”

  Clay shrugged. “I’ve made a lot of ’em mad.” He upended his beer, pouring the last of the brew down his throat, and then set the empty bottle on the bar. “The thing is,” he said, as he signaled the bartender for another one, “you know you’re going to do it sooner or later—a guy’s always going to do it sooner or later, if he has feelings for a woman—and the sooner you cowboy up and get it done, the sooner you’ll be the one she’s dancin’ with instead of that clown. You leave it too late, though, and you run the risk of leavin’ here alone tonight.” He picked up his fresh beer and took a long swallow. “Or else you’ll end up watching her walk out of here with someone who ain’t so pigheaded and prideful.”

  Tom knew the awful truth when he heard it. “Shit,” he said.

  AFTER THE THIRD skipping turn around the dance floor with the painted cowboy, Roxanne decided she’d waited just about as long as she was going to. If Tom wasn’t going to come crawling after her on his own, she was going to have to do something to give him a little added incentive. And that incentive was dressed in black and standing next to him at the bar.

  “All this dancin’ is making me feel a little light-headed,” she said to the bullfighter, fanning herself for effect. “Would you mind awfully if I s
at the rest of this one out?”

  “Would you like something to drink? A beer? A glass of water?”

  “Oh, no, thank you, sugar. I think I’ll just go to the ladies’ room and run some cold water over my wrists for a few minutes. That should perk me up some. Don’t feel like you have to wait for me.” She patted his arm. “You just go right on ahead and find yourself another partner. I’ll probably be a while.”

  On her way to the ladies’ room, she just happened to sashay down the length of the bar. She walked on past Tom as if she hadn’t seen him, then stopped and turned a brilliant smile on the man standing next to him. “Hey, there, good-lookin,” she purred, as if he were the only man in the room.

  “Hey, yourself,” he said, and grinned at her. “Having fun?”

  “Sure am.” She put her hand on his chest and leaned in a bit, smiling at him from underneath her lashes. “I’d be having more fun if you’d dance with me,” she invited in a breathy little voice.

  “Well, now, that’s the best offer I’ve had all night.” He reached behind him to set his beer on the bar. “I’d consider it an honor to dance with you.”

  “No,” Tom said.

  Roxanne stiffened and turned her head toward him, slowly, as if he were some strange species of bug that had suddenly spoken. “I beg your pardon,” she said in her frostiest tones. “Were you speaking to me?”

  “You know damned well I’m speaking to you.” He reached out and curled his fingers around her forearm, pulling her hand away from Clay’s chest. “If you want to dance, dance with me.”

  “What if I don’t want to dance with you?”

  “Damn it, Slim, don’t push me.”

  “I wasn’t aware that I was even talking to you.” She looked down at the hand on her arm, and then back up at him. The look in her eyes was pure temptation. Pure fire. Pure female cussedness at its most contrary. “And if you don’t remove your hand from my arm, I’m going to have to ask Clay to remove it for you.”

  Tom decided he damn well didn’t want to wait a minute longer to have her in his arms again. Damn, he liked a woman with sass! “I’m sorry, Slim.”

  Yes! she thought, mentally doing a little victory dance. “Really?” she said, as if she couldn’t care less. “What for?”

  “For acting like a jealous fool.”

  “And?”

  “And for yelling at you like I did.”

  “And?”

  “And what?” he said, exasperated. “What else did I do?”

  “Well, let’s see, now. What else did you do? Oh, yes, I remember. You called me a tramp.”

  “Damn it, don’t start that again. I didn’t call you a tramp.”

  “You may not have said the actual word, but that’s what you meant.”

  “I did not call you a tramp,” he insisted.

  “I’m not going to argue semantics with you. You all but came right out and accused me of having sex with Clay right after I’d had sex with you. In my book, that’s calling me a tramp.” She looked over at Clay. “What do you think, sugar? Did he call me a tramp?”

  “Close to,” Clay said diplomatically.

  “I did not call you a—” Tom clenched his teeth on the word, clamping down on his temper at the same time. Because she was right. And he knew it. He hadn’t actually called her a tramp, but that’s what he’d implied. Without any proof, without even a hint of tramplike behavior on her part, he’d let suspicion and ego override good sense. Knowing there was no way out of it, Tom suppressed a sigh and did what he had to do. He groveled.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for yelling at you. I’m sorry for implying that you were a tramp. I’m sorry for acting like a goddamned jealous jackass. I was wrong. And stupid. And—” He groped, searching for another word, any word, that would satisfy her and get him back in her good graces. “I was just flat-out wrong, is all. And I’m sorry.”

  Roxanne smiled beatifically. “I forgive you.”

  Tom eyed her suspiciously. “That’s it? That’s all I had to say? You’re not going to make me eat shit?”

  “Dirt,” she said. “I was thinking of making you eat dirt. And no, I’m not.”

  He couldn’t quite believe that’s all there was to it. “Why not?”

  “Because when I walked in here tonight and saw you talking to that silicone-enhanced little chippy, I wanted to tear her bleached-blond hair out by the roots.”

  Tom smiled. “You were jealous.” He all but crowed the words.

  “When you’re with me, sugar, you’re a one-woman man. Or you’re not with me.”

  Tom’s smile widened into a grin. He slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her close. She melted against him, her hands flat on his chest, her face tilted up like a flower to the sun, her luscious ruby-red lips a kiss away from his.

  “So,” he said, and his voice wasn’t quite steady. “You wanna dance?”

  She shook her head, brushing her lips back and forth across his in an almost kiss. “No.”

  “Drink?”

  Another brushing butterfly kiss. “Uh-uh.”

  “What, then?”

  She leaned in that tiny, necessary fraction of an inch and pressed her lips to his. When she finally drew back, a long delicious minute later, she had his lower lip between her teeth. She nipped it lightly before letting go. “I’ve got us a room down at the Round Up. How ’bout we skip the preliminaries and get right to it?”

  THEY DIDN’T MAKE IT to the Round Up Motel. They didn’t even make it as far as the car. They were hardly a dozen steps past the front door when Tom pulled her into the dark, concealing shadows at the far side of the building and pressed her up against the unpainted plank wall.

  His mouth crashed down on hers, lips open, tongue seeking, teeth nipping and nibbling, his hands on either side of her head to hold her still for his invasion. He didn’t come up for air until their lips were red and wet and swollen. Just like certain other parts of their collective anatomy.

  “I missed you,” he said, and skimmed his mouth down the side of her neck with tender, avaricious hunger. “I know it’s only been a couple of hours, but I missed you something fierce.”

  She tilted her head to give him better access, then sighed when he took it. “I missed you, too.”

  He smoothed his hands downward, palms open, fingers curved, letting them glide over the curves of her shoulders and arms and breasts. “I’ve been miserable ever since you walked away from me.”

  “Me, too.” She moaned and arched into his caress, lifting her hands to the backs of his to press them more firmly to her breasts. “Oh, me, too.”

  “I couldn’t do anything but think about you.” He flicked open the first button on her denim vest. “About this.” He flicked open another button, and then another, and another. “These,” he said as he brushed back the sides of the vest and exposed her breasts to the warm night air.

  The two ends of the silver lariat necklace she’d purchased that afternoon hung between her breasts, the vivid blue stones dangling on a level with her erect nipples, making her look more naked, more sensual than she would have without the added adornment.

  Tom sucked in his breath. “You have the sweetest little breasts,” he murmured raggedly, and cupped his hands over them, enveloping them completely, squeezing them together so they plumped up in delicious little mounds of flesh that overflowed his hands and caused the turquoise stones on her necklace to disappear into her cleavage. “Sweet little cupcakes.” Slowly he drew his hands away, bringing his fingers together in a pinching motion at the tips of her breasts. “With sweet little cherries on top,” he said as he rolled her nipples back and forth between his fingertips.

  Roxanne felt everything inside her turn warm and liquid and wanting. She arched her body even more, thrusting her breasts outward, pressing her head back against the rough-hewn wall. “Please,” she said.

  Tom smiled into the night. “Please what?”

  “Touch me.”

  “I am touchi
ng you.”

  “With your mouth.”

  “Where?”

  “On my breasts. Put your mouth on my breasts.”

  He bent his head, flicked a nipple with his tongue. “Like that?” he said, knowing he was teasing her, knowing she wanted more.

  “Yes. Like that. More.”

  “More how?” He flicked her nipple again. “Like that? Or like this?” He circled his tongue around the hard, distended little bud, slowly, making it thoroughly wet, then drew back and blew on it.

  She shuddered.

  “Tell me,” he murmured. “Tell me what you want and you’ll get it.”

  She put her hands on either side of his head and tried to draw him closer. “More,” she said, her voice low and petulant and rasping, a mere breath of sound.

  Gently, he took her wrists in his hands and pushed them down to her sides. “Keep them there,” he said, and pressed her palms flat against the wall. “And tell me what you want.” He leaned in close for a minute, swaying against her, letting the fabric of his shirt rasp against her sensitive nipples. “You can have anything you want,” he crooned. His lips hovered a tantalizing inch above hers. “Anything at all. But you have to ask for it.”

  “Kiss me,” she said.

  He did. Thoroughly. Completely.

  “Now what?”

  “Kiss my breasts.”

  He scattered a wealth of baby-soft kisses over the upper slopes of both breasts.

  “My nipples. Kiss my nipples.”

  He placed a soft sucking kiss on the tip of each breast.

  Roxanne’s fingers pressed into the wood beneath her palms.

  “Tell me,” he murmured again, his voice rough and ragged. She’d lost her cornpone-and-molasses twang again and it drove him nearly crazy to hear her talk dirty in that starched New England accent. He circled his tongue around her nipple, slowly, stopping just short of giving her what he knew she wanted. “Tell me what you want, Slim. Tell me and you’ll get it.”