She looked like a temptress or a mythical goddess against the dark blue bedspread, her red hair spilled across the pillow. The filmy, barely there fabric of her gown was more temptation than covering for a body made for loving.
And she was his, all his, Wade thought with a sense of awe as he stripped off his clothes and joined her.
The heat between them was fanned alive by his first touch, then escalated by hers until there was nothing between them but need and urgency and demanding pleas. He slid off the scraps of lace, tossed them aside and watched, mesmerized, as the gown floated to the floor.
But then the only thing mesmerizing him was Lauren, her gaze dark with desire as he knelt above her, her perfect bow of a mouth parted with a sigh of fulfillment as he slowly slid into her.
This, he thought as the tight, velvet moistness surrounded him, must be what all the books were written about. Not the hasty unions he’d enjoyed in the past, but this sweet mating that began with the quick flame of kindling, built into something urgent and then exploded into a conflagration that could wipe out thoughts and consume a man.
He covered Lauren’s mouth with his to capture a scream just as her body shuddered with a violent release that triggered his own. Clinging together, they let the waves of pleasure ebb slowly.
Reluctant to let it end, Wade stayed where he was until he could feel himself growing hard again inside her, the urgency every bit as powerful as the first time, the release—when it finally came—every bit as satisfying. The amazement and delight in Lauren’s eyes was as rewarding as any gift he’d ever received.
He rolled onto his back, carrying her with him, then gazed into her eyes and grinned. “I think you did it anyway,” he murmured.
“Did what?” she asked.
“Killed me.”
She tweaked a hair on his chest, drawing a sharp response. “Nope,” she said happily. “Still alive.”
“How reassuring,” he said wryly. “You must be awfully satisfied with yourself, coming over here tonight and having your way with me.”
She regarded him with an innocent expression that she managed to make look surprisingly sincere. “Is that how you think it happened?”
“I know it is.”
“Are you complaining?”
“Even if I had any breath to spare, I wouldn’t complain,” he assured her. “You were everything I imagined and then some.”
“Does that mean we can keep doing this?”
Try to stop it, he thought. “I don’t see why not,” he said, careful as he tried to gauge her mood. It seemed a little edgy, a little unpredictable.
“Now?” she inquired.
Wade feigned a moan.
“Are you turning me down?” she asked, wiggling against him.
He laughed as his body responded. “Guess not.”
Satisfied with a job very well done, Lauren showered and scooted down to the barn before dawn. She was coaxing Midnight out into the corral by the time Wade sauntered down a half hour later with a mug of coffee in hand.
“You were up early,” he noted as he handed her the coffee.
“I figured if I didn’t get out of there before you woke up, there was a very good chance neither one of us would get to work today.”
“Grady does owe me a few days off,” he said, giving her a deliberately suggestive once-over. “Today could have been one of them.”
“I would love to have heard that call,” she teased him, feeling amazingly comfortable with their newfound intimacy.
“There’s still time. I can make it now and we can be back in bed in five minutes.”
Lauren shook her head. “Afraid not. I have a date with another male.” When Wade’s expression immediately darkened, she gestured toward Midnight. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous of a horse.”
He shrugged ruefully. “Could be,” he said. “Don’t test me.”
She patted his cheek. “You’ll get over it, once you realize I’m all yours.”
There was an unmistakable flicker of alarm in his eyes. Determined not to let it linger, she quickly added, “As long as all you’re after is a quick romp in the hay.”
His gaze narrowed. “Is that all you really want, Lauren?”
She forced out the words she knew he wanted to hear. “It’s all I really want.” For now, she amended silently.
Wade still wasn’t sure how he’d let Lauren talk him into going to this party with her. What the hell business did he have socializing with a megabucks computer genius like Cole Davis? Unfortunately, his protests had fallen on deaf ears. One thing he was learning about Lauren was that once she got a notion into her head, there was no talking her out of it. And she wanted to go to this barbecue, seemingly every bit as badly as she’d wanted to finesse her way into his bed the other night.
“Why are you resisting?” she had demanded finally. “Don’t you want to be seen with me in public?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Wade had snapped.
“Then it must be because the party is at Cole’s,” she’d guessed, hitting the nail on the head on the first real try. “Have you even met him?”
“No, we’re not likely to travel in the same circles,” he’d said wryly.
She’d given him a pitying look. “Is that so? Who serves you dinner at Stella’s more often than not?”
He’d stared at her blankly. “Are you talking about Cassie?”
She’d nodded. “Cassie Davis, Cole’s wife.”
Wade had been stunned. “Cassie is married to Cole Davis and she’s waiting tables in a diner? You have to be kidding me. What kind of man—”
Lauren had cut him off, grinning. “Don’t even go there. It drives Cole crazy, but Cassie loves her job. She pretty much told him he could complain from now till doomsday, but she wasn’t giving it up,” she said proudly, then studied him with a penetrating look. “Still think you won’t fit in at this party? Grady and Karen will be there, too.”
“Okay, fine,” he’d grumbled, defeated.
Now, as he turned his truck into the long driveway that led up to a sprawling new ranch house, his second thoughts came flooding back. The house had soaring panels of glass and the kind of custom details that could be spotted even from a distance. The home he’d grown up in would have fit in one tiny alcove of this place. Even Grady’s spacious house was small by comparison.
Before Wade could get all of his defenses firmly in place, Lauren was tugging him into the middle of a throng of people, introducing him to a group of women she referred to as the Calamity Janes, her best friends from high school. He already knew Cassie and Karen. To his surprise, Gina Petrillo from Tony’s Italian restaurant was another of them. And that attorney he’d met at the Blackhawks’ one morning, Emma Hamilton, was the fifth.
He realized Lauren was regarding him with amusement. “What?” he asked.
“Feeling better? You already know half the crowd. They’re not that scary, are they? Now, let’s go for broke and I’ll introduce you to the men.”
Wade studied the cluster of males around the barbecue with surprise. Looking at them, it was impossible to tell which ones had money and which did not. They were all wearing faded jeans and T-shirts and well-worn boots. If he’d had to hazard a guess, he would have said they were all in the same income bracket he was. All except one, anyway. His jeans actually looked as if they’d been pressed at the dry cleaners and though his shirt was western in style, it was as starched as any dress shirt hanging in Wade’s closet. He pegged him right off as the wealthy Cole Davis.
To his astonishment, he was flat-out wrong. Davis was in the same well-worn cowboy attire as the rest of them. The man in the fancier duds was Rafe O’Donnell, Gina’s fiancé.
“You’ll have to excuse him,” Gina said to Wade, tucking her arm through the man’s. “Rafe is a bigshot New York lawyer. This is his idea of dressing down. We’re working on it. I’m going to take him out to the barn for a romp in the hay before the afternoon is over and try to mess him up a little.”<
br />
Lauren winked at Wade. “Definitely something for him to look forward to, right, Wade?”
Wade felt a rush of heat to his face. “I don’t think they want to hear about that.”
“I certainly do,” Gina assured him.
“Me, too,” Rafe agreed, clearly fascinated.
“Well, my mama taught me it is never polite to kiss and tell, so I’m sorry, but I can’t be the one to satisfy your curiosity,” Wade said.
“Oh, that’s okay,” Gina said blithely. “I can get Lauren to blab almost anything.”
Wade frowned down at Lauren. “Is that so?”
“Well, not everything,” she assured him. “A smart woman always has some secrets.”
“Maybe we’d better talk about that,” Wade said, steering her away from her friends.
She gazed up at him, her expression innocent. “Something wrong?”
“Just how much of our private business do you share with the universe?”
She stiffened at his curt tone. “I don’t share any of it with the universe,” she said tightly. “But I do talk to my friends. They care about me. They want to know what’s going on in my life, so, yes, they know that I care about you. Is that a problem?”
Wade forced himself to relax. “And that’s all?”
“Why does this make you so uncomfortable?”
Wade didn’t have a ready answer for that. Was it because the more her friends knew, the more likely they were to have expectations for his relationship with Lauren? Was he afraid of the pressure? Or was it just his natural inclination for privacy after years of enduring the gossip about being the bastard son of a Montana power broker?
“I don’t like the world knowing my business,” he said finally.
She returned his gaze with an unblinking look. “Believe me, neither do I, and I probably have more experience with it than you do.”
“I doubt that,” he retorted. “Half of Montana thought my mother and I were fair game.”
Lauren’s mouth opened, but no words came out. Instead, she merely snapped it shut and walked away, leaving Wade staring after her. Because he was in no mood to continue the conversation either, he grabbed a beer and wandered over toward the corral to take a look at the horses. The next thing he knew, he was joined by a boy who looked to be about ten. Except for his thick-lensed glasses, he was the spitting image of Cole Davis.
“Hi, I’m Jake,” the boy said. “Grady says you work with the horses at his place.”
Wade nodded. “You like horses?”
“Sure. My grandpa taught me to ride when my mom and me moved here a year ago. That was before she and my dad got married.”
“Your dad?”
“Cole Davis,” Jake confirmed. “He’s probably the smartest guy in the whole world when it comes to computers and stuff. I didn’t know him when I was little, but then we came back and he and my mom got married, and it turned out he was my real dad all along.”
Wade heard Jake’s matter-of-fact recitation with increasing amazement and mounting indignation. It was all too reminiscent of his own situation, even though this one had obviously had a far happier ending. Still, it added fuel to his belief that the rich had their own way of doing things, with little sense of decency figured into the equation.
He would have whirled away, gone after Lauren and insisted on leaving, except Jake was staring up at him with a wide-eyed look, clearly waiting for some sort of response. Wade struggled to come up with something neutral that wouldn’t reveal the turmoil his thoughts were in.
“I imagine you were glad to get to know your dad,” he said finally.
“You bet,” Jake said eagerly. “I already knew all about him, because I read all this computer stuff. When it turned out we were related, it was, like, the best thing ever.”
Wade knew he couldn’t ask a kid why he hadn’t resented the man who’d deserted him years earlier. The situations might not have been as similar as they sounded. Whatever the case, he wasn’t sure he could spend five minutes in Cole’s company without wanting to slug the guy on the boy’s behalf.
And what was wrong with Cassie that she’d turned around and married a man who’d ignored her and their kid for all those years?
Wade forced a smile for Jake’s benefit. “Good talking to you. Maybe one of these days you can come by the Blackhawk ranch and show me how well you ride. I can give you some pointers.”
Jake’s eyes brightened. “Really? That would be so awesome.”
“We’ll definitely set it up, then.” He looked around for Lauren. “I’d better go see what happened to my date.”
“Lauren’s out back by the pool,” Jake said. He looked up at Wade shyly. “She’s really, really pretty, isn’t she?”
Wade grinned at his awestruck tone. He understood it all too well. “She is, indeed.”
“I was hoping maybe she’d marry me when I grow up, but I guess since she’s with you, I’d better forget about it,” Jake said, then added with a hopeful note, “unless things, maybe, aren’t working out for you guys.”
“They’re working out well enough for now,” he told Jake solemnly. “But I’m sure Lauren will be glad to know you’re waiting in the wings in case I blow things.”
“Oh, gosh, you can’t tell her that,” Jake pleaded. “It would make me look like such a dumb geek.”
Wade ruffled his hair. “Hey, there’s nothing dumb about falling for a beautiful woman. No woman can have too many admirers.” He winked at him. “And you’re never too young to start looking out for the best.”
He managed to hide his grin until after he’d walked away. So, he thought, Lauren was making conquests among the elementary-school set. He’d better stake his claim fast.
As promised, he found her out by the pool, wearing a two-piece bathing suit that almost had his tongue falling out. It took everything in him not to grab a towel—or better yet a blanket, if only one had been handy—and toss it over her.
Instead, he drew a lounge chair up beside her. “Hey, good-looking, I have it on excellent authority that I have competition in this crowd.”
She slid her sunglasses down her nose and stared at him over the top. “Oh?”
“Jake is smitten. He says if I blow it, he’s waiting in the wings.”
“Jake, huh?” She smiled. “He’s a very smart boy. He takes after his daddy in that regard.”
Wade stiffened. “You and Cole had a thing?”
She frowned at the question. “Don’t be ridiculous. He never had eyes for anyone except Cassie.”
“Then why the hell did he abandon her and their son?” he blurted before he could stop himself.
Sudden understanding dawned on her face. “Oh, I get it. You’re comparing their situation to yours. It wasn’t like that,” she insisted. “Cole never knew Cassie was pregnant. It’s a complicated story, but their parents managed to keep them apart. When Cassie came back to town and Cole found out about Jake, he was furious. He insisted that Cassie marry him so he could be a real father to Jake. It was a pretty tense standoff for a while, but they were meant for each other and everything’s perfect now.”
She painted such a rosy picture, Wade thought, unable to squelch the bitterness that was always close to the surface when anything reminded him of his own past.
“I’m sorry,” Lauren said quietly. “I know hearing about Cole and Cassie and Jake must bring up a lot of bad memories.”
“Yeah, you could say that.” He met her gaze. “Would you mind if we got out of here?”
“Now?” she asked, regarding him with surprise. “We haven’t even eaten.”
“Suddenly I’m not all that hungry,” he said. “If you want to stick around, I’m sure you could hitch a ride back with Karen and Grady.”
“No,” she said at once, getting to her feet. “If you’re leaving, so am I. I’ll explain to Cassie.” She winked. “I’m sure I can make her understand how anxious we are to be alone.”
Not entirely sure whether she was serious, Wa
de regarded her with alarm, but Lauren reached up and stroked his cheek.
“I’ll tell her I have a headache,” she reassured him.
“Thanks.”
Her gaze captured his and held. “But I’m pretty sure I’ll be miraculously cured by the time we get home if you want to make it up to me for tearing me away from my friends.”
Despite his sour mood, Wade chuckled. “I definitely think we can work something out.”
“Then what are you waiting for? Get that truck started,” she said.
She said it with an eagerness that made his heart flip over. Somehow in the last couple of months, he’d gotten lucky. Experience had taught him that luck seldom lasted, but he was going to ride this streak for as long as he possibly could.
Chapter Ten
The barbecue at Cole’s had been a bad idea. Lauren could see that now. It had just reminded Wade of everything he was bitter about in his own life. Even though the circumstances were entirely different, she could see why hearing about Cole and Jake had just reconfirmed for him that wealthy, powerful men took whatever they wanted and to hell with everyone else.
Though it bothered her that Wade hadn’t been willing to stay and get to know Cole, even after she had explained that he wasn’t to blame for abandoning Cassie, she had been more than willing to go home and spend the afternoon in his arms.
Still, it had been a wake-up call, reminding her that Wade wasn’t going to take the news of her own economic situation in stride the way she’d hoped he might. Even though it was increasingly evident how he felt about her, she didn’t doubt for a second that could change in a heartbeat if he discovered she’d been deliberately deceiving him all this time. And that didn’t even take into account the whole superstar thing.
“‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive,”’ she muttered as she brushed down Midnight. The horse whinnied in apparent agreement.
Wrangling the Redhead Page 12
