Only Skin Deep

by Cathleen Galitz

  Lauren was quiet on the ride back to town, her mind too preoccupied with decorating plans to notice the way Travis kept casting surreptitious glances her way. He had certainly made himself clear enough on the matter of his precious bachelor status for her to disregard him as a potential suitor. Aside from the fact that he reacted the way a skittish colt did around a man with a heavy saddle whenever the subject of marriage came up, Travis Banks wasn’t exactly what Lauren would consider good husband material.

  Just because he’d always had the power to turn her insides to mush whenever she looked at him didn’t mean she couldn’t separate rational thought from foolish fantasy. For one thing, he carried too much baggage from an apparently painful past relationship. For another, he was too handsome and sure of himself for his own good. Still insecure about her own appearance, Lauren didn’t like the thought of having to compete with the rest of womankind for a man’s attention. She liked even less the possibility of marrying someone who might very well cheat on her the minute someone prettier threw herself in his way. Lastly, a real cowboy like Travis would probably care more for his livestock than he did for any woman.

  That settled in her mind, she turned to him as a confidant.

  “Would you mind telling me where the best place in town is to pick up single men?”

  Travis swerved to miss a jackrabbit.

  “You mean other than church or the local Laundromat?” he asked.

  Lauren rolled her eyes.

  “I mean like a bar.”

  From his reaction, one would think she was inquiring about a male escort service. Lauren refused to look away. If anyone would know the answer to that question surely it was the most eligible single man in these parts. After that jab about turning his grandpa’s cabin into the playgirl mansion, she saw no reason why he shouldn’t be completely forthright with her.

  “The Alibi,” he said grudgingly. “If all you’re looking for is a one-night stand, that is.”

  She wasn’t, but since Lauren was long past the age of having a coming out party, she could think of no better way to announce her intentions to the world than circulating in the most happening spots. In a small community, when one got stereotyped as a stick in the mud as far back as high school, drastic measures were required. And just because she might let a friendly guy buy her a drink certainly didn’t mean she had to go to bed with him. Marriage, not gratuitous sex, was her ultimate goal—although she sincerely hoped a good deal of the latter was thrown in with the former.

  “There’s a church social scheduled for this weekend if you’re interested,” Travis suggested.

  Lauren’s pulse leaped at the thought that he might actually be asking her to accompany him, but his overly nonchalant tone convinced her that she was mistaken. An unexpected wave of disappointment washed over her. Having allowed him to step all over her pride since before he’d even known she existed, she vowed not to let it happen. Besides, she’d been to enough staid church socials to know that the only eligible men in attendance were either horny teenagers or widowers collecting Social Security. Determined to shed her heavy cloak of invisibility once and for all, she tipped her chin defiantly up.

  “I’m really not.”

  A more experienced woman might have been better able to read the frustration in Travis’s face. As it was, Lauren simply tuned him out by turning her head to stare out the window and proceeded to shade her eyes against a future so bright it threatened to burn her if she wasn’t careful.

  Travis was duly impressed with his tenant’s industriousness. Lauren took him up on his offer to take a load of old furniture that she didn’t want to the dump. By the time he returned she was in the process of polishing the old hardwood floors until they gleamed. With a gingham kerchief holding her hair away from her face, she looked the picture of domestic industry. On her hands and knees, she presented an enticing view that put the most indecent thoughts into his head. He struggled to find his voice.

  When he cleared his throat to announce himself, Lauren’s hand flew to her hair as though in embarrassment at being found in such a disheveled state. Travis hoped she thought that was the reason why he turned down her offer of a homemade lunch rather than discover the real reason he was in such a hurry to flee. Lacing his hands nonchalantly over the bulge in his jeans, he backed out the front door with all the grace of a teenage boy ill at ease with his sexuality.

  The following day, he watched from the safety of his own front porch as she replaced all the old, faded curtains with a feminine, although not overly fussy, print. When the furniture store dropped off a new couch and bed, Travis couldn’t help but notice how long the deliverymen lingered on the porch sipping the fresh squeezed lemonade Lauren offered them. For some perverse reason, Travis took pleasure in the fact that one man’s hair was thinning and he sported a paunch. However, he found himself scowling when he caught the younger of the two rolling up the sleeves of his shirt to reveal an impressive set of biceps as he helped her open a window that was stuck—a simple task that Travis himself would have been more than happy to have done for her if she had only thought to ask him.

  From the relatively short distance separating their places, he could see the warmth of Lauren’s smile as she refilled the guy’s glass not once, but twice. Travis couldn’t get over how different she was looking these days. It wasn’t just her new haircut and an artful application of makeup that made a man take notice, either. There was a new bounce in her step, a waggle in her wiggle that Travis hadn’t remembered seeing before.

  Watching her stretch those long legs of hers out to their full length in a pair of shorts as she attempted to hang a porch glider from the overhang the very next day didn’t do anything to make him feel any less a voyeur. If Lauren Hewett ever discovered the effect her body could have on a man, she just might be dangerous. For the life of him, Travis didn’t know why he’d even mentioned such an infamous spot as the Alibi to her earlier. Ever since bringing it up, he’d been praying she would just forget it and opt for the church social instead. He hoped Lauren was too caught up in the process of redecorating that old cabin to have enough energy left over to get herself into too much trouble.

  He figured wrong.

  Lauren checked her reflection in the mirror one last time before dabbing perfume behind each earlobe and heading for town. She was so apprehensive about going into a bar alone that she’d called on Suzanne for moral support. Unfortunately, her makeover buddy had been forced to decline due to a previous engagement, but she most graciously offered to send her niece in her place. They met up in the parking lot outside the bar shortly after nine o’clock.

  Wearing the exact same outfit she’d had on when she’d cut Lauren’s hair, Claire was undaunted by the sight of the usual crew at The Alibi. In fact, she seemed inordinately pleased by the loud whistles and “yee-haws” that accompanied their arrival. That an equal number of motorcycles and pickups filled the lot was enough to put the local police force on alert. A patrol car parked out front did nothing to deter a multitude of lonely cowboys and oil field workers from crowding into the smoke-filled bar with loving on their minds and paychecks burning holes in their pockets.

  A bouncer sporting a tattoo of a skull and crossbones across an arm as big as a cottonwood branch admitted Lauren and Claire with a smile that showed off his gold tooth. In her chic sundress, Lauren looked as out of place in the honky-tonk as he might at a high tea. Surveying her from head to toe in an overtly masculine gesture, he gave her a look as if to ask if she were lost.

  “There’s no cover charge,” he said. “It’s ladies’ night tonight.”

  It was definitely a misnomer for the clientele that frequented The Alibi. Men outnumbered the women by a goodly five-to-one margin.

  “I like the odds,” Claire said, putting a hand to the middle of Lauren’s back and pushing her inside.

  Once they were in the bar, Claire grabbed the closest chair and lit up a cigarette.

  As tempted as Lauren was to ask her to extingui
sh it, she didn’t want to insult her companion. The bar was so smoky that such a request would be like trying to keep the chlorine in one half of a swimming pool with a fishing net. Blinking, she gave her eyes time to adjust to the dimness of the room and strained to hear Claire over the deafening roar of a band that was clearly more into volume than producing a quality sound.

  “Tequila!” the crowd shouted along with the refrain of the song that the band was in the midst of playing.

  Lauren began tapping her foot in time with the music. The place was packed. Unable to catch the barmaid’s attention on her own, she was surprised when a young lady wearing an apron longer than her skirt sauntered over to their table with two tall drinks.

  “From a couple of admirers,” she said, setting them down.

  The drinks were so strong that Lauren thought the bartender must have forgotten to put any soda in hers. Accustomed as she was to being invisible, she didn’t quite know how to react to all the attention suddenly being directed her way. Men were straining their necks to get a better look.

  Claire was more than willing to help her enjoy the moment.

  “Drink up,” she said, clinking their glasses together and giving the eye to a couple of good-looking hustlers chalking up their cue sticks at a nearby pool table. “Tequila!”

  “The woman has the common sense of a goose,” Travis muttered under his breath. Perched on a bar stool, he had a slightly elevated view of all the comings and goings in the shabby bar. He reminded himself that he’d stopped by just for a quick drink, not to check up on his renter’s whereabouts. Definitely not. It wasn’t exactly like he’d followed her to The Alibi shortly after watching her leave from his living room window. He’d simply had a hankering to go to town right about that same time.

  Damn, but Lauren looked sexy in that soft, flared dress with the ridiculously wide belt that emphasized her trim waist. Matching shoes and handbag were wasted upon the other men leering at her from surrounding tables. A smart guy would simply leave her to her own match-making devises, however poorly thought out they were.

  Despite a word of warning to himself that he wasn’t anyone’s keeper, his adrenaline kicked in along with his protective instincts as he overheard a suggestive remark about his naive tenant from someone walking past. Reminding himself that it hadn’t been intended for him to hear, he unclenched his fist and took a sip of beer. The sooner he got her out of here the better. If Lauren wasn’t of a mind to leave just yet, he’d just park himself at her table and scare off the more menacing sorts until she was ready to go.

  He was in the process of unhitching his boots from his stool when a big cowboy tipped his hat in Lauren’s direction and made his move to cash in on the drinks he’d bought the two women earlier. Travis shouldn’t have been so surprised to see that Lauren could hold her own on the dance floor. Anyone who could survive a two-step with Fenton Marsh should manage well enough with the kind of men who frequented The Alibi. Such hard-drinking skirt chasers were often deceptively light on their feet.

  Travis watched closely to make sure no one slipped anything into her drink. Unfortunately, date rape drugs were no longer confined to big cities.

  He saw her laugh as her partner spun her around, caught her in the crook his arm and dipped her precariously close to the floor. As the final strains of the song died away, Travis could hear her deep-throated laugh and watched in disgust as men lined up like dominoes for an opportunity to gain her affection. Had Lauren known the score, it might have been amusing to watch, but he doubted she could figure that particular number with a preprogrammed calculator. She didn’t have the chance to make it back to her table before another guy tapped her on the shoulder and asked her for the next dance.

  “The lady’s with me,” the big cowboy grumbled threateningly.

  Because Lauren was after maximum exposure tonight, hoping to get her name circulating among the single men in the community, she wasn’t about to limit herself to just one suitor so early in the evening. She smiled sweetly at the cowboy who’d bought both Claire and her yet another round of drinks so that it would be hard for him to think he’d wasted his money.

  “I’ll save the next dance for you,” she promised.

  While Lauren had been dancing, Claire had connected with one of the pool players who’d caught her eye and now was leaving with him. Lauren waved goodbye as she made her way back to a table now loaded down with a wide assortment of drinks. She was startled to see Travis sitting there frowning at her.

  “Grab your coat,” he growled, scooting his chair right up next to hers so he didn’t have to scream to make himself heard. “I’m taking you home.”

  Thinking he was worried that her friend had left her stranded, she hastened to assure him. “I have my own vehicle.”

  She enunciated each word carefully so he wouldn’t suspect that she’d had a teensy bit too much to drink already. The best cure for that, she was sure, was to burn off any excess alcohol on the dance floor.

  “You can leave your car here overnight.”

  Wondering why her powers of invisibility were suddenly failing to protect her from someone who’d never hesitated to look through her before, Lauren shook her head to the contrary. Not wanting to appear ungrateful for all the money that had been spent on her over the course of an hour, she took a sip from every drink lined up in front of her. The variety of alcohol was working its way though a body unused to more than an occasional glass of sherry during the holidays.

  Travis was feeling the heat of at least half a dozen other men glaring at him. He fixed a deceptively neutral smile on his face. He’d timed his request for Lauren to get out of Dodge to coincide with Ox’s trip to the bathroom, and her stubborn refusal to leave while she was having so much fun was jeopardizing his careful planning.

  “Stick around, doll,” interjected a swarthy guy from the next table. “I’ll take you home whenever you want.”

  Barely an inch separated the man’s head from his shoulders.

  Travis’s muscles tensed. Whether Lauren knew it or not, she was in way over her head. If his own sister Callie ever found herself in such a predicament, he hoped to hell someone would step in and save her from herself. Of course with spitfire Callie the likelihood was that somebody just might need to save the stranger from her.

  Still, Travis would never forgive himself if a woman came to harm and he’d stood by and done nothing to prevent it. His mother had drummed it into his head that it was a man’s obligation to protect a lady. No matter how crazy that lady might be acting….

  A meaty hand came down on Lauren’s shoulder.

  “Forget it, buddy. She’s going home with me,” a hostile voice announced from behind Travis.

  Apparently having finished up his business in the men’s room, the cowboy was not at all happy with the prospect of being shot out of the saddle. Though not as stocky and compact in build as this one, the guy at the next table was by no means a weakling. When he stood up to kick his chair out of the way, Travis recognized him as Toss Weaver. He had come by his name in this very establishment—by tossing a competitor in a strong man competition across the ring. To this day the other man remained disabled.

  Toss’s favorite way of provoking a fight was to knock a Stetson off some drunk cowboy’s head and stomp it into the ground. As a preventative measure, Lauren’s suitor took off his hat and set it in the middle of the table.

  “There’s no reason to—” Lauren began to say.

  “Shut up!” Toss said, not so much as glancing at her.

  That was as far as Travis was willing to let things go. Dropping a hand beside his thigh, he grabbed the leg of Lauren’s chair and, doing his best to avoid drawing attention to the act, dragged them both several feet back from the table. Having suffered more than his fair share of black eyes over the years in the name of chivalry, Travis wasn’t particularly inclined to step between two giants who looked as though they belonged in a Grimm’s fairy tale.

  A second later, the cowboy lu
nged over the table. Beer flew everywhere. Taking hold of Lauren by the wrist, Travis pulled her out of her chair.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she protested.

  So much for the eternal gratitude of a damsel in distress, Travis thought as he hauled her out of harm’s way, a direction that happened to take them toward the dance floor.

  The sound of vile swearing, tables breaking and glass shattering immediately drew a crowd. Unfazed, the band played on, if anything more loudly than before. Tightening his grip, Travis swung his free arm around Lauren with the easy familiarity of a man claiming his woman. Then he unobtrusively proceeded to waltz her around the few remaining couples on the dance floor toward the back door. A siren wailed out front.

  “But shouldn’t we—”

  Travis cut the question off by gently pressing her head against the hollow of his shoulder. He rested his cheek against her hair and inhaled the scent that had haunted him since the last time she’d worn it for his benefit. It was far more intoxicating than anything he’d had to drink.

  Lauren snuggled up against him and followed his lead. Considering her alcohol consumption for the evening, she moved well to the beat of the music. That she felt even better than she smelled said a lot for his restraint at the moment.

  “This is nice,” she murmured.

  Goose bumps rose along Travis’s neck. A dimly lit exit sign glowed through the haze of cigarette smoke less than a dozen steps away. He barely had time to react to the surge of tenderness that welled up in his heart and sent an unmistakable tingling sensation to a part of his body even less inclined to follow the rules of logic.

  Cool air hit them both in a refreshing blast as Travis maneuvered his way out of the hot bar and into the night. Cat eyes that seemed more magical every time he looked into them widened in surprise as Lauren realized with a start that she was no longer inside. It was hard to think that just a couple of days ago Travis had considered this woman plain. Then again, a couple of days ago he’d also acted out of a sense of almost brotherly concern when he’d offered to rent Lauren a place for next to nothing.