Authors: Candace Schuler
“God! You were fabulous!” She planted another one on him. Quick and hard and sweet. “You
are
fabulous!” Another smacking kiss. “That was the prettiest ride I’ve ever seen. Well—” she grinned, her hot whiskey-colored eyes smiling into his “—the second prettiest. Last night was the prettiest.” She hitched herself a little higher against him and put her lips against his ear. “I’m so hot for you right now, I’m practically melting,” she whispered.
He practically melted, too, right then and there. Would have, too, if he hadn’t suddenly spied Clay Madison over Slim’s shoulder, standing there grinning like a skunk eating cabbage. Her very public display of affection—talk about cats in heat, he thought!—had gone a long way toward soothing the green-eyed monster, but the sight of the young bull rider standing there as if he were waiting his turn, brought it roaring right back to the forefront again. He let go of her butt and slid his hands up her sides to her arms, curling his fingers around her biceps to loosen her hold on him.
She let go immediately, unlocking her legs from around his waist and her arms from around his neck. “What?” she said, instantly sensing the change in him. “What is it, sugar?”
“While you’re with me,
sugar,
you’re a one-man woman.” His fingers bit into her biceps. “Or you aren’t with me.”
She stared at him for a full five seconds, her eyes wide and uncomprehending, her mouth half open, as if she meant to say something but couldn’t think what it might be. And, then suddenly, understanding dawned. Her eyes narrowed. Her teeth snapped together. “Just what are you accusing me of?”
Without a word, Tom dropped his hands from her arms and stepped back, jerking his chin toward someone behind her.
Roxanne glanced back over her shoulder. Clay. She’d completely forgotten he was there. “Go away,” she said, and turned back to Tom without waiting to see if she’d been obeyed.
The old Roxanne would have waited to make sure he was gone, loathe to make a scene in front of witnesses. Then she would have soothed and explained, wanting only to smooth things over before the situation escalated and feelings got hurt, before anyone yelled. The new, improved Roxy let ’er rip.
“How dare you!” she said, and there was nothing soothing in her tone. There was also nothing of the San Antonio barrel racer in it, either. It was all clipped New England indignation. “How dare you stand there and accuse me of being a promiscuous tramp.”
“I never said you were a tramp.”
“As good as.
While you’re with me…you’re a one-man woman. Or you aren’t with me.
” She spat his words back at him. “Just who else was I supposed to have been with between now and this afternoon?”
Tom lifted an eyebrow and shifted his gaze to the man standing behind her.
Roxanne didn’t even turn around. “And just when was I have supposed to have fucked him?” she demanded, using the most shocking, the most graphic term she could think of. “Hmm? Out in the parking lot, maybe? Under the bleachers of the grandstand during the steer wrestling event? When?”
“I didn’t say you fucked him! And keep your voice down, goddammit. Do you want everyone to hear you?”
“I don’t care who hears me.” She was right in his face now, toe to toe and nose to nose, blood pumping with righteous indignation. “I want to know what—
exactly
—you’re accusing me of.”
“You kissed him,” Tom said, and knew, as he said it, just how ridiculous it sounded.
“I
what?
”
“Kissed him,” he mumbled.
“I kissed him? Is that what this is about? I
kissed
him?” She turned to Clay, a look of mock confusion on her face. “Did I kiss you, Clay?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Eyes sparkling, he touched his finger to his cheek. “Right here. It was quite a little smacker. Very nice, if I do say so as shouldn’t.”
“That wasn’t a kiss.” She reached out and grabbed him by the ears. “
This
is a kiss,” she said and pressed her mouth to his.
She gave it all she had—lips, tongue, teeth, and a good deal of squirmy body language. It was a wet, seductive, blockbuster of a kiss. When it was over, she thrust him away from her and whirled back to face Tom.
“Now you have something to be pissed about,” she said, and socked him in the stomach as hard as she could. It was a good solid jab, with her body behind it, and it took the wind out of him.
He made a surprised-sounding “Woof,” and hunched over.
She smiled evilly, satisfied she’d made her point. “See you around,
sugar,
” she said, and then turned away, deliberately, and bent over from the waist, her bottom pointed at him like a dare—or an insult—and scooped her belongings off of the ground.
Without a backward glance, she straightened, regal as an affronted queen, and stalked off with her head held high.
If she had a flag, she thought, she’d be waving it. She felt that high, that triumphant, that strong. She’d raised her voice. She’d created a scene and used vulgar language, and—ohmygod!—she’d actually
hit
another person. She’d said exactly what she wanted to say, exactly when she wanted to say it, and she felt
wonderful.
Almost as good as she had last night in the midst of her fifth—or was it sixth?—glorious orgasm. Or this afternoon on the side of the road, when he’d come apart in her hands.
All in all, she decided, there was a lot to be said for unbridled emotional excess. She should have tried it a
lot
sooner.
Behind her, Tom straightened slowly, one hand still clasped protectively over his stomach, and watched her walk away. Maybe it was best this way. He had Jo Beth to think of, after all. A man shouldn’t spend the summer tom-catting around when he was seriously thinking about getting engaged come fall. And there was the season to think about, too. He couldn’t keep riding like he had today if he was doing a different kind of riding all night. A body could only take so much.
“Man, that little gal sure packs a hell of a wallop,” Clay said, grinning when Tom shifted his gaze to glare at him. “In more ways than one,” he added, and tugged at his lower lip. “Be a shame to let her get away.”
“Hotter than a firecracker,” someone else said, and Tom shifted his gaze farther to find that Rooster had apparently been standing behind the screen door of the cowboys’ locker room the whole time and had seen the whole sorry incident. Which meant everyone else was going to hear about it before the day was over because Rooster didn’t have a discreet bone in his whole wiry body. “It’s going to take a whole heap of grovelin’ to get back on her good side,” Rooster said.
Disgusted with the both of them, Tom shifted his gaze back to the woman who appeared to be walking out of his life. Her back was ramrod-straight, her hips were swinging, the ridiculous red feathers dangling from her hatband were dancing in the breeze. She didn’t hesitate, didn’t pause, didn’t look back over her shoulder. Tom told himself again it was better this way. He told himself he had no intention of trying to get back on her good side. But he didn’t believe it for a minute.
She was a tall cool glass of water with a scalding hot spring inside, and he was one sorry-ass son of a bitch who had a whole heap of groveling to do if he wanted to get back in her bed.
Which he did.
In the worst goddamned way.
“Shit,” he said.
7
R
OXANNE’S HIGH LASTED
through the time it took her to walk across the rodeo grounds and the parking lot to her car. It lasted through the time it took her to drive to the nearest motel and get checked in. It lasted through her leisurely bath and a careful application of fresh makeup and the ritual of getting dressed for the evening—
Take that, Tom Steele,
she thought as she buttoned the snug little denim vest she’d bought over nothing but soft, perfumed skin. It lasted on the drive to the Bare Back Saloon, where all the cowboys hung out after the Rodeo de Santa Fe in the hopes of finding some horizontal action.
It faltered a bit when she stepped inside the smoke-filled honky-tonk and saw Tom leaning up against the bar, talking to a certified, card-carrying buckle bunny, the kind who collected belt buckles as trophies and had perfected the art of gnawing the little red tag off the back pocket of a cowboy’s Wrangler while he was still wearing them.
She felt a sharp little jab in what she hoped was only her pride, although it felt uncomfortably close to her heart. Was she really so easily replaceable? Could he share what he’d shared with her last night and this afternoon, did the things he’d done, say the things he’d said, and then blithely go out and find someone else to do them with tonight? And if he could switch partners that easily, damn it, then why was he so incensed when he thought
she
had? What difference could it possibly make to him if it was so easy for him to do the same?
Were men and women really
that
different when it came to sex?
She was about to conclude that, yes, indeed, men were pigs and the San Antonio barrel racer had been right—rodeo cowboys
were
irresponsible sons o’ bitches and you
couldn’t
trust them—when he looked up suddenly and captured her gaze from across the room. Roxanne abruptly decided that maybe she wouldn’t pack up her poor little broken heart and head for home, after all.
He still wanted her.
Badly.
It was all there in his eyes. The burning lust that was twin to her own. The injured male pride. The determination not to be the first to give in. Roxanne felt all her confidence return at that one nakedly yearning, stubbornly male look and decided, then and there, that if Tom Steele wanted her, and she knew now that he did, he could have her. But he was going to have to make the first move. And he was going to have to grovel. And she knew just how to make him do both. Hiding a smug little smile of satisfaction, she lifted her chin and turned away, the ruffled hem of her brand-new, white-eyelet skirt swishing around the tops of her red Sweetheart of the Rodeo cowboy boots, and tapped the closest broad shoulder.
“Dance, cowboy?”
T
OM 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.
“W
HY
, 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.
“W
HY 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.
A
FTER 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 sat 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.