Lone Star Woman

by CALLAHAN, SADIE

  At the same time, J. D. Strayhorn’s face, with hard brown eyes and a scowling mouth, floated in and out of his mind. On the verge of praying for willpower, Brady gripped her shoulders, set her away from him and looked into her face. “Jude. We need to sit down.”

  She looked up at him with parted moist lips and dreamy eyes that had gone from amber to as dark as coffee. “Okay,” she said softly.

  A longing profound enough to be mystifying passed through him. Jesus, get me out of this.

  But even as he prayed, he wasn’t sure he wanted out of whatever he was in.

  When they reached the booth, four fresh drinks were sitting on the table. The waitress breezed by and said, “Ace wanted to buy y’all a drink.”

  “Great. I’m thirsty.” Jude slid into the booth and picked up a margarita.

  Brady sat down, too, but he was embarrassed to look her in the eye. He usually kept his libido under control, especially in a matchup that had absolutely nowhere to go. The alcohol plus knowing she had seen him bare assed in those pictures had mixed in with his belief that she knew he had a hard-on. It had all done something to him. In a matter of hours, she had become aware of him more intimately than had most of the people he knew. He had never been more uncomfortable.

  A few minutes later, when he felt some relief behind his fly, he pushed his drinks to the center of the table. “Look, I’ve had enough to drink and I’ve got to drive. Let’s go on home. I want to get up early and get on the road.”

  “Right.”

  Thank God she doesn’t want to dance some more.

  He signaled for the waitress to bring them the check. He paid in cash. He hadn’t had credit cards for two years. Without them, he had discovered life went more smoothly.

  Jude gulped what was left of her drink, got to her feet, took a few seconds to steady herself and picked up her purse.

  Oh, hell. Is she drunk?

  He, too, stood and urged her ahead of him toward the front door. As they passed through the bar again, Ace sat back on his bar stool and reached out. He clasped Jude’s forearm, stopping them. “Guess I’ll see ya when I see ya, Brady.”

  Ace didn’t fool Brady. The man’s eyes, as well as his hand, were on Jude again. Brady felt a rush of . . . what? Jealousy? Christ!

  No. It wasn’t jealousy. It was responsibility. She was in his charge. He had to make sure she returned to Lockett no worse off than when they left, which meant keeping her away from the likes of Ace.

  He nudged her forward again, away from Ace’s touch. “I won’t be hard to find. Thanks for the drink.”

  12

  The heavy front door of Lupe’s Cantina banged shut behind them, abruptly arresting the barroom sounds. It also killed the air-conditioning. Enveloped by the day’s lingering heat and thick humid air, Jude felt as if she had walked into a steam bath. She knew she was in a lowland part of the state where the nighttime summer temperature didn’t drop, nor did a dry, cool evening breeze relieve the heat. And the air had a swampy odor. Stephenville wasn’t far from Bryan and Austin. She hadn’t enjoyed the climate there, either.

  Brady had parked his pickup a short walk away. He bleeped the doors unlocked and held the passenger door for her. As she brushed past him and climbed inside, she couldn’t see his eyes, but she was well aware of his body. He had tried to conceal the bulge in his jeans that pressed against her stomach while they were dancing, but she had felt it anyway.

  Without a word, he closed her into the pickup’s dark sanctum. Was he angry? Upset? She couldn’t tell. What she could tell was that his mood had changed and something was on his mind. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment they had gone from fun to something else, and too much tequila wasn’t helping. All she knew was that one minute he had been teaching her to dance, and they had been laughing and joking about her clumsiness; the next they were moving belly to belly, thigh to thigh, and were close to making out on the dance floor. Then he had abruptly brought an end to the dancing.

  Jude. We need to sit down.

  She watched him round the front end of the pickup, her heartbeat thumping in her ears. She blamed that, too, on the tequila. He scooted behind the wheel, then reached back, picked up his hat from the backseat and set it on his head. He tugged the brim down on his forehead, fastened his seat belt and started the engine, all without saying a word. He pulled out of the parking lot and sped toward the traffic light and the left turn that would take them to his mobile home.

  In the darkness, the pickup cab felt more intimate than it had in the daylight. She sank into the buttery leather bucket seat with her thoughts. The image from the poster and the black triangle of cloth barely covering his most intimate parts was back. It had returned to tease her when she felt his hardness against her stomach on the dance floor. From that moment on, the erotic picture of his bare body had returned and fixed itself in her mind, and she became acutely aware of everywhere their bodies touched. Instead of putting distance between them like she should have, she had arched her back and pressed even closer. What was wrong with her?

  The question she had pondered yesterday came back to her, and she just had to ask him, “Where do you, uh, plan on me sleeping?”

  “My sleeping bag’s still on the shelf in the closet. I’ll throw it on the couch in the living room, and you can have the bed.”

  His answer had come so quickly, she could only conclude he must have thoughts similar to hers. And imagining what those thoughts might be did nothing to quell her uneasiness. “I don’t mind renting a room here in town,” she said. After all, he was more than six feet tall. He wouldn’t fit on the couch.

  “That’s not necessary. And driving in to town to pick you up tomorrow is forty miles out of the way. I’d like to get back to Lockett before noon.”

  “Oh. I didn’t think of that.”

  He looked at her across his shoulder, his expression unreadable in the cab’s dim light, but she could see he wasn’t smiling. “Quit worrying,” he said, so sharply she didn’t need to see his face to know he was irritated. “The sleeping arrangements aren’t a problem. I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not some horny kid. I’m not gonna jump your bones.”

  She felt her whole body flush. Thank God he couldn’t possibly know what she was thinking. Or could he? “I didn’t think . . . that.”

  He turned his attention to the radio, switched it on and punched buttons until Josh Turner’s sexy deep voice cut through the silence with the last half of “Would You Go with Me.” Jude kept quiet, gluing her eyes to the dark landscape whisking past them. Tension felt like a blanket around them, so thick and heavy in the pickup cab’s close space, she could barely endure it. “I think it would make more sense if I took the sofa. I’m only five-seven. I think I’d be more comfortable there than you would.”

  “Darlin’, I don’t expect you to camp out. It’s no big deal. I’ve slept on the couch before.”

  Now, what did that mean? When he was married?

  He appeared to be watching something in his side mirror. He stopped for the red light, made the left turn when a green arrow lit up and headed into the moonlit night toward the mobile home. On the radio, Alan Jackson sang “Don’t Ask Why.”

  In the silence, Jude’s agile imagination contrived multiple scenarios of her slightly tipsy and overheated body entwined with Brady’s perfect one. It was an outrageous notion, but something had freed her inhibitions and replaced good sense. Was it seeing the intimate pictures of him? Was it because she’d had one too many margaritas? Was it as simple as being out of town, away from the scrutiny of everyone who had ever known her? Or maybe none of that was the explanation. Maybe this attraction went back even farther than the past few hours. Since the first time they met, she had behaved so strangely around him, she almost didn’t recognize herself. A mysterious force beyond her control seemed to have taken over.

  Get real, Jude. It’s sex. Bottom line: Mysterious force equals sex.

  God, had it been only two days since she drove into Mrs
. Wallace’s driveway and saw him?

  Contemplating sex with any man she scarcely knew was ridiculous, but even more so with Brady Fallon. She could count off, oh, probably twenty good and practical reasons why it would be a monumental mistake. But hadn’t she already ignored practicality in the first place by inviting herself to come here with him?

  Something deeper than practicality raised its pesky head and set her thoughts on a new course. Sex with the two men she had planned to marry had been far from perfect and not memorable in a good way. The awkwardness that had accompanied it had always made her anxious. She found the idea of sex with someone like Brady both frightening and fascinating at the same time. He had a rawness about him that neither Webb Henderson nor Jason Weatherby possessed. Brady would have certain expectations, and she doubted she would know how to meet them. A man who looked like him probably had untold experiences with women, while Jude hadn’t even been kissed in more than three years.

  She rarely felt inadequate in any area, but when it came to men and relationships, and sex in particular, she had to acknowledge her limitations. She knew more about mating in cows and horses than she knew about her own sexuality. She might as well be a twenty-nine-year-old virgin. Suzanne was right.

  Minutes lapsed with neither of them speaking. Perhaps it was just as well. Her throat had gone so dry, she might not be able to talk, and her chest felt as if a lariat had tightened around it. And her pulse rate seemed to be elevating with every passing minute.

  The dash clock showed eleven when they came to a stop in front of the mobile home.

  Brady still seemed out of sorts. She didn’t wait for him to come around to open her door. She opened it herself and slid out. Preoccupied with all that was going on inside her head, she crashed into him.

  His hands sprang out and grabbed her shoulders, steadying her. On her bare arms, they felt as hot as a brand and set off a new tumult within her. Startled, she looked up into his unsmiling face.

  He dropped his hands and stepped back. “Sorry,” he said stiffly.

  He let her pass in front of him, and they walked toward the mobile home. She stood behind him while he unlocked the front door. An unfamiliar rhythm thrummed in her belly, raged in her ears. . . . Lust . . . pure animal lust. She could think of no time when she had lusted after a man, but she was convinced that was what had her bumbling and fumbling now.

  He stood aside and gestured her into the mobile, then came in behind her and clicked on the overhead light. The room lit up in the dingy pall of one ceiling light. He had turned off the air conditioner before they went to town. The place felt airless and as hot as a sauna, and that trailer-house plastic smell was back, though the mobile had been closed up and locked for only a few hours. Her whole body began to perspire.

  “We need to hit the sack so we can get going early tomorrow,” he said, lifting off his hat and dropping it onto the only chair in the living room. “I’ll get the sleeping bag. Then the bedroom’s all yours.”

  “Okay, I guess, but, really—”

  Before she could finish, he tramped toward the bedroom, the heavy thuds of his boot heels bouncing off the mobile home’s thin floor.

  Before she had time to sit down on the sofa, he returned, carrying a rolled sleeping bag under one arm. “I turned on the air. This isn’t like West Texas. Here, it doesn’t cool off at night.” His speech sounded strained, his tone brusque.

  “But what about you? Won’t you be too warm on the sofa?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  She didn’t believe that. “I was just thinking, the, uh, bed’s big enough. We, uh . . . we could both be comfortable.”

  He looked at her, blank faced. Tension strung between them like a taut rope, even more potent than it had been in the pickup cab.

  “To sleep, I mean,” she added quickly. Now her heart was galloping.

  A few beats passed, then his head shook. “Nuh-uh.” Her duffel had been sitting on the sofa since this morning. He moved it to the floor. “You might be comfortable, but I wouldn’t.” He unrolled the sleeping bag, threw it out to its full length and began smoothing and fitting it to the sofa.

  “But I think—”

  “Jude,” he said, cutting her off bluntly, at the same time straightening and looking at her with fierce eyes. A thin sheen of perspiration shone on his face. “Trying to sleep beside you in a bed would be a torment I don’t want to inflict on myself. Get it?”

  The sharp tone pierced her. Without warning, hot tears rose in her throat, but she swallowed them quickly. “Oh.”

  A muscle bunched in his jaw and a few more seconds of loud silence passed. Then he looked away and shook his head again. “I’ve gotta get a pillow.” He strode back to the bedroom.

  Was he mad at her? She hated the idea that he might be. People were never mad at her. Tears made it all the way to the rims of her eyes. She blinked to keep them from spilling over. She was behaving worse than teenager. In fact, she had students who could probably handle this better than she was.

  He returned and caught her wiping the dampness from her cheeks with her fingertips. He dropped the pillow onto the sofa and reached her in two steps, but she couldn’t look at him. She detested having him see her reddened eyes. His arm draped around her shoulder and he pulled her against his side, into the heady space and scent of warm male and woodsy cologne. “Hey, now,” he said softly, and gave her shoulder a little squeeze.

  With nowhere else to put her hands, she had to place one on his middle and the other on the small of his back. She could feel his heartbeat, and it was pounding. Her eyes landed on the top button of his shirt. A tuft of crisp brown hair and his tanned neck showed in the vee of his open collar. She could see his pulse jumping in the hollow of his throat.

  “C’mon now. Don’t cry,” he said.

  “No. I’m not. Really, I’m not. I never cry.”

  His rough fingers pushed her hair back from her face, and placed it behind her shoulders, as if she were a child. “I didn’t intend to hurt your feelings. I just meant . . .”

  As his words trailed off, she looked up into his beautiful blue eyes. In the room’s dim light they looked like sapphires, and they were staring back at her with what she believed to be desire, saying so much more than words. A wild feeling of arousal charged through her. He was so close, his face only inches away. Her palms already touched his midriff. Her body already touched his. The room’s heat and that primal force filling the space around them with an excruciating weightiness pushed her up on her tiptoes, and she pressed her lips to his.

  His head jerked back, his hands grasped her wrists. “Jude, what’re you do—”

  “I—I don’t know.” Her voice wavered as if it were unwilling to support her actions. His strong hands manacled her wrists, holding her in place.

  “I just know I—I . . . The way you were looking at me, the—the way you were when we were dancing, I thought you . . . wanted . . .”

  His gaze held hers. “Jude, God, do you think I’m nuts?”

  He was rejecting her? With horror, she realized he was. Humiliation struck like a slap. More tears burned behind her eyes, but she steeled herself. Her pride would never allow her to show him he had hurt her. She jerked her wrists against his grasp. “Let go.”

  But he held her like a vise. “Jude, wait.”

  “I said let go of me.” She jerked against his strength again. Jaw clenched, she kicked at his shin with the toe of her boot, but he made a little backward hop and she missed. As quick as lightning, he loosened his hold on her wrists and she found her arms pinned to her sides by his and her body pressed tightly against him, as if she were wrapped in a straitjacket. His long legs bracketed hers, and against her belly she could again feel the ridge behind his fly.

  She squirmed within his hold, but his strength was too much to overcome. She glared up at him, clenched teeth and hostile eyes her only weapons. “Let. Me. Go.”

  “Dammit, wait,” he said again, only holding her tighter and capturing
her eyes with his. “What I said didn’t come out right. Jude, listen to me. What I meant to say was what sane man wouldn’t want you? You had it right. That last hour of dancing just about did me in.”

  She tried to move. “Let me go.”

  “Not ’til you calm down. . . . Jude, stop fighting me and listen.”

  She stilled and looked up at him again. Though emotions she had never known careened through her, her body remained tight as a stretched rubber band.

  “Jude, give me a break here. Right now, I’m your daddy’s employee. And I really need that job. I can’t afford to do . . . this.”

  Something even harder to bear than humiliation rushed into her—the realization of her own insensitivity and self-absorption. Hadn’t he already told her the job at the Circle C was important to him? And hadn’t she made this trip in secret because she knew the consequences if her father learned she was here?

  She ducked her chin and gazed at his chest, her thoughts a blur. His pulse seemed to be beating even harder in the hollow of his throat. The physical struggle and adrenaline, coupled with the frustration she had already felt, had her own heart leaping as if it wanted to escape her rib cage. “I know. Honestly, I do know. Just let me go. Please.”

  He dropped his arms, freeing her, and stepped back. She couldn’t make herself lift her chin and see her own mortification reflected in his face, but she felt his eyes boring into the top of her head, heard his ragged breathing. Her own breath was shaky, but no more so than the rest of her. She barely found her voice. “This was stupid. I was stupid. As you say, let’s just go to sleep so we can get an early start tomorrow. The sooner I get home, the better.”

  Gathering her composure, she flung back her hair, walked across the room, picked up her duffel and started for the bedroom. But she had to say something, had to somehow acquit herself. She stopped but still didn’t want to look him in the face. “I misunderstood.” She swallowed, groping for words. “I, uh, thought you—you were attracted to me in the same way I was”—she drew a deep breath—“attracted to you.”