Rules of the Game

by Lori Wilde

Forget dignity. You’re about to bust your ass.

  The cart picked up speed on the downhill slope. Feeling like a goofy cartoon character, she tried to figure out how she was going to keep the cart from steering off the sidewalk and into the stream that fed into Stardust Lake. Why had she built her B&B so close to the water? Uh, because normally the tributary was a good thing, a nice draw for customers who liked to fish or canoe, but right now, she hated that damn stream.

  Don’t blame the stream. Blame the dumbass who climbed into a laundry cart when it was parked at the top of a hill.

  Forget blame. Forget being embarrassed. How was she going to get out of here without getting skinned knees and elbows?

  The cart was flying now, bumping along the sidewalk. If she flung herself sideways, she could seriously hurt herself on the concrete. So what was alternative? She had to stop the laundry cart or end up in the stream.

  She could hear Skeeter trotting along beside the laundry cart, panting with glee as if to say, Mobile hide-and-seek, what fun!

  Maybe the cart would stop on its own. When the sidewalk ran out, it could just topple over into the dirt instead of pitch forward into the water. That could happen, right? Except the cart showed no sign of slowing or stopping. It kept rolling, gathering speed, zooming toward an unhappy destiny.

  Skeeter let out a deep-throated bark of canine warning. She startled. The cart jerked, the wheels catching on something. Jodi pitched forward, felt the cart leave the sidewalk, tilt, tip. Momentum shot her from the downed cart. Her plan was to somersault forward, plant her feet, stand up. Ta-da. Unhurt. Unfazed.

  Except it didn’t turn out that way.

  Gravity claimed her somersault, sent her tumbling feet-over-head into the stream. She tried to brace herself, to cushion for the fall, but she ended up splayed facedown in the cold, muddy water.

  Brr!

  Her teeth chattered and she was shivering so hard, it took a second to orient herself. Before she could push up to take stock of her injuries, a strong masculine arm reached down for her.

  It was the same masculine arm that had picked her up when she’d fallen at the Grand Texan. She knew without looking up that it belonged to Jake. If she lived to be a hundred, she would never forget the feel of those particular biceps. He must think she was the clumsiest person on the face of the earth.

  “Are you all right?” His warm voice brushed against her ear.

  Oh Lord.

  She closed her eyes. Struggled against her desire to melt into his embrace, raise the white flag, give up, tell him he was hot as a firecracker and all she wanted was to screw his brains into next week.

  But she couldn’t do that. He was supposed to have been nothing more than a sweet fling, an exciting adventure to help her put the memory of Ryan and her wedding day humiliation behind her. She had closed him up in a mental box and he was supposed to stay there, dammit. Nothing more than a lovely fantasy she pulled out along with her vibrator from time to time.

  Why on earth was he here? Did she really want to get involved with someone so persistent that he’d tracked her down even after she’d told him she never wanted to see him again?

  Um, yes.

  “Gwendolyn?” His hands were so gentle, so kind, and that was odd because he was so big, so strong, so rugged. “Speak to me.”

  She opened her eyes and finally looked at him. One glance into those dark brown eyes and the same emotions seized her—hunger, desire, need. One night had not been nearly enough. Jodi gulped, shivered, her teeth bumping together so fiercely she couldn’t speak.

  “You’re freezing wet,” he exclaimed.

  Yeah, okay, her body was kind of numb. She took a step away from him, ankle-deep in mud. Well, at least that was the intention. Her body moved, but her right foot stayed mired in the muck. She went down again, falling on her knees in the stream.

  Dammit! She hated appearing weak. Especially in front of him. She was the oldest. The strong one. The one who took care of everybody. The mother hen. And yes, okay, according to her sisters, the bossy one.

  But right now, she couldn’t even boss her own body around.

  In fact—horrors—her frustration threatened to turn to tears. She was frustrated with her body for betraying her so completely. Frustrated with Jake for showing up here when she’d told him she did not want to see him again. Frustrated with herself for being so glad to see him.

  Jake picked her up from the mud, scooped her into his arms, and started carrying her. Where was he taking her?

  “Put me down,” she protested.

  He did not. He marched—all alpha he-man—up the sidewalk, his black cowboy boots striding across the cement. Jodi’s heart thumped and her breath was short and shaky. Demand he put you down. Struggle! Put up a fight. Do something!

  But she’d been fighting for so long. From the time she was a small girl. Fighting to survive with a drug-addicted mother. Fighting to prove she deserved to be a Carlyle. Fighting to hold her adopted family together when Breeanne was so sick. Fighting to build her business from the ground up. Fighting to live down Ryan’s felonious betrayal.

  Dammit, dammit, dammit. Why was she having a meltdown now? Why did she want this man?

  He climbed the steps to the office, paused to jiggle open the door with one hand while transferring the bulk of her weight to his other arm. She was shivering uncontrollably. The cold January wind was blowing through her soaking wet sweater. She wasn’t even wearing a coat because it was too bulky to wear when cleaning the boxcars and too inconvenient to keep taking on and off between coming and going from the rooms.

  The door to the office swung open and he carried her inside. Skeeter trotted in behind them like he lived there. Her fault. She snuck him meat scraps. The black potbelly stove in the corner exuded heat. He kicked the door closed, and finally, thankfully, set her on her feet. She lost her balance, swayed into him.

  “Whoa there.” He put out a restraining hand, steadied her.

  “I’m fine,” she said, her voice coming out soft and weak. Alarmed, she starched her voice, lowered her tone, moved away from him. “I’m good.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest, her nipples hard as rocks beneath her wet sweater. Skeeter loped over to lick the back of her hand.

  Jake’s eyes flicked to her chest, and a knowing smile lit up his eyes.

  She felt the color rise to her cheeks, burn pink. “Down boy,” she said to the dog, but she was really talking to Jake.

  “Sit,” he commanded, pulling out a chair near the potbelly stove.

  Immediately, Skeeter sat.

  “Your dog is well trained.”

  “Skeeter’s not my dog. He belongs to a neighbor, but he loves hanging around. Probably because I feed him.”

  “Explains why he obeys better than you do. Sit,” Jake told her pointedly.

  Skeeter looked up at him with baleful eyes as if to say, But I am sitting.

  Jodi shook her head, not liking his bossy tone, but her knees were kind of wobbly, so she sat anyway. She blinked, trying to orient herself. How had she gotten into this situation? Oh yeah, she’d stupidly climbed into a laundry cart. It was nobody’s fault but hers.

  Jake whipped off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. The front of it was damp and smeared with mud from carrying her. He swore under his breath, muttered, “Need something warmer,” glanced around the room, grabbed the lap blanket from the sofa, and tucked it around her shoulders.

  She shivered, more from his nearness than the cold, although she was pretty darn cold. She lowered her lashes so he couldn’t see that she was studying him. Oh man, but he was hot. Really, really hot. The man was utterly edible.

  He wore blue jeans and a red flannel shirt that hugged broad shoulders. Red was his color. It complemented his tanned complexion and dark head of hair. Although he’d looked debonair in a tuxedo, he was even hotter in flannel and jeans. A regular guy’s guy. Macho. Rugged. Like the dude on the Brawny paper towel commercial. This was more his true s
elf. While he’d worn the tuxedo with ease, it was not a natural fit. His mouth was full, but not too wide, and seriously, she should not be thinking about his mouth because that made her think of kissing him, and kissing him made her think of— Well, never mind what kissing him made her think of.

  A scowl creased his forehead, but his lips lifted in an unexpectedly sweet smile. That kindness thing again. Clearly a man of action, he trod across the room to the coffee machine she kept for guests, grabbed the carafe, poured coffee in a Styrofoam cup, and brought it back to her.

  “Drink,” he commanded.

  The man was bossier than she was. She sat with the steaming cup in her hand, stubbornness latching on to her.

  “Drink.” He glowered.

  She balked.

  “Please don’t make me force-feed you.”

  “It’s drink, not food.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Just to get him off her back, she took a sip. The warm liquid slid down her throat, braced her. Felt really good. She kept drinking, and slowly the shivers racking her body ebbed.

  “Good girl,” he said, sounding self-satisfied.

  “Don’t patronize me.” She glowered. “I’m thirty years old. I haven’t been a girl in twelve years.”

  “Good woman,” he amended. An amused smile plucked his angular mouth. She remembered what those lips tasted like—heat and peppermint and Jake.

  “I’m good because I obeyed you? If I hadn’t, would I have been bad?”

  “You’re a disagreeable cuss.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  His grin spread. “Not at all. I like a good argument.”

  So did she, but she wasn’t about to say that.

  He knelt in front of her.

  “What are you doing?”

  He didn’t answer, just untied her sneaker.

  She curled her feet underneath the chair rung.

  “Give me your foot.”

  “I can take off my own shoes.”

  “I know that.” He reached for her right ankle, slowly untangled her foot from the chair rung, and settled it on his knee. The sight of her foot on his leg sent a memory rushing over her and she recalled his big fingers working the buckle on her high heels. A fresh shudder ran through her.

  He slipped off her sneaker and her soaking wet pink Hello Kitty sock. “Love the socks,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, sometimes I feel frivolous.” Actually, the socks had been a Christmas gift from Hannah, the seven-year-old girl for whom she served as a court-appointed special advocate volunteer.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “No,” she said. “Don’t keep it in mind. You have no need to know that I wear Hello Kitty socks upon occasion.”

  “But I already do know.” He smirked and reached for her other foot.

  Jodi rolled her eyes, caught a glimpse of herself in the glass of the potbelly stove. Eeek! Her hair was matted to her head, face bare of makeup, a smear of mud over her left cheek. She tried to fluff her damp hair and scrubbed at her face, knocked flecks of mud into her lap. What a mess. Good grief, what was wrong with the man that he wanted her enough to hunt her down?

  Now that he had both her bare feet propped up on his knees, he started vigorously rubbing first one freezing pale foot, and then the other. Instantly, her skin tingled at his touch, toes pinking.

  “That feels good,” she admitted.

  “Next time don’t be so stubborn.”

  Next time. What did that mean?

  “The color is back in your cheeks too,” he said. “A few minutes ago you were white as a corpse.”

  “Wow. That’s a wildly romantic simile,” Jodi said, and cringed the second the words were out of her mouth. Why had she said “romantic”?

  “I wasn’t trying to be romantic.”

  Good. She dropped her gaze back to her coffee cup. It was almost empty.

  He got another lap blanket from the sofa—this one she’d knitted—and wrapped her feet in it, and then he moved to lean his gorgeous butt against the desk, pressing big hands to his upper thighs, and sent one eyebrow jutting up on his forehead. Skeeter trotted over to join him, aligning himself with the stranger against her. Et tu, Skeeter?

  “Why were you in the laundry cart?” he asked.

  “Why are you here?” she countered. She did not owe him an explanation, if she wanted to go jumping into laundry carts that was completely her business.

  “You were hiding from me.” A teasing tone crept into his voice. He sounded victorious that he’d driven her to rash action.

  “Who wouldn’t hide from a stalker?” she countered, raising her chin.

  That caused him to look alarmed. “You think I’m a stalker?”

  “Well, you did show up after I explicitly told you to leave me alone.”

  “I wasn’t stalking you.”

  “No?” She sprinkled a dusting of Death Valley dry into her voice. “Then what are you doing here?”

  “I came to rent a room. I’ve got business in Stardust. I didn’t know you’d be here. How would I know you’d be here? Are you a guest? Or do you work here?”

  “I own the place.”

  He looked surprised and impressed. “No kidding.”

  “You expect me to believe you just showed up out of the blue to rent a room in the small town where your one-night stand runs a B&B?”

  “Believe what you want,” he said. “It’s the truth.”

  She wanted to believe him. “Big coincidence.”

  “Maybe, but it’s the truth. I’m here for one night and then I’m gone,” he said, his eyes lit up with a hopeful here’s-your-chance-to-get-more-of-what-happened-at-the-Grand-Texan gleam.

  Well, he could hope all he wanted. She was not going to take him up on the unspoken offer.

  “The laundry cart,” he pressed. “Why’d you dive in?”

  “Why do you think? Because I didn’t want to see you.”

  “And you couldn’t just tell me that?”

  She shrugged. “I wanted to avoid …” She waved a hand between them. “This.”

  He winced, and then chuckled like her words hurt. “Was I that bad that you’d rather risk life and limb in a runaway laundry cart than talk to me?”

  No, he was that damn good. “I told you I didn’t want a relationship.”

  “I know. I completely respect that.” He raised both arms, surrendering. “I swear I did not come here to romance you.”

  Well, that was disappointing. Even if she didn’t want him to romance her, she liked thinking that he wanted to. “I thought you came here looking for me.”

  “Didn’t.” He raised one palm, but the other was down as if taking a Bible oath. “Promise.”

  “So you need a room?” She should tell him no vacancy, but she wasn’t big on lying.

  “Don’t get up.” He pushed a palm downward.

  “No trouble.” She dropped the lap blanket, but wrapped his coat more securely around her, acutely aware of Jake’s brazen gaze on her body. She hopped to her feet, kicking off that blanket too, folded both neatly, and put them back on the couch. When she finished, she hustled over to the desk, giving him a wide berth, and plunked down in the chair. She felt safer behind the desk here in her domain.

  Business mode. When in doubt, fall back on what worked.

  Work.

  “Boxcar #3 is vacant. Lucky for you it’s my slow season. It’s the orange Boot Hill and Western.” She fished a key off the pegboard behind her.

  Was she making a mistake by giving him a room? What if he was stalking her? The chances of him stumbling into her B&B by coincidence were too astronomical to be believed.

  She looked into his face, didn’t see anything to cause alarm. In fact, his eyes were so warm and friendly, she felt flattered that he’d made the effort to find her, if indeed he had. But what the hell did she know? She’d dated Ryan for two years without a clue he was a lying, embezzling cheat. While her instincts might tell her Jake was trustworthy,
how could she trust her own judgment?

  “You’re uncomfortable.” He read her mind. “I’m making you uncomfortable.”

  She wasn’t about to admit that. Instead, she held his gaze, raised her chin. “Not at all.”

  “You sure? I could go to the Best Western on the highway.” He gestured over his shoulder in the direction of the interstate.

  Yes, say yes. Tell him that would be a great idea. “Just one night?” she said.

  “Just one night,” he echoed.

  She pushed the key toward him. “Enjoy your stay in Stardust. I won’t be around this evening. I have a family function. If you need anything, my assistant, Hamilton Gee, will be on duty.”

  “Okay.” His big tanned hand closed around the key and she couldn’t help staring at his long, tapered fingers. Couldn’t help remembering what it had felt like to be caressed by that hand.

  She gulped down her lust, shoved it to the bottom of her stomach. Realized she was still wearing his jacket. Gave it back to him.

  He smiled. It was a genuine smile that started somewhere deep inside him, as if he was overjoyed at seeing her again. Thank heavens she would be at Breeanne and Rowdy’s engagement party tonight.

  Otherwise …

  She might do something irrevocably stupid like knock on the door of the orange boxcar and ask him to make it a two-night stand.

  No, no. That’s not how it went. If a woman was looking for a casual hookup she did not extend it. Not if she was trying to keep her heart intact. “Do you need me to show you to your room?”

  “Don’t you want to see a credit card?” he asked.

  “Oh yes, yes.” What was wrong with her? The man scrambled her brains. All the more reason not to spend any more time with him.

  He pulled out his wallet. Extracted an American Express black card. Okay, so he was rich as hell.

  The name on the credit card said Jake Coronado. Hmm. Why did that name sound familiar? She had a feeling she should know the name, but she couldn’t place it. She could ask, but she didn’t want to give him a reason to hang around the office chitchatting.

  “All set.” She forced a smile and handed his credit card back to him.

  He reached for the card, his fingers brushing lightly against hers.