She couldn’t forget what Shane had said to her.
What he’d done to her.
She blew out a breath as a zing of remembrance flew through her, playing electric havoc in her belly, then tingling lower. Just the thought of him made her shift a little on the swing, sending it to creaking.
It was an addiction, running last night over and over again in her mind, reconstructing what it’d been like to feel his mouth near her neck, his hot breath in her ear.
Not a word…
The porch screen door slammed open and three kids spilled out, giggling and waving at Nicki as they ran past, rousing a couple of Australian shepherd ranch dogs who’d been poking around an old oak tree.
“Hi, Nic!” they called out.
“Hey,” she said, straightening up and pushing all thoughts of last night away. “What’s the ruckus about?”
“We saw Candace in her lady nightie!” Giggle, giggle.
As the lot of them scrambled toward the employee cabins where they lived, Nicki laughed and refocused on the princess costume. Her face was burning in a blush and she hoped no one would see it.
When Candace came out of the door, too, Nicki stiffened. She’d been dreading this moment. She’d avoided talking to her last night, not knowing if she should be angry at Candace or give her a big old hug for…
Well, for procuring Shane like any old-time cathouse lady would’ve.
Nicki’s first instinct was to sink down in that porch swing. Procuring. It sounded real tawdry.
But… Tawdry.
The sound of it was adventurous—something Nicki had never been in her life. Except for last night.
A need swelled in her, something just short of a drug she wanted with every hopping molecule in her body.
Candace stepped outside in her short, silky “lady nightie” kimono, yawning, stretching up and smiling at the rising sun.
Then she saw Nicki sitting there, and her expression went cautious as she moved toward the swing.
“Morning.”
Nicki had been planning what to say for hours, as she’d lain there in bed, a sexual insomniac.
Mad. She was supposed to be mad at Candace, who was waiting there with bated breath, as if she wanted good news about Nicki’s tryst so badly.
Candace said, “I didn’t know if I should knock on your door this morning or stay away.”
Something perverse in Nicki wanted Candace to squirm a little.
“Didn’t you have company?” Candace added.
“Not this morning.”
Candace looked as if she was about to explode either with questions or remorse now.
“Okay, okay,” Nicki said. “You know darn well what happened last night.”
Candace sat on the swing, sending it back then forward ever so slightly. Her bedhead hair was in raucous, red disarray. “And…?”
“You wrote that note.”
A cautious nod. “Yes, I did.”
“I should strangle you.”
“You should?”
“I can’t believe you did it.”
“I’m sorry, Nic. I just wanted to give you a… Well, a little push. Otherwise you’d go right back to that office and hiding away.” She plucked at her kimono. “Did the note work?”
“Yes, the outlaw did come into my room. While I was sleeping.”
“Sleeping?”
“That’s right.”
Now Candace looked more remorseful. “But you woke up.”
“Eventually.”
It seemed as if Candace was mentally going over what she’d written in that note, and she sucked in a breath, as if understanding that Shane had probably started seducing a slumbering Nicki because it’d been suggested that he should.
Nicki held Candace over the fire a little longer, stitching up the costume in her lap.
“I thought you’d be awake,” Candace said. “That’s what you said in your phone message, and I thought that when you saw him in your doorway, you’d be flattered. That maybe you’d even throw caution to the wind and go for it.”
And Nicki sure had. But, oddly enough, there was no regret on her part, just a craving for more from a man who was clearly damned good at what he did in any bedroom.
A pointed yearning spun through Nicki: images of all her dreams coming true, just for as long as Shane would be here in town. Goose bumps from the longing to be whatever she wanted with him.
“Did you go for it after you woke up?” asked Candace.
Nicki just smiled again.
“You!” Candace laughed, clearly relieved. “And here I thought you were going to strangle me.”
“I rethought that.”
“So…” Candace leaned forward. “Are you going to tell me about it?”
“Nope.”
Candace leaned back in the swing. The wind toyed with stray wisps of hair. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t need every detail—I’m just glad to see you happy. That was the purpose, anyway.”
Nicki put down the costume, rested her hand on Candace’s shoulder. Her cousin had only done something daring to try and improve Nicki’s life. And it could even work again if Nicki dropped her pride and accepted Shane’s implied offer of trying out another fantasy….
“Just one thing?” Candace asked, as if there were a million more questions coming, even after this.
“What?”
“Will there be another time, with Shane? Or was he a passing thing?”
Nicki didn’t answer, because she was this close to blurting that Shane wasn’t just a passing anything.
He was…
What? Good heavens, everyone knew that he wasn’t a long-term kind of guy. It was just that he’d made her feel so…well, special in a way, unlike anyone had made her feel before. Alive to the world. Even now her skin was still buzzing from him.
But it’d only been sexual. Foreplay. A teasing game.
A something she could have again, if she wanted it badly enough.
Candace must’ve seen the want of it written all over Nicki—it was obvious from the glow in Candace’s eyes, that naughty matchmaker’s addiction.
“If he’s not a passing thing,” her cousin said, “you should write a note next time.”
Nicki saw that Candace’s happiness for her was genuine. It was catching, too, and she started to wonder why she wouldn’t take Shane up on his offer.
He was Shane Carter, everything she’d always wanted, and all she had to do was say yes.
Nicki realized that she’d already come to her senses and changed her mind from last night.
“Next time,” she said, “I think I’ll just ask him in person.”
Just as Candace was about say more, the ranch kids came running by. They’d obviously gotten tired of whatever amusements they’d found in the cabins, and they were messing around in back of the main house now.
Candace demurely tucked her hands under her legs, tucked away all talk of sex and good times. Instead, she nodded at the cowgirl garb Nicki was wearing: her newest pair of jeans, weathered boots, a checkered shirt tied at her waist. Even so, Nicki could tell she was beside herself with excitement about Shane.
“Is this what you’re wearing for today’s meeting?”
Business talk. Good call.
Nicki touched one of her braids. “I was going for the cowgirl look. I mean, when the investment guy comes out here, he’ll want something genuine.”
But Candace wasn’t swayed. Brassy as ever, she began to unbraid Nicki’s hair.
Another makeover?
“Hey,” Nicki said, protecting her no-fuss do.
“You look like you’re a refugee from the Dukes of Hazzard—and not in a good Daisy kind of way.” Candace got one of the braids undone. “Now, there we go.”
Nicki remembered last night, how Shane had touched her hair, how he’d seemed to like it, even though, most days, it was all she could do to tame it.
But why tame anything now?
As Candace took care of the other braid,
then got up from the swing to go inside, Nicki looked in the direction of the Slanted C, toward Shane.
Toward what she could have again if she would only take that next wonderfully tawdry step.
OVER AT THE Slanted C Ranch, Shane was hammering away at a plank in a barn that had been left for useless in favor of a second, fancier one. His brother, Tommy, had never been much for fixing and building on what they already had. Shiny and new—that’d always been Tommy’s preference.
This particular plank was a replacement for one of many that had suffered from rot during the ensuing years, just like a lot of things around this place.
After a particularly energetic slam, a voice sounded from behind Shane.
“Frustrated?”
The rusty-hinge tone belonged to Walter, a shaggy-gray-haired, bow-legged hell-of-a-horse-breeding man who’d been in charge of operations at the Slanted C ever since Shane was a kid. He’d stayed on after Shane had moved north of Dallas, away from his father and toward his future on a smaller spread. Walter had even been here after Barry Carter’s death, when Tommy had taken over.
And that’s when the rot had gone to a whole new level, Shane thought as he slid his hammer into his tool belt, then lifted his hat, wiping a slick of sweat from his brow.
“What makes you think I’m taking my ire out on a poor piece of wood?” Shane asked.
Walter handed him a bottle of water, and Shane drank it up. The older man didn’t even bother to answer Shane’s rhetorical question.
“A load of things eating away underneath, ain’t there?” Walter said instead.
He meant the ranch, but he could’ve just as well been talking about Shane.
Walking out of the barn, he pulled his hat lower, taking in the hay-laced morning air, the spread of grass in front of him, leading to paddocks over the hill and the new barn. Over another hill, the Square W+W Ranch waited, too.
So did Nicki, and when Shane wasn’t hammering at something, he remembered how she’d taken him away from the rot last night, making him feel like a new man for a short while.
And he wasn’t just talking about being in the role of an outlaw. He’d forgotten just about everything while he was with Nicki, and he couldn’t explain why or how.
He looked toward the north fence line, recalling a day when Nicki had fallen from a broken rail. His dad had already been tearing into her when Shane had ridden ahead, not thinking about anything other than if she was hurt or what might happen if Barry Carter got to her before Shane did.
When he’d seen that she was all right, he’d immediately shielded her from his dad, but by that time, the old man had gotten hold of himself, donning that cover that only his family fully saw beneath. Still, when he’d turned his horse around, he’d sent Shane a look that indicated there’d be hell to pay back home for even hinting to anyone outside the family that Barry Carter was someone else entirely.
When Shane had looked down at Nicki again, the gratefulness—maybe even the awe—on her face had taken him to another place for a moment. It had shown him that he could matter, even in some little way, to someone else.
But he didn’t know why he was thinking of Nicki now, when she’d told him she wouldn’t see him again.
Walter had followed him outside, crossing his arms over his striped shirt. “I hear the W+W is hosting a picnic for that businessman today. You going there?”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
“I don’t blame you. Your dad would be turning over in his grave to know that Nicki is even thinking about welcoming dudes. Can you just imagine what kind of blue words would fly out of his mouth at that?”
Shane didn’t want to imagine, because with those so-called “blue words,” there’d always been more, and they’d left bruises.
Are you stupid, drag racing on the back roads, boy?
Why can’t you just smarten up like your brother?
See if I can’t knock some sense into your head with this—
Shane steeled himself from the memory of his dad’s fist coming at him, then began to walk away. “In Nicki Wade’s defense, she’s only trying to make sure everyone on that ranch has a job, come the end of the year.”
The old man strolled next to Shane, giving him a surprised glance, his bushy eyebrows arched. “Listen to you.”
Even Walter couldn’t have had a grasp of just how far Tommy had run the Slanted C into the ground. He also didn’t know that when Russell Alexander had called Shane, just to inquire if he was interested in turning the Slanted C into a dude resort with him staying on as a consultant, that there’d been a moment of temptation.
But he would find another way to get back in the flush. There had to be one, and it’d be a way that wouldn’t involve public knowledge of the Carter family’s woes.
Shane would make it all right, even if the perfect son, Tommy, hadn’t. It’d always been that way, whether it was Tommy crashing the family pickup and Shane covering for him in a moment of pity, or Tommy taking the Carter family’s savings and saying he would double them, only to wipe them out.
“My main concern,” Shane said, “is that a shark like Russell Alexander doesn’t take Nicki Wade for all she’s worth. Businessmen like him know how to wheel-and-deal, and from what I hear, Nicki is desperate to save her place.”
“So you are going over there, then?”
Shane stopped walking.
“I mean,” Walter said, “you’re gonna do what her daddy and mama would’ve expected a neighbor to do and watch over her?”
“She’s an adult, Walter.”
At the thought of last night, something went off-kilter in his chest. She’d told him there wouldn’t be more encounters between them, but from the look in her eyes, he’d wondered.
He drank the last of his water, looking toward the W+W. Yup, he’d wondered.
“Maybe I’ll go on over there later,” he said, “just to see what’s what.”
Just to see that Nicki didn’t fall into the clutches of a true bad guy.
THE WEATHER COULDN’T HAVE been better for a picnic on this Saturday, and the sun shone down over the hay bales that everyone on the W+W had set out near an abandoned, plank-withered, paint-stripped barn. Children climbed over the stacks, playing tag and hide-and-seek, using ropes to try to lasso the fake pony heads that were attached to some of the bales.
There were also gingham cloth-covered tables holding a bevy of country food that Nicki had splurged on—beans that had been cooked over the fire that crackled in the middle of the festivities, carne asada plus all the trimmings for soft tacos, ribs and corn on the cob. A wagon was rolling around, too, driven by Manny, transporting the ranch kids back and forth from the regular stables, where they were taking out the horses today for rides.
Among it all, the representative from the Lyon Group stood, and Nicki surveyed the man she would need to impress in order to perhaps partner with his business and use his money to keep the ranch alive, all while keeping on her crew, too.
Maybe.
Russell Alexander, who looked to be in his early thirties, was dressed in what Candace had told Nicki was a Versace suit, as cool as Cary Grant, even in the mild heat. Tall and broad-shouldered, he had his black hair slicked back in a hundred-dollar-plus haircut, if Nicki were to guess.
Altogether, Alexander possessed a sixties smoothness about him—a man with a certain throwback gloss and masculinity that made him even more imposing.
Candace sidled up next to Nicki. “He was nice enough when you greeted him. He seemed absolutely charmed.”
“I think he’s the type who always seems charmed, just so he doesn’t have to tell you what he’s really thinking.” Nicki looked at him sidelong. “There’s something about him that’s hard to grasp.”
As he bent down to Kirby, the four-year-old tow-headed son of one of the ranch hands, Mr. Alexander offered the child a cupcake.
“Yes,” Candace said. “He’s definitely suspicious. Just look at him operate—you can’t put any faith in a
man who’s nice to children.”
“You’re hilarious, Candy.” Nicki smoothed down her white blouse. It was sleeveless, chic and straight from Candace’s closet. Candace had paired it with the only nice pants Nicki owned—a pair of tan trousers that Candace had ironed until the things practically stood up themselves.
Nicki had insisted on wearing her Sunday pair of hand-worked, tooled leather boots, though.
Candace squeezed her bare arm. “You’re sure this is what you want to do with the ranch?”
Nicki sighed. “It’s either this or start letting some of the staff go.”
“I could make more calls to my old professors and classmates from business school. Maybe they, or my friends, have come up with ideas for us by now.”
“Keep doing that, Candy. Meanwhile…” Nicki nodded toward Russell Alexander.
“I’d wish you luck if I thought you needed it,” Candace said.
“Thanks. But there’s one thing I might need instead of luck.”
“What’s that?”
“You.” Nicki gave one glance to Candace’s blossoming yellow sundress, with its halter that gave modest shelter to her buxomness. She’d worn her red hair straight today, and it shimmied down her back.
“If you see that I don’t have Russell Alexander interested,” Nicki said, “you have my blessing to swoop in and help me out.”
“Me?”
“You’re the businesswoman.”
Candace got serious. “Anything you ask. I’ll be keeping my eye out for any SOS signs.”
Nicki was sure she would, and she set out to win over Mr. Alexander, breathing in, out, her nerves jangling just under her skin.
Aside from the Slanted C next door, which boasted a small lake, Nicki knew she had the most beautiful, versatile ranch in the area, with a shady creek running through it and the best horseflesh in the county, although hard times had cut down on the size of what they had to offer. So, as she made her way to Russell Alexander, her stride grew even more confident.
Now he was at the hors d’oeuvres table, filling a plate with bacon-wrapped chestnuts. He grinned at the food, as if it was country-time charming.
When Nicki approached him, he glanced at her, and she could’ve sworn he’d already dismissed her in the first eighth of a second.
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