Leather and Lace

by Jessie Evans

  Learn more at www.jessieevansauthor.com.

  And check out the entire Lonesome Point, Texas, series:

  Leather and Lace

  Saddles and Sin

  Diamonds and Dust

  Glitter and Grit

  Please enjoy this excerpt of “Saddles and Sin,” Lonesome Point Book Two…

  Chapter One

  Robert Lawson—Bubba to his friends, family, and about anyone else who’d known him for more than fifteen minutes—was not the kind of man who made women stop and stare when he walked down the street. He was tall and dark, with slightly wavy brown hair and warm brown eyes, but he’d missed the handsome part. He was…pleasant-looking. His was a face that made babies smile, and old women pat his cheek on their way out of church. He was a good old boy, with a good old boy’s face, and a good old boy’s grin that had gotten him out of more than his fair share of trouble growing up.

  If someone had told him two weeks ago that women would be screaming his name when he walked onstage, and tracking him down after the show to offer to take him home/follow him home/give him a blow job right there in the backstage hallway, he would have laughed his ass off, and called them a liar.

  And then he would have apologized for the liar part.

  Bubba had been known to let his mouth run a little now and then, but he was always sorry after. He had been raised by people who insisted family came first, friends came second, and kindness came always, and those were lessons he’d taken to heart. He was a kind man, a good man, and he knew better than to take advantage of a woman who had fallen for the lights and the music, more than the person beneath the fancy new cowboy hat and designer jeans.

  But damn, if the curvy little blonde who had been waiting by his truck when he came out of The Cadillac Club wasn’t making it hard to remember his manners.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said, forcing himself to look away from the blonde’s very generous, very bare breasts. “You’re a beautiful woman, but it’s late and I’m sure you’ve had something drink, so…”

  “I’m not drunk,” she said, swaying her shoulders coyly back and forth, setting those killer breasts to bobbing gently. “I know what I want. So let’s take this party back to your hotel room, cowboy.”

  Bubba shook his head as he exhaled. “Probably not a good idea, though I appreciate the offer. Truly.”

  Just tell her “thanks, but no thanks,” idiot. This isn’t time for your Sunday school manners.

  But it was the first time a woman had ever greeted him by taking her clothes off, and he wasn’t sure how to handle himself—or the voice in his head that said he should reach out and take what was being freely offered. He hadn’t been with a woman in longer than he cared to admit. He was already imagining how good it would feel to have this girl’s hot little hands on his bare chest. It had been so long since he’d been touched that way, so long that for a crazy second, he almost opened the door to the truck and told this complete stranger to climb on in.

  He might have even done it, and had his first one-night stand, if Marisol hadn’t emerged from the club’s back door at that moment, and shifted immediately into talent protection mode.

  “Oh no, girl. No, no, no,” Marisol said, shaking her finger as she power-walked across the parking lot in her sensible black flats and skinny jeans, her long black hair bouncing around her shoulders. She had so much attitude packed into her slim frame that even her hair seemed to have a personality of its own. “Robert is not interested, sweetheart. He has to be up for a meeting at seven o’clock tomorrow morning, and he prefers women who keep their clothes on in public.”

  The blonde’s eyes narrowed and her bow-shaped lips parted, but Marisol was already barreling on.

  “I want you to go home and think about where you misplaced your dignity, sugar.” Marisol clucked her tongue with concern as she grabbed the blonde’s tee shirt off the ground and tossed it at her chest. “You are better than this, chica. You deserve a man who will treat you like a princess. Look how pretty you are! So pretty! Way too good looking to be this guy’s booty call.”

  Marisol jabbed a thumb at Bubba and wrinkled her nose. “I mean, take a good look at that country bumpkin face. He’s not even that good-looking. The stage presence is all smoke and mirrors, and that’s a fact. Take it from someone who learned the hard way.”

  The blonde blinked in confusion, her gaze shifting back and forth between Marisol and Bubba. After a moment, she nodded and backed away.

  Bubba wasn’t sure if she’d gotten a good look at his face and agreed with Marisol’s less-than-flattering assessment, or if she was just too beer-buzzed at the end of a long night to keep up with Marisol’s rapid fire delivery. Whichever was to blame, moments later the girl and her tempting chest were gone, vanished to the front of the club, where the valet would slip her into a cab that would whisk her away into the Austin night.

  Cabs. They still seemed foreign. Growing up in a town as small as Lonesome Point, Texas, Bubba hadn’t seen a cab until he went to see Willie Nelson play in Dallas when he was sixteen years old. He was a small town boy, and he should be grateful that he had a big city girl like Marisol looking out for him. But right now, he wasn’t in a grateful frame of mind.

  “That could have been handled better,” Bubba said, glaring down at his manager.

  Marisol rolled her eyes. “Whatever, it was handled.”

  “Poorly. Could you have been more condescending?” he asked, wondering if he should have signed with the greasy guy with the tattoos and the handlebar moustache after all.

  After his first industry talent search open mic night, he’d taken one look into Marisol’s hungry brown eyes, eyes that sparkled with energy and ambition, and decided she was the one for him. He was giving the music career one shot, and he wanted the fiercest ally he could get on his side. Marisol might not look fierce on the outside—she was tall, but slim, with delicate features and a sexy baby deer thing going on that club managers seemed to find irresistible—but Bubba had enough firecracker female friends in his life to know a live wire when he saw one.

  Live wire, he could handle. He could handle being bossed around, told what time he needed to go to bed, what he should wear on stage, and which songs he should sing, but he wasn’t going to put up with being treated like a dumb country bumpkin.

  “I’d prefer that doesn’t happen again,” he said in a hard voice.

  “I’m sorry,” Marisol said with a surprised laugh. “Did you want me to put on the kid gloves for a girl who took her shirt off in front of a total stranger?”

  “I wasn’t talking about the girl.” Bubba felt like a fool the second the words were out of his mouth. He usually wouldn’t care if someone made fun of his face. He didn’t know why he let Marisol get to him. Maybe it was because she was supposed to be on his side. Or maybe it was because he couldn’t quit thinking about how much he’d like to fist his hand in her wild hair and kiss her until she couldn’t think of a single thing to say with that pretty mouth.

  He had a thing for his manager. He wished he didn’t, but the truth was even the way she sighed and rolled her eyes at him made him a little thicker.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” she said, batting her eyelashes as she slipped into pacify the talent mode. “You know I think you’re the best. I was just getting rid of that girl. You’re the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. I’d take my shirt off for you in a parking lot, too, if I was a sex-starved drunk girl with no self-respect.”

  Bubba sighed. “All right, give it a rest. You don’t have to butter me up.”

  “But I would.” Marisol grinned up at him. “Butter you up and lick you clean if we didn’t have a strictly professional relationship, and you didn’t have a very important interview at seven o’clock tomorrow morning. You remember what we decided you should wear, right?”

  “I do,” Bubba said, the comment rubbing him the wrong way. “I may look dumb, but I can hold information in my head for longer than five hours at a time.”

&nbs
p; Marisol’s easy-going façade cracked, and for the first time Bubba thought he saw genuine worry in her eyes. “Seriously, Robert,” she said, the lilt going out of her voice. “I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s late and I said what I knew would get the job done. I swear it wasn’t personal. I didn’t even think, and if I had, I wouldn’t have thought anything I could say was capable of hurting your feelings.”

  “Why’s that?” Bubba asked. “Good old boys have feelings, too, you know.”

  “I-I know,” Marisol said, her usually direct gaze flicking from the pavement, to his truck, to the streetlight above their heads. “I just…” She shrugged and rolled her eyes again, but she seemed more embarrassed than irritated. “Seriously, Rob, I can’t tell if it’s an act with you, or you’ve just never looked in a mirror, but I don’t see how you’ve made it to twenty-five years old without realizing you’re crazy fucking gorgeous.”

  Bubba couldn’t think of a damned thing to say. All he could think about was that he’d finally gotten a glimpse at Marisol without her walls up, that she thought he was “crazy fucking gorgeous,” and that maybe she hadn’t been completely joking about that butter comment. The possibility made it hard to tear his eyes away from her lips, or to keep from imagining what she would taste like, what she would sound like when he made her moan. It had been too long since he’d had a chance to practice his skills in the bedroom, but there were some things a man never forgot.

  Like how to ride a horse, how to change the oil in his truck, and how to drive a woman crazy.

  He was imagining all the ways he’d like to get Marisol worked up—with his tongue and his teeth and his hands between her long, smooth legs—when a matching pair of squeals sounded from the far side of the parking lot.

  “There he is! Robert Lawson!”

  Bubba looked up to see two new blondes—three-fourths of the female population of Austin seemed to be composed of different shades of bottled blondes, something else that was much different from Lonesome Point—jabbing dangerous-looking fingernails in his direction. A moment later, the two women started his way, jogging the painful-looking, mincing trot of women whose impractical footwear was on the verge of crippling them for life.

  Marisol cussed as she propped her hands on her hips and turned to watch the approaching groupies. “Jesus, Robert. Women are literally throwing themselves at you. How can you have an ounce of insecurity in that big body of yours?”

  “I’m a sensitive soul,” he said, his eyes still glued to Marisol’s face, too intrigued by the flustered note in her voice to give the blondes skittering toward them a second glance.

  Marisol made a sound that was half laugh, half snort, and all sexy—at least to him. “Get going to your hotel, sex god. I’ll get rid of the lusty twins and give you a call in a few.”

  “I can think of a better way to get rid of them,” Bubba said, pulse spiking as he angled closer to Marisol, knowing this might be his only chance to see if the chemistry between them was more than smoke and mirrors.

  Her eyebrows lifted. “And how’s that?”

  “Like this.” Bubba reached for her, driving his fingers into her hair and tightening his hand into a fist as he pulled her close and claimed her mouth with his own.

  The moment their lips touched, Marisol’s breath rushed out and her neck went limp in his hand, making Bubba’s cock swell until his jeans felt like they’d do him damage. He’d let himself imagine that Marisol would enjoy being kissed like this—being taken, with a firm hand, and a firmer mouth. With his tongue invading, demanding, claiming her, the way he’d been dying to do for weeks. But he’d never dreamed she would respond like this, that she’d open for him, melt against him, and give in without a spark of outrage or a hint of resistance. That she’d twine her arms around his neck, press her curves against his chest, and gasp in pleasure when he swatted her bottom before cupping her ass in his hand and squeezing tight.

  God help him, he hadn’t intended to do anything but kiss her, but now he didn’t want to stop. He wanted to bundle Marisol into his truck, and bring her back to his hotel room. He wanted to strip her sexy red tank top off with his teeth and discover the taste of her skin, make her squirm beneath him as he showed her what good old boys can do to a woman when they’re given permission to be bad.

  He was on the verge of proposing that they take this public display somewhere more private and reconsider the “just business” part of their relationship, when Marisol abruptly jerked out of his arms. He opened his eyes to see her swiping her arm across her mouth. A moment later, she was laughing like he’d told the funniest joke she’d ever heard.

  “Mierda,” she said, eyes sparkling. “You’re crazy.”

  Bubba did his best to stop breathing hard, but he couldn’t work up a smile. “Why’s that?”

  “That! The dramatic clinch. But you were right, it got rid of the groupies,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “But next time, less of the macho shit, okay? I’m not a pull-my-hair-and-spank-my-ass kind of girl.”

  She was lying. Something deep inside of Bubba would bet his vocal chords on it. The way she’d responded to him hadn’t been an act. It had been real, as real as the erection doing its best to rip an escape hatch through his jeans, making him glad for the relative darkness. If it were daylight, there would be no way to hide how aroused he was.

  The thought made him want to slip his hand down the front of Marisol’s black jeans, beneath whatever she was wearing under them, and slide his fingers between her legs. The instinctive part of him was certain she would be hot, wet, and every bit as turned on as he was. The uncertain part of him—the good old boy who had never met a girl as exotic as Marisol, let alone kissed one—wondered if she really had been acting, and he was a pathetic, lonely asshole who had gone so long without a woman in his bed that he couldn’t tell the difference between turned on and playing along.

  “What kind of girl are you then?” Bubba aimed for a casual tone, but his voice came out strained.

  “I’m not,” Marisol said, her expression growing chillingly sober. “As far as you and I are concerned, I’m not a girl. I’m a businessperson. I will use every weapon in my arsenal to get your career moving. I will flirt with club managers, and wear a dress that shows some cleavage when we meet with Wendy Jade’s main man tomorrow. I’ll even be your arm candy at events until you find a cute little thing to take home to your mama, but that’s where it ends. As long as you’re my client, it’s all business between us. If that’s not okay, we can end this. Immediately.”

  Bubba swallowed hard, fighting the urge to tell her they could rip up their contract right now. He’d rather have the Marisol who kissed him like she’d been dying for everything he wanted to give her than a business partner any day of the week. He’d had several managers approach him after the open mic night, but he hadn’t felt this drawn to a woman since he and Casey broke up a few years after high school.

  Still, no matter how much he wanted to let his cock do the talking, he had a meeting tomorrow morning with Wendy Jade and her people. Wendy wasn’t country music royalty, but she was definitely a rising star. The chance to open for a major act like hers, while her original opener was out of commission for vocal node surgery, was a once in a lifetime opportunity. If he landed this job, he could tell his asshole boss at the electrical company to go fuck himself, and put his five year career as a lineman behind him. He’d been relieved to be spared his older brothers’ fates as slaves to the family ranching business—he loved his family, but he had never felt the call of the cows the way John and Cole did—but it wasn’t his dream to maintain overhead transmission lines, either.

  No matter what the rest of the Lawsons had to say about it, music was in his blood. He never felt more alive, more at home, more at peace and generally right with the world than when he had a guitar in his hands and his lips inches from a microphone. Singing was the only thing that had ever lit a fire inside of him, and he didn’t want to risk losing his shot to transform his passi
on into a career because he was too hot for a woman to focus on the big picture.

  So, with a deep breath and a brittle smile, Bubba swallowed the words on the tip of his tongue, and said, “I understand. Just business is fine with me.”

  “Good,” Marisol said, but Bubba would swear she sounded disappointed. “Then go get some rest and I’ll pick you up at six-thirty tomorrow morning. We want to be sure we’re on time. They’re making an effort to squeeze in this meeting before Wendy gets on a plane to Nashville for her week off, and we need to be there bright and early to show how appreciative we are.”

  Bubba nodded, plucking his new Resistol hat off his head and running a hand through his hair, still feeling a little strange wearing a hat for stage dressing. Back in Lonesome Point, you wore your cowboy hat so your nose wouldn’t burn off by the end of a long day working outside. He was definitely out of his comfort zone in the three hundred dollar hat Marisol had picked out for him. So far, almost all the money he’d made at his gigs had gone right back into clothes and headshot photographs and a half dozen other things he hadn’t realized he needed to launch a country music career. He couldn’t afford to derail things now, when he was so close to making good on his investment.

  But as he swung into his truck, and Marisol crossed the parking lot to her vintage Spider convertible, Bubba couldn’t help wishing things could be different. For the first time in his life, he was defying his family’s party line and looking for a life outside of Lonesome Point. If he met someone special right now, it wouldn’t have to end the way things had ended with Casey, with a sad goodbye because most girls want to grow up and leave a small town behind, not settle in and raise a fifth generation of Lawsons with their high school sweetheart.

  In Bubba’s gut, he knew he’d return to Lonesome Point eventually, no matter where his new career might lead, but in the meantime he had the chance to see what it was like to date someone he wouldn’t have to run into at the supermarket every other day, someone he hadn’t known since elementary school, and whose mama wasn’t friends with his. But so far, he hadn’t met anyone who intrigued him.