He kept a single eyebrow raised, his mouth curved in one of those grins that forever twanged her pulse. “And what comes first with us, darlin’?”
He was teasing her, and the practical, no-nonsense Holly had no problem being blunt.
“How about we flip a coin to see who gets that bed tonight?”
He laughed. “Touché. Just for that, you win the mattress. I’ll take the sofa.”
Thank goodness it broke the tension, and she laughed a little, too, in spite of how much she meant the comment. It felt good to be able to make light of this ridiculous situation—this surreal bend of a mirror that was somehow reflecting her life right back at her in a way she’d never pictured before.
Bo leaned forward on the sofa, his bright blue eyes brimming with more humor…and maybe even something else that Holly didn’t want to dwell on.
A true invitation to start a honeymoon…?
“And here I thought a romantic wedding would knock your boots off,” he said. “Just what does it take to win you over?”
A blast of desire roared through her, even though he wasn’t—and couldn’t be—serious. But before they ventured into uncomfortable territory, Bo grabbed the TV remote and started flipping through the channels, landing on a digital music station.
An old forties tune played, slow and sensual, warmed by the beat of a bass and the sway of clarinets.
Surely Bo wasn’t trying to seduce her.
Holly smoothed down the skirt of her wedding gown, not knowing what else to do.
She had to be imagining things. Bo was just being Bo, making the best out of their situation. He was a flirt, but he was even more of a gentleman.
Or so she hoped.
Besides, as far as she’d heard from the grapevine, Bo had a certain type of woman that he gravitated toward, and it didn’t include one whose belly was just beginning to stick out from here to there with another man’s baby.
Then Holly remembered their wedding kiss—the way his lips had fit against hers, the fact that he’d lingered, his mouth just a breath away, as if he’d wanted the moment to last and last…
A knock sounded on the door, and Holly just about jumped out of her skin.
Bo stood from the sofa and went to get it. “Dinner is served.”
“I’m not really that…”
“You’ve got to be hungry. I didn’t see you eat a thing at the reception.”
He’d been watching?
Her stomach gurgled. Darn Bo, but he was right. Still, wouldn’t it be the worst idea ever to sit at that table with him, basking in the candlelight and mood music, taking their so-called honeymoon even a millimeter farther than it should go?
“My dress,” she said, gesturing to the wedding gown she hadn’t changed out of yet. “I don’t want to spill anything on it, so I can just eat later.”
By herself. In her separate bed.
“Excuses, excuses,” he said, opening the door to the waiter.
As soon as Holly caught the aroma of the food, she lost some of her willpower. She just stood there by the window, watching as the room service employee lit the candles, the wicks flickering with dim, come-hither light. Then he set down an ice bucket of nonalcoholic wine, along with covered dishes he announced as cream of leek and potato soup, salad, Brussels sprouts browned with cheese, French bread and roasted chicken.
Oh, man.
After Bo signed the ticket and the server bowed his way out of the room, Holly ventured to the table. The tempting smells were too much.
“And for the finale…?” Bo said, gesturing to a cart that the waiter had left behind. He opened the lid on the remaining dish, revealing a plate of chocolate-covered strawberries.
Her stomach grumbled again, and she thought she could feel the baby squirming around with agreement.
Holly had to take care of herself and her child, anyway, so she sat in her chair. Bo pushed it forward, then took her napkin, leaning over to lay it over her lap and gently cover her.
The soft touch of linen over her thighs felt like a vibrating weight, and heat crept up and down, coating her.
Chocolate, candlelight and sexy music.
Her heartbeat felt like it was powered by gusts of light, urging steam.
What if Bo made even stronger overtures? And…well, what if she gave in, just as easily as she’d just done with the food?
No. No way she would. But if she did, what would Bo expect out of her? A lot of experienced moves, like the women he no doubt usually dated?
What if he found Holly lacking in experience compared to them? She had been with one guy her entire life, and Bo…
Just how many women had he made love to during his thirty-five years?
“Relax, Holly.” Bo’s voice was low enough to coast over her skin as he sat in the chair opposite her. Somehow, he could read her. Maybe he didn’t know every thought tearing through her head, but this man was intuitive, especially when it came to her, it seemed.
“I am relaxed,” Holly said.
Ignoring the obvious, Bo smiled and fixed his napkin over his own lap. “We’re not going to do anything you don’t want to do tonight.”
Was he thinking she wanted to do something?
Blood rushed to her face, and it felt as if her cheeks were neon signals, beating out a heated message for him to make bolder moves.
If she didn’t lay everything out for him now in no uncertain terms, she might regret it. “I don’t know why you’d think that I’d be thinking of doing anything with you. We both know where we stand.”
He swept a glance over her, and it seemed to last so long that she thought she would start to simmer under it.
But then he nodded, apparently unaffected, still grinning and having a good old time.
“Then there it is,” he said.
He took the bottle from the ice bucket and poured some sparkling cider for them both. He toasted her, clinking his glass to hers, then drinking up, not pressing the issue any further.
Not even as the candlelight flickered on, marking the passing moments with beats of burning light.
Holly ate her salad as silence reigned at the table, the music lyrics inserting the wrong words between them—promises of kisses and eternities and love, love, love.
There had to be a way to break this tension. Had to be a way to tell him that he should probably just turn off the music and stop pretending that they were anything but business partners.
She thought about subjects that always brought a night up cold.
Small talk. Other people.
Ex-girlfriends.
Heh.
She shuffled a piece of lettuce around her chilled plate with her fork. “You seem to be an expert in these romantic dinners.”
Bo paused, a chunk of roast chicken poised on the fork above his plate. The arch of his eyebrow told her that he knew exactly what she was up to.
“I’ve had a few,” he said.
“So how long do you think it’ll be before you start dating again? I mean, after our annulment?”
She might as well have just sprayed him with a scent named There Will Be No Nookie Tonight.
“Holly,” he said. “I told you that you can relax. I’m not going to put any kind of pressure on you.”
Oh, but if only his eyes were promising the same thing…
They ate a little bit more, but by now, curiosity really was starting to get the better of Holly. She’d asked a question as a diversionary tactic, but he hadn’t answered, and she’d been half hoping he would.
She set down her wine glass. “Bo, in all honesty, I really am wondering. For the six months of our marriage, what do you plan to do about…?”
“Sex?”
Ooh. She wished he hadn’t gone and said the word. But now that it was out there, it couldn’t be ignored.
“Half a year is a long time,” she said.
“Haven’t you ever lasted that long?”
She ignored that. “I mean it, Bo. Simply from a political standpoint, I
think you already know that if you decide to go outside of our marriage, whether it’s real or not, for…satisfaction…there’ll be trouble for you.”
He gave her one of those looks that she couldn’t file under his usual categories: the flirt, the gentleman, the politician.
It actually reminded her of the night when he’d talked about his reasons for wanting to be mayor….
Then he stuck his fork into a Brussels sprout. “I’ll be too busy to think of anything but my job, Holly. Besides, in the end, after we announce our annulment, I’m sure a lot of the town will be disappointed in me for being unable to make a marriage with you work, so I wouldn’t dare compound their ire by being unfaithful to you.”
“You’re going to be a monk?”
“I plan to devote myself to them, heart and soul.”
It all should’ve sounded so cynical, but somehow it didn’t, maybe because Holly knew that Bo’s heart really was in the right place when it came to Thunder Canyon.
Longing sifted through Holly. What would it be like if someone felt that way about her? Willing to risk their reputation, their time, their…everything?
And what if that man had been Bo?
Don’t even wonder, she thought. Don’t let all these honeymoon trappings get to you.
“You’ve probably figured out that I’m not the marrying type, anyway,” he said, picking up his glass to wash down that Brussels sprout.
“Why do you say that?”
When he looked into her eyes, it was with a question that dug deep. Thing was, Holly didn’t understand what he was asking until she recalled this afternoon, when he’d seemed so forlorn about his mother not being at the ceremony.
Another piece of Bo’s puzzle fell into place, right inside her chest where, bit by bit, he was becoming a more complete part of her.
A part that would no doubt crumble to pieces again right after this marriage was over.
Holly’s expression seemed so sad, and Bo couldn’t do anything but glance away from her, focusing once again on eating, shoving the food into his mouth, hardly tasting it.
“I’m sorry about your parents,” Holly said.
“No need to be.”
She hesitated, as if seeing straight through his defenses. Then she said, “All right,” and stirred her soup with a spoon.
The seconds ticked by, piling one upon another, adding more weight on him until he couldn’t stand it any more.
“You must’ve heard the details about my parents’ divorce.” And a person like Holly would’ve been astute enough to do the math and figure out that one dissatisfied parent plus another equaled a son who saw that relationships were made to fail.
“I heard bits and pieces,” she said. “I wish your mom would’ve forgotten about her disappointments and come to the ceremony for your sake, no matter how much she didn’t want to run into your dad.”
“She said something about attending my inauguration, if it happens.”
“What if your dad’s there, too?”
Bo’s laugh was short. “It’ll be up to me to make sure he doesn’t come. You see, in her eyes, he got the wedding, and she’ll get a day that’s important, too. Fifty-fifty split down the middle, just like a division in property.”
“Oh, Bo.”
Compassion filled her voice and he absorbed it. But he wrung it out of himself as soon as possible.
This was their honeymoon—or, at least, this was a night that wasn’t made for deep talk or deep anything. Hell, even if Bo had ordered up the candlelight and seductive music, he knew damned well that he was dancing awfully close to that line he and Rose had talked about. He’d even caught a yearning glint in Holly’s gaze a time or two, as if she was recalling their wedding kiss and wondering what it would be like to take it to the honeymoon suite.
So why had he been flirting with that line, making insinuations and setting the stage for a seduction?
Was he seeing if she was open to one?
God, he was playing with fire, and it was as if he couldn’t stop himself.
The best thing he could do would be to let Holly continue with this sobering discussion, covering a topic that might just provide an invisible wall between them, a clear sign that he should stay on one side and her on the other.
She still hadn’t eaten that soup. “I suppose I understand what you’re saying about property. I felt like that with Alan, except he didn’t seem all that interested in taking what he left behind, namely a child.”
“He didn’t know what he was giving up,” Bo said without checking himself.
Holly’s smile was sorrowful, and it just about cracked Bo’s heart in two.
But that was only because he felt for her situation, not because she still might be in love with Alan.
Or that Bo himself might be…
When she continued, he silently thanked her for cutting him off.
“I tell myself every day that him leaving me was for the best,” she said. “Can you imagine if I’d gone through with marrying Alan and then, years later, that’s when he decided that his career was his true love?”
“Would that have hurt less?”
“I’m not sure. It might have been worse. At least by ditching me now, he made sure my child won’t remember him.”
Her comment made Bo reconsider that she might still be in love with her ex. “You don’t have feelings for him anymore?”
Holly paused, then said, “I can’t imagine loving someone who has no respect for me or the baby he helped to create. I couldn’t love myself if I had someone like that in my life, because I was raised to believe that I’m better than that.”
Her maturity struck him. He almost even forgot about their age difference until he reminded himself of it again, just as he kept repeating so many reasons that this wasn’t a real marriage.
Holly said, “The bottom line is that I didn’t have the chance to give Alan all of me—not like how my dad and mom gave themselves to each other.” She sighed. “Now, there was a love that went right.”
Bo didn’t remind her that it had gone right until Holly’s mom had passed on. He wasn’t about to point out that, even with her parents, there’d been heartbreak, just of another sort.
“Even if your parents had a good marriage,” he said, “not everyone has to wed in a traditional sense. Some of us can just enjoy the company of others on this level. As friends. Colleagues.”
Holly took that in, as if understanding what he was really saying.
He wasn’t capable of more than this kind of marriage.
She smiled, accepting it. “I just might end up liking life as your colleague, Bo, even just for a few months.”
He ignored the tipsy slant of his heart. “I hope I get to be there even afterward for you and Baby. I owe you big, Holly.”
“No one owes anyone.”
As if they’d come to some kind of truce, they went back to their meals, filling up on the best the resort had to offer.
By the time they’d finished the chocolate-dipped strawberries, Holly was far more relaxed, holding her tummy, rubbing it as if she was comforting herself as well as her child.
Just watching her, Bo longed to be a part of it. Mother and baby. His wife and child.
All it might take was a touch of his fingertips over her cheek. A brush against her neck, her collarbones…lower.
Hotter.
His groin tightened, his body’s temperature rising and erasing every bit of common sense from each individual cell.
Except for the ones in his brain.
You want to commit yourself? Because taking her to bed would sure do it with a woman like Holly.
Still, the heat rose, nearly shutting out one last thought.
Being with her is going to change you, and you know it….
Holly stretched in her chair; she’d obviously gotten comfortable with the gentleman Bo had seemed to be during the last part of their dinner—the groom who’d promised not to do anything she didn’t want to do.
&nb
sp; But that groom was watching the way her wedding dress pushed up the swell of her breasts under the velvet. He was imagining how it would feel to cup his hands over her, sketching over the curves, the budding centers…
She slowly stood. “I’m beat. Would you mind if I got ready to hit the hay?”
“Go ahead,” he said.
She moved to the baggage she’d left near the door, then went to the bedroom. Bo rose from his own chair, flames coursing through him, beating, demanding.
She didn’t shut the bedroom door behind her, so he could see her walking to the spacious marble bathroom, where she did close herself in.
Bo shut off the TV, then went to the window, looking out at the wide Montana night sky with its glitter of stars winking back at him, as if encouraging every thud of his pulse.
Your wife. Your bride…
When he heard Holly come out of the bathroom, he went to her.
She’d just climbed onto the bed when she saw him come through the door. He glimpsed white cotton, modest and sweet, as she pulled the covers over her chest.
But there was that look in her eyes again.
The wanting.
The needing.
I do, she’d said earlier today at the altar. And he’d said it, too.
I do.
He went to her bedside, and as her eyes widened, he slipped a hand behind her head, leaning over.
She hitched in a breath, just before he pressed his lips to her forehead.
“Night, darlin’,” he said, pulling himself away before he destroyed everything.
He only had time to see the shape of her mouth—a half gape of shock, the softness of a pair of lips that had been all too willing to be kissed senseless—as he left the room and headed for the couch.
There, Bo didn’t sleep a wink, just like most men on their wedding nights.
Except, for him, it was for a different reason altogether.
The next morning, after they’d stayed out of each other’s way, getting ready, eating breakfast, ignoring everything about the night before, Holly and Bo had checked out of the resort, going straight to the Rockin’ C.
There, he had moved Holly’s scant belongings into his own house while she took care of light unpacking. The plan was to keep out of the public eye over the rest of the weekend during their short honeymoon, and they did it well, sticking to their strategy. They even managed to steer clear of one another for the rest of the day, too, grabbing their own meals until it came time for Holly to climb into her new bed in her new home.
When the Cowboy Said ''I Do'' Page 10