Downhome Darlin' & The Best Man Switch

by Victoria Pade

  Teasing or not, that was getting to be a more and more interesting idea. Especially if going to his place meant getting to be up against his chest again. Or feeling his arms around her again. Or his hands on her breasts for real. On her naked breasts. And his mouth, too...

  “Abby?” came Cal Ketchum’s voice again.

  “Hmm?”

  “Which way do I go?”

  “Any which way...”

  Any which way at all as long as it got her up close and personal with him again...

  “You probably should tell me where any which way is,” he said patiently, in that conspiratorial way once more.

  Yep, she probably should, all right.

  And she would, too.

  Pretty soon.

  Pretty soon after she took a little nap....

  2

  CAL WONDERED IF ABBY always slept soundly or if all the liquor she’d consumed the night before was contributing to the fact that it was nearly noon and she still wasn’t so much as stirring. He’d even gone into his bedroom, rummaged through the closet, opened and closed drawers and taken a shower in the connecting bathroom.

  And there she was, still snoozing.

  She was lying on her back in his bed, and as he towel dried his hair, he studied her. Even in drunken slumber, with too much makeup clouding her features, she looked like an angel. Her full, curly hair fanned out against the pillow in a coffee-colored halo. Long, thick lashes sealed her eyes closed, resting on high, fine cheekbones that had their own blush of rosy color beneath the too stark smudges she’d painted there.

  She also had the damn cutest nose he’d ever seen. Thin, pert. The nose of a girl next door above soft, full, now pale lips that he’d been hankering to kiss since the first time he’d seen her smile from across the bar the previous night.

  Even her chin was adorable—and her jawline was smooth, well-defined, with just enough jut to make him think a stubborn streak disguised as a pretty pout had probably gotten her a lot as a little girl.

  She must have been dreaming because as he looked on, she sighed a small, sensuous sigh that lifted perfectly shaped eyebrows aloft and let them float back down—twin feathers on the wind—while the corners of her mouth stayed turned deliciously upward.

  The sigh sounded like a response to a lover’s caress. And Cal could picture himself as the lover....

  After tossing aside the towel he’d been using on his hair, he dropped down on that mattress beside Abby, on top of the sheet and light blanket that covered her. Lying on his side, he propped his head on his right hand and took an even closer look at her face.

  She had peaches-and-cream skin without a pore or a line or a mark on it, and he thought that if he were going to bet on it he’d gamble that not only did she not usually wear the artificial stuff she had covering it, but that also it was probably scrubbed clean at least twice a day with some kind of soap that gave it a milky glow and the kind of cool, flawless feel that would be like pressing his cheek to satin.

  Appealing thought.

  Very appealing.

  So appealing, in fact, that he couldn’t figure out why she would cover anything that naturally beautiful with goop.

  Her ears caught his attention just then, too. Cute ears. Tiny and shell shaped, with only enough of a lobe to nibble. And damn if he didn’t want to! It was a struggle to restrain himself, but even so he couldn’t help wondering what would happen if he did.

  Would she sigh again? Smile that secretly contented smile? Tilt her chin and give him better access?

  Because if she did, he’d nibble and kiss his way to the tender spot just behind her jaw, then just underneath it to her neck and on down to the deep hollow of her collarbone. He’d nuzzle her bra strap aside—pretty though it was, there where the V-neck of her T-shirt had gone askew to fall off her shoulder and expose the strap. And he’d drop a kiss or two...or three...to the curve of that shoulder before working his way lower still. Much, much lower...

  Feeling ornery—and aroused—he leaned a little closer and blew a soft gust of air onto the side of the white column of her neck.

  It caused her to smile again. That smile. Which almost made his effort to resist acting out his fantasy worth the trouble.

  Maybe it was too bad she wasn’t the wild woman she’d claimed to be last night, he thought.

  Nah, he didn’t mean that.

  Sure, it might be nice for a while because then he’d be able to get some relief for the hot desire that was hardening him up right then. But in the long run? That wasn’t Abby Stanton’s allure.

  He’d known his share of wild women—according to her definition and according to his own. He’d known his share of loose women. Feisty women. Women out for nothing but a good time.

  But he hadn’t known a lot of wholesome women. And in spite of the way Abby had dolled herself up the night before, the minute he’d set eyes on her he’d spotted her as a wholesome woman.

  One of the few to ever cross his path.

  Since he and women had started taking notice of each other, he’d abided by a private code. A code that had counted out women like Abby Stanton even when he did encounter them.

  Living the life he’d led, it just seemed smart. Women like Abby Stanton were not women to play with. And he’d always been a player.

  So what was he doing with her in his bed now?

  Enjoying the sight to beat all hell.

  And wanting to see even more of her. Wanting to see those big, round, licorice eyes of hers again. To hear her slightly throaty voice. To see what she was going to do when she discovered herself in his bed.

  Just the thought of that tickled him and reminded him all over again of the big kick he’d gotten out of her the previous evening. There was something sweet about such a clumsy attempt to be her version of a wild woman. It had been like watching a little girl try to walk in her mama’s high heels. A little girl with a sense of humor, who hadn’t taken herself or her attempts too seriously. That had put some fun into what might have just been embarrassing to witness of anyone else.

  And he had enjoyed it. He’d enjoyed this woman all the way around.

  Well, not all the way around.

  But enough to make him want to know more. Want to go the rest of the way around.

  He blew on her neck again. Lightly.

  And in her sleep she giggled just a bit.

  It made Cal grin.

  Oh, yeah, he liked this lady.

  “Wake up, Abby,” he whispered in her ear.

  She wrinkled her nose and turned her head away.

  He put his mouth nearer to the earlobe he was wanting to nibble and blew yet again.

  “Come on, honey. Wake up,” he coaxed.

  He knew she was on her way when her delicate features sobered and her brow began to crease into a confused frown.

  “Half the day is already gone, and you’re missin’ it....” he added, trying to tempt her the rest of the way back to consciousness.

  The frown deepened. The eyelashes fluttered slightly, but she settled back to sleep anyway.

  “I’m not leavin’ you alone till I see the whites of your eyes,” he warned.

  Not that he had any intention of leaving her alone then, either. She’d caught his interest.

  And maybe, now that he had a next-door for the first time in his life, he ought to get to know a girl-next-door type for a change. Just to see what made them tick.

  “Come on and wake up,” he said yet again. Because awake was how he wanted her. Bright eyed. Bushy tailed. Sweet smiling. And making him feel the way he had the night before.

  Like a randy buck with a coffee-haired doe.

  “Rise and shine,” he sang softly. “And make me a happy man...”

  ABBY WAS HAVING a great dream.

  In it she was lying in a field of wildflowers, the sun was warm on her bare skin and the gentlest of breezes was brushing her neck. From somewhere far away she could hear a voice. A deep, smoky voice. A man’s voice.

 
; He said her name like an endearment so sexy that on its own it was enough to make her blood run faster through her veins.

  Enticing. Intriguing. Enchanting.

  “Wake up.... Rise and shine,” he called to her in a tone that was hard to resist

  But harder still was coming out of the deep sleep that held her wrapped in its heavy cocoon. It felt too good to lie there. To hear the man beckoning. To feel his big, hard body so nearby...

  So nearby?

  She realized suddenly that she wasn’t in a field of flowers. She was in a bed. But it wasn’t her bed because her bed was much softer than this.

  And there certainly shouldn’t be a man in it.

  She struggled to wake up, and the more alert she became, the worse she felt. Her head was pounding, and when she managed to open her eyes even just into slits, daggers seemed to jab into them and force them shut again.

  “That’s it,” the husky voice urged in more of that intimate, warm, whiskey tone. “Wake up. You can do it.”

  He was definitely nearby. Very nearby. And the voice was not one she recognized as belonging to anyone she knew.

  Where was she and who was this guy? And how did she get here? How did she end up with him?

  Her brain felt as if it were fogged under, making it difficult to discern what was real and what was merely a figment of her imagination or a piece of a dream.

  She remembered the previous evening up to a certain point. The point where she and her sisters were in the Clangton Saloon. She recalled drinking. A lot. And being challenged to pat some good-looking cowboy’s rear end...

  She peeked out of only a bare hint of a crack in one eye.

  That cowboy’s rear end.

  She clamped the eye closed again and fought harder to remember.

  There’d been a rest room down a hallway. He’d bought her a drink. More than one.

  Had he really ended up carrying her out of the place? Putting her into a black sports car?

  And what had happened after that?

  Total blank. She drew a total blank from there.

  But here she was—wherever here was—in a bed that wasn’t her own.

  With the rear-end cowboy.

  Oh, my God.

  “Abby,” he said again. “If you don’t come to pretty soon here, honey, I’m gonna start worryin’ about you. Are you all right?”

  No, she wasn’t all right! She felt like an 18-wheeler had driven over her head and she was even more sick about not knowing what had gone on in the past twelve hours.

  She steeled herself and opened her eyes all the way, very, very slowly and as she did she wondered what his name was. She couldn’t very well call him the rear-end cowboy. She must know his name. She just had to think about it....

  Cal. That was it. Cal Ketchum.

  “Mornin’,” he said when she finally turned her pounding head his way and looked straight at him.

  Ingrained courtesy put a weak smile on her face even as it seemed ridiculous to be worrying about manners under the circumstances. “Hi,” she said through a throat that was almost too dry to let the word pass.

  She swallowed with difficulty, taking some personal stock as she did while still staring up at the man she presumed to be her host.

  It felt as if she had on her clothes. Twisted, turned, falling off her shoulder, but at least they were basically where they were supposed to be. And he wasn’t under the covers with her.

  Neither of those things offered much reassurance, but nevertheless it was better than waking up with both herself and the rear-end cowboy naked under the sheets. A lot better. She didn’t know what she would have done if that had been the case. Especially when just the hint of bare chest and stomach showing from the open front of his pale yellow shirt was enough to send her already unstable stomach into flutters.

  “I think I drank too much last night,” she admitted shakily.

  “I know you drank too much last night.”

  “Did I get sick or something?”

  “Sick? No, not sick,” he said as if that only touched the surface of the whole story.

  “Then how do you know I drank too much?”

  “You passed out on me, honey.”

  “Oh.” How embarrassing. Mortifying images of herself falling down dead drunk flashed through her mind.

  “You didn’t actually pass out,” he amended as if he could tell what she was thinking about herself. “You just fell asleep. At a pretty inopportune time.”

  There was an allusion in that. But Abby couldn’t even begin to guess what he was alluding to. A whole world of possibilities came to life in her mind, but she didn’t think she could handle knowing if any of them had really happened. At least not right away.

  So instead she tried to ease into how many ways she might have embarrassed herself by asking, “Did I drool in my sleep?”

  He smiled down at her, and she had a sudden memory of the evening before. Of that terrific smile honing in on her as if she were the only person he’d been aware of in the whole bar.

  “No drooling, no,” he answered.

  “Did I snore?”

  “No snoring.”

  “And it was you who put me to bed?” she asked cautiously, edging toward some harder-to-know facts.

  “That I did,” he said with a slow devilry in his tone.

  She couldn’t help it. She had to lift the covers and look down at herself just to make sure her clothes really were basically intact.

  “No, I didn’t undress you,” he assured.

  “Thank you. I think.”

  “But you aren’t sure.”

  How could she be sure when she didn’t have any idea what had gone on between them, clothes or no clothes?

  “Did we...did I ruin your evening?” she ventnred.

  “Ruin my evening?”

  “I’m sure pouring a drunken woman into your bed was not the ending you had in mind I mean it couldn’t have been much...fun...for you,” she said, fishing for answers.

  “You might be surprised.”

  His insinuation made her heartbeat speed up. “Did I do something...fun...before you had to put me to bed?”

  “Let’s just say I had a good time.”

  Was he teasing her? She couldn’t tell. And her fog-shrouded brain was not giving up any memories to help her out.

  “I’m afraid I can’t recall much about last night.”

  “pity.”

  It took courage to ask “Did I disgrace myself?”

  “Disgrace yourself? I didn’t think wild women cared about that kind of thing.”

  Wild women.

  Oh, dear.

  “How do you know about...that wild-woman thing?”

  “You told me that’s what you are.”

  “Ah.” She swallowed back her own worst fears and said, “But did I prove it?”

  He grinned mischievously from the side of his mouth. “Wild women don’t care what happened whether they can remember it or not. They just pick up and go on bein’ wild,” he said as if he were anticipating the benefits of that.

  “Uh...I think I should warn you that I’m not really such a wild woman. I mean, I’m...well...I’m a baker.”

  “You have my ovens lit—that’s for sure.”

  “No, honestly. It’s what I do for a living—bake. Cakes. Cookies. Pies. Brownies.”

  He shrugged one of those broad shoulders she had a vague memory of laying her head against. “Even wild women have to have a day job. It’s those off-hours that count,” he added with a lascivious arch to one eyebrow.

  Without thinking about it, she held the covers in a tight-fisted grip as if it would protect her from what she’d gotten herself into here. This wasn’t the kind of run-of-the-mill good ol’ boy that Clangton was rife with. This was a man handsome enough to have women throwing themselves at him. Certainly this was a man accustomed to women making good on what they promised. And he didn’t seem to be understanding that she hadn’t been herself if and when she’d promised any
thing.

  “What I’m trying to say is that I don’t know what I might have led you to believe about me last night...or what I might have led you to believe would happen this morning...but...well—”

  “You’re just not that kind of girl,” he finished for her.

  “Something like that,” she admitted reluctantly, feeling like a fool and thinking Bill Snodgrass must have been right about her after all.

  “So if you’re not that kind of girl, what were you doin’ sayin’ you were last night?”

  She grimaced at the thought. “It’s a long story. I guess you could say I was pretending. To prove a point.” The admission made her cheeks heat up.

  Cal’s handsome face erupted in a full-fledged grin. “So what you’re tellin’ me is that you aren’t a dyed-in-the-wool wild woman? I never would have guessed,” he said facetiously.

  Light finally dawned for her. “Oh, I get it—you’re putting me on.”

  “Don’t tempt me, honey, I’m tryin’ to keep off you.”

  “I meant teasing. You were teasing me.”

  “Still am,” he said with a laugh.

  She was out of her league with this man in more ways than one and she knew it. But she was still worried about what had gone on the evening before. “So what really happened last night?”

  “Really?” The lascivious tone was back.

  “Come on. Give me a break.”

  “A break isn’t all I’d like to give you.”

  She rolled her eyes at him.

  Rather than being chagrined, he only laughed at her. Then he said, “I was takin’ you home, but you fell asleep in my car before tellin’ me where home is. So I brought you here, carried you up to bed and tucked you in.”

  Relief helped her headache. Partial relief, anyway.

  “Where did you sleep?”

  He arched an insinuative eyebrow at her again, but this time she didn’t buy it.

  “Not here,” she guessed.

  “To my everlastin’ regret.”

  “You know what I think? I think you’re just a sheep in wolf’s clothing.”

  “Or maybe not,” he said with enough of a sexy rumble to his voice to disabuse her of the notion.

  “Okay. So you were a gentleman, but it goes against the grain. Thank you anyway.”