She pitched her voice lower, so it came out a sultry purr. “Quality can be taught. And young men are so coachable.”
The sound that came from Noah bordered on a growl.
“What was that? I didn’t quite understand you.”
“Nothing.”
She didn’t think it was nothing. She thought it was the sound of a male animal whose masculinity had been challenged. From her experience, a man so challenged would be looking for opportunities to prove his prowess. Even if he hotly insisted otherwise.
Before long, Noah would beg to make love to her, and that would go a long way toward healing the hurt he’d inflicted, knowingly or not, when he’d rejected her sixteen-year-old advances. Maybe a few words of desperate need from him were all she needed to finally get him out of her system.
IT WAS ALL coming back to him now. Not only had he been tortured with feelings of lust where Keely was concerned, he’d also been ready to kill every guy who so much as looked at her. Leaving Saguaro Junction to follow the rodeo circuit had kept him away from Keely, but it had also saved a lot of cowboys from having their jaws busted.
Apparently he hadn’t changed in that regard, either. The drugstore clerk was a mere baby, but when his hormone-driven attention had settled on Keely’s breasts, Noah had been ready to take the kid apart. He’d have to work on that reaction, because men weren’t going to stop looking at Keely during the next three days. Men were always looking at Keely.
The worst part was that he couldn’t understand where his protective instincts were coming from. Maybe because he’d grown up with Keely, he had some big-brother feelings going on, but she’d never acted like a shrinking violet in need of male protection. The males probably needed protection from Keely, when it came right down to it.
That might be the heart of the matter, he realized with sudden insight. He hadn’t been willing to face that his childhood friend had become an extremely sexy woman. Every drooling guy who hung around emphasized the very thing he didn’t want to admit, so the answer was to keep them away from her. Knowing that she’d never tolerate that kind of protectiveness had been one of his major frustrations in life. The safest course had been to stay away himself, which had the added benefit of protecting him from his own sexual feelings for her.
He should have continued on that course today. But he couldn’t have left her at the topless bar, knowing she’d have a job in no time and be dancing there by tonight, probably. The way things were going, the bachelor party really would end up at that exact bar and he’d have to watch his buddies and a host of strangers ogling Keely. The centerfold spread had been torture enough, but at least it hadn’t been firsthand torture.
“Where are you staying?” she asked as they arrived at the Strip and turned left.
“The Tahitian.” He’d been floored by the prices, but he had to admit the rooms were nice.
“That new place? Cool! I’ve been meaning to check it out. The cliff-diver show is supposed to be awesome at night. And don’t they have an actual beach with surf in the courtyard?”
“I guess. I haven’t seen it yet.”
“You haven’t? Everybody talks about it—white sand, saltwater waves lapping at the shore, palm trees swaying—the whole nine yards. I guess your room must not look out on that, or you’d have noticed.”
“Nope. Mine overlooks the parking lot.” He had a vivid mental picture of Keely lying at the edge of that lapping surf, the foam curling over her naked breasts and licking at her smooth thighs. Oh, boy. He was in trouble. He’d been denying her sexuality for years, but denial wasn’t working anymore.
“In fact, considering you’re staying at such a premier resort,” she said, “I’m surprised you didn’t want to hang out right there and soak up the atmosphere instead of wandering around in the heat on a basically boring side street.”
“Well, the thing is, I—”
“Noah Garfield, were you planning to actually go into that bar? Don’t tell me that you’re secretly a voyeur who pays to look at naked women?”
He winced as several people on the crowded sidewalk turned to stare at him. Taking Keely by the arm, he leaned down. “No, I am not a secret voyeur, but now several people in this city think I am.” He released his grip on her arm before the soft warmth under his fingers gave him even more ideas.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “You know I always tend to speak my mind.”
“I do remember that. Obviously you haven’t changed.”
“Obviously you haven’t, either. Still worried about what the neighbors think.”
She was baiting him. He knew that, but still she got his dander up. He wondered if he had any chance at all of changing her attitude this weekend. Probably not, but he had to try. He’d keep reminding her of her roots and see if that helped the cause. “Where you and I come from, you’d better stay chummy with your neighbors if you expect to make it in the ranching business.”
“Well, I have no interest in making it in the ranching business.”
She scored another hit with that one. He loved his life as a rancher and took negative comments about it personally. “I think you made that perfectly clear when you took the deal with Macho.”
“You noticed that.”
“Everybody noticed that.” And that was the other big reason he’d better get his mind off the lovely body of Keely Branscom. He’d never been the kind of guy who could have sex for the hell of it. With him, a physical relationship with a woman needed to be going somewhere. With Keely, it could go nowhere. She didn’t want what he could offer.
“Noah…about that centerfold…” She sounded hesitant, which was unusual for her.
Surprised at the sudden shift in her manner, he glanced over at her.
She cleared her throat. “It was my ticket out.” Her gaze slipped up to his face, but her expression was disguised by her dark glasses. “Can you understand that?”
“Sort of.” Frustrated by not being able to see her eyes, he faced forward again. “I mean, if you wanted to get out of Saguaro Junction, posing for that magazine sure worked like a charm. And I can see why the town might seem too conservative for you. But to cut yourself off completely…”
“It was easier that way.”
“Maybe, but growing up there wasn’t all bad, was it?”
“No, of course not.”
“Don’t you ever miss the place?” He decided not to talk about missing the people for now.
She didn’t answer for a long while. “Sometimes,” she murmured at last. “Yeah, sometimes I do.”
She was full of surprises. He didn’t think she’d admit to that so soon. Maybe he had a chance, after all. “Then why not come back and mend some fences?”
“I don’t fit in there, Noah. I’m too much like my mother.”
He barely remembered Keely’s mother, who’d died from complications surrounding B.J.’s birth. But Arch had said his wife had loved the excitement of the city and had been bored by country living. “I didn’t mean you had to move back. But would it kill you to visit?”
“Maybe.” She smiled wistfully. “Although I have to say, this business of my little sister getting married has me thinking. You never did mention when the wedding was.”
“Let’s see. It’s…two weeks from Saturday,” he said with some shock. “I didn’t realize it was getting so close, myself. And I still don’t have a gift bought, either.”
“That soon? Are you sure this isn’t a shotgun affair?”
“Absolutely sure. Jonas is the one who is pushing to tie the knot.”
“I’m amazed.” Keely shook her head. “B.J. must have really changed.”
“Not a whole lot. She’s still a better ranch hand than most men. Better at some things than Jonas, to be honest.”
“Then I don’t get it. She’s so not his type. He likes girlie girls, and B.J. is about as far from that as you can get.”
“Maybe your sister has hidden depths.”
“Maybe she does.”
“See? She’s pregnant!”
“No, she’s not, but I can see you aren’t going to take my word for it.” He paused. “Guess you’ll have to ask her yourself.”
After a long moment, Keely sighed. “I understand what you’re trying to do, Noah, and it’s very sweet, but…too much water’s gone over the dam, or under the bridge. At any rate, there’s been a heck of a lot of water running. I don’t think I’d be a welcome guest at the wedding.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure.” Noah was taking a chance saying that. But he had a hunch Arch and B.J. would love it if Keely showed up. Besides, he didn’t see how the gap in the family could get any wider, so he thought it was worth the risk to suggest she go.
KEELY WALKED along silently beside Noah as they covered the last block before reaching the towering hotel that would magically transport them to the South Pacific. She was afraid to say too much more on the subject of her sister’s wedding for fear Noah would figure out how much she longed to go back and see her father and sister. Maybe now her sister was old enough and experienced enough to understand what had happened all those years ago. Maybe they could be friends again.
Only two years apart, they had been friends once. Then Keely had launched into puberty like a rocket, leaving B.J. behind. Living on a ranch where the only other females were her boyish younger sister and the Garfields’ housekeeper, Keely had found no one to help her through the confusing process of growing into a sexual person. She’d only had the dim memory of her mother to guide her, a mother who had apparently looked and acted just like her. Or so her father said.
Keely had developed early, B.J. late. And it had seemed to Keely that B.J. had tried to keep her tomboy image just to set her apart from her wild sister. Or maybe they’d split the parental influences between them, with B.J. becoming like Arch and Keely growing more and more like her mother. At any rate, B.J. had become the good daughter in their father’s eyes, while Keely had continued to blaze a path toward bad-girl land.
But Jonas wouldn’t be attracted to a woman who didn’t have a touch of naughtiness, so maybe B.J. wasn’t Little Miss Innocent anymore. Maybe she wouldn’t be as mystified by Keely now. Then again, maybe she would turn her back on her rebel sister, and that would be painful. Keely had a real aversion to pain.
In fact, she gravitated almost exclusively to pleasure and living in the present moment. The past couldn’t be changed and the future was a guess, but for the moment she had Noah Garfield right where she wanted him at last. As they approached the Tahitian, a ripple of anticipation made her shiver with delight. He had found her hard to resist in a drugstore. Once she got him inside this tropical paradise, he’d be a goner.
Set a distance back from the street, the hotel beckoned visitors to approach by leading them through a man-made jungle misted with thousands of tiny jets and cooled with countless tumbling waterfalls. The air reverberated with exotic birdsong and the steady beat of native drums.
“What fun,” Keely said as they joined the throng headed toward the entrance.
“I’d hate to get their water bill,” Noah said.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Can you do me a favor for the next three days and try not to think of practical things like that? You’re going to ruin my fantasy if you insist on worrying about utility bills.”
To her surprise, Noah laughed. “You’re right,” he said. “Vegas is over the top, and you might as well accept that from the git-go.”
“Very good.” She took off her sunglasses and slipped them into her purse as they approached a large clearing. “There’s hope for you, cowboy. Maybe before the weekend is over, you—”
She forgot what she’d intended to say as the foliage gave way to a view of a granite cliff rising ten stories above them. “My God. They dive off this thing.” She stood and gazed at the deep pool at the base of the cliff while she tried to imagine having the courage to hurl yourself into it from that height. “I definitely want to see this show tonight.”
Noah glanced over at her. “I hope you don’t mind watching it by yourself. I have a bachelor party I’m supposed to go to and it might run late.”
That fit perfectly into her plans. She could squeeze in some interview time. “No problem,” she said. “I’m good at amusing myself. But could we stop by the desk and get me a key to the room?”
“Oh. Sure.” He sounded anything but sure.
“Would that make you uncomfortable?”
“No, no, of course not.”
“You’re worried that the people at the desk will think you picked up a call girl, aren’t you? Just like Richard Gere picked up Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.” She thought that was a good image to plant in his mind.
He looked uneasy. “But I’m not—I mean, we’re not—”
“Tell you what. I’m going to help you out, here. In that movie, he told everybody the girl was his niece. So let’s say I’m your cousin.”
“Nobody will believe that.”
“Of course they won’t, but they’ll pretend to believe it, and that’s good enough, right?”
“I think if we say that you’re my cousin they’ll know we’re lying and be even more sure you’re a call girl.”
Keely smiled at him. “Okay, then what do you want to say? That I’m a wayward woman and you’re trying to reform me? They’ll believe that even less. I’d better be your cousin.”
He gazed at the cliff before looking back at her. “Maybe we could share a key.”
“I don’t see how that would work, unless you want me to hang around outside the room waiting for you to come back tonight. I don’t think that would be too good for your image, either.”
“I guess not.”
“Noah, we’re in Vegas, Sin City. So what if you have your cousin staying in your room? That’s probably one of the tamest situations they’ve seen around here in ages. I’ll bet an hour ago they gave a guy two extra keys because he ran into his twin cousins. And remember that not a single person behind that desk is your neighbor. So you don’t have to give a care what they think.”
He gave her a wry grin. “Point made. Let’s go get the key.” But as he started toward the large entrance doors decorated in brass bamboo, he suddenly turned back and grabbed her arm. “Come this way,” he said.
“Why?”
“Just go with it. Head back the way we came.” He hustled her down the walk past the crowd of pedestrians.
“Noah, I don’t understand what we’re doing.”
“I’ll tell you in a minute. Come over here.” He stepped into the landscaping and pulled her in with him.
Instantly she was spritzed from head to toe. “I don’t think we’re supposed to be walking on the—”
“Down behind this rock.” He pulled her to a crouch behind a large lava rock.
“Noah, I’m getting soaked from all those misters spraying down. What on earth is the matter?”
“The groom.” He took off his Stetson and peered up over the rock. “Brandon.”
“Ah.” She gazed at Noah’s tense profile. Despite her complaining, the mist felt kind of good after the warmth of their walk. “So you’re planning on keeping me a secret from the bridal party?”
“I hadn’t thought about it until you started talking about the extra key, but then I began thinking that it could be kind of awkward, trying to explain everything.”
“Maybe you’re right.” Far from being insulted, she was delighted. One of her most popular magazine articles had dealt with secrecy in a relationship and how tantalizing the forbidden could become. She would love to be Noah’s forbidden secret for the weekend. It would make her that much harder to resist.
“Here comes Brandon. Can you get down lower?”
“Sure.” She got to her knees on the mossy ground and hunched
down even more. The plants gave off a loamy, fertile scent that was quite exciting. And fortunately this wasn’t really the tropics, so she didn’t have to worry about putting her hand on an icky bug by accident.
Noah went down on his knees, too. Wrapping his arm around her, he pulled her in close.
Secrecy had all sorts of benefits, she decided as she snuggled against him. She’d only felt the hard press of his body once before and that had been wildly exciting. Yet he’d been a kid then, not much older than the drugstore clerk. She preferred this version. Maturity sat well on him—he had the solid strength and intriguing scent of a man in his prime. Their damp clothes seemed to melt against their bodies, giving the illusion of skin against skin. She could almost feel steam rising from where they were pressed together.
“I’m sorry you’re getting all wet,” he said softly.
“There are worse things.” Like wanting to be kissed so bad she could hardly stand it. She studied his lower lip and longed to run her tongue along its length. She wondered if he’d moan the way he had the first time she’d kissed him years ago. And she wondered if he tasted more like a man than a boy. In order to find out, she needed him to tilt his face down toward hers, so she spoke his name. “Noah?”
Sure enough, he looked down at her. His eyes grew darker. “What?” he murmured.
“Lean closer,” she whispered. “I need to tell you something.”
His eyes grew darker still, and his lips parted as he drew near. “What?”
She slipped her hand behind his neck. “Jungle drums get me hot.” Then she kissed him.
4
NOAH’S PROGRAM to reform Keely was seriously off track. Not an hour into it and he was making out with her in the bushes. For the second time in his life he’d succumbed to the temptation of her mouth, but he’d had some idea he could deal with it this time. For some unknown reason, he’d expected a repeat of the kiss she’d given him as a sixteen-year-old. He’d sadly miscalculated.
Oh, she’d had plenty of passion back then, too, but she hadn’t been quite sure what to do with it. Now, she’d learned. Good God, how she’d learned. The pressure of her mouth was light at first. Warm. Soft. Taunting him.
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