Jo Beth squinted up at him from underneath her raised hand, but all she could see was the silhouetted figure of a man on a horse. His shoulders were impossibly broad against the expanse of blue sky behind him. His face was completely hidden in the shadow of his hat. Except for the sun glinting off the blunted rowels of his spurs and the silver conchas on his chaps, he was shrouded in darkness.
An instinctive quiver of apprehension snaked its way up Jo Beth’s spine. She very deliberately brushed it aside. This was, after all, Diamond J land. She was the jefe of the Diamond J. And he was a Diamond J cowhand.
Whatever reason he might have for trailing her out to this remote corner of the ranch, it sure as hell wasn’t because he had any nefarious designs on her body. None of her cowhands would dare. Especially given the mood she’d been in when she left the stable yard.
Which meant there was some problem that demanded her immediate attention back at the main house. Her squint deepened into a frown. Good Lord, couldn’t she have one measly hour to herself? Just one measly little hour without the whole operation falling apart?
“This had better be damned important,” she said irritably, scowling up at him from under her tented hand.
“Ma’am?”
“Whatever you trailed me out here for. It had better be damned important, or you and whoever sent you out here after me are going to be damned sorry.”
“No one sent me after you,” Clay said, thinking delightedly that she’d already managed to surprise him again. Whatever he’d expected her to say, however he might have expected her to say it, he certainly hadn’t anticipated anything so prosaic as a simple expression of annoyance at his presence and the possible reason for it, especially not with her still sitting there neck deep in water and as naked as the day she was born.
“Then why the hell did you follow me out here?” she demanded.
“I didn’t follow you.” His easy, affable tone was in direct contrast to the snapping impatience of hers. “I was out taking a ride all by my lonesome and saw someone moving around down here by the water tank.” He eased up on the reins as he spoke, letting the pinto amble closer to the concrete tank. “I thought I’d better take a closer look in case that someone was up to no good. So…” Leather creaked as he leaned forward and casually draped a forearm across the saddle horn. The reins dangled loosely from his gloved fingers. The pinto dropped his head and began sucking up water. “Are you up to no good, darlin’?”
Jo Beth opened her mouth to lambaste him for the dual offenses of dereliction of duty and being overly familiar when it occurred to her that not only was he a good deal closer than he’d been a moment before, but—Diamond J cowhand or not—she had absolutely no idea who he was.
Nothing about him was familiar. Not the tilt of his hat. Not the sound of his voice. Not even the way he sat his horse. And she prided herself on being able to put a name to every hand on the Diamond J just by watching him ride.
The quiver of apprehension returned, a little stronger this time, a little more insistent as it snaked its way up her spine to lodge at the back of her neck. It wasn’t fear. Not yet. Not by a long shot, she assured herself. But it was close enough to it that she glanced toward Bella, mentally judging the distance to the shotgun holstered behind the saddle, hoping like hell she wasn’t going to have to sprint for it, buck naked and dripping wet. Her gaze darted back to the man who seemed, suddenly, to be much too close, much too big, much too…much.
She stiffened her spine against the nascent fear, refusing to give in to it. Her eyes took on a steely glint beneath the shade of her sheltering hand. “Just who the hell are you, cowboy?”
“Beg pardon, ma’am,” he said, as polite as if she’d asked a civil question instead of snarling it at him like an angry bobcat. “I didn’t realize you didn’t recognize me or I’d’ve made myself known to you straight off.” He dipped his head, reaching up to touch two fingers to the brim of his hat. “I’m—”
In that instant, with that slight telling movement, Jo Beth suddenly knew who he was. “Oh, good Lord!” she burst out before she could stop herself. “You’re—” She dropped her upraised hand, covering her mouth before the name escaped.
“Clay Madison,” he said, and swept his hat off, giving her a theatrical little bow from the saddle. It was the same cocksure, conquering-hero bow he used in the ring to acknowledge the approving roar of the crowd. “In the flesh,” he added, with a wickedly charming cowboy grin.
Jo Beth stared up at him for a disbelieving few seconds, her eyes gone wide above her concealing hand, her body frozen like a wild woodland creature trying to escape the notice of a predator. Visions of her fantasies and what she’d done to fulfill them chased round and round in her head. She knew it was too much to hope that he hadn’t seen her solo performance. If he’d been watching long enough to see someone moving around by the water tank, he’d certainly been watching long enough to have seen what happened after that someone got in the water tank.
She closed her eyes briefly, trying to block out the awful reality of the situation, desperately wishing that one or both of them would just disappear into the hot, dry air. But when she opened them again, he was still there, sitting atop the pinto with the sun shining on his gleaming black hair, hat in hand, grinning at her like a feral cousin of the Cheshire cat.
And she was still bare-ass naked, sitting in a water tank in the middle of a sun-baked cow pasture with the guilty blush of self-indulgence heating her cheeks.
There was only one thing to do, one tack to take. She dropped her hand from her mouth, squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and glared up at him with the expression every hand on her ranch had learned to fear. “Just what the hell are you doing on Diamond J land?”
He shrugged elaborately, unintimidated by the ferocity of her question. “Like I said, I was out taking myself a little ride. Just following my nose, don’t ’cha know? Ended up taking the shade in that stand of cottonwoods on the hill, yonder.” He gestured with his hat, indicating the gentle swell of the land behind him. “No rhyme or reason to it.” His grin flashed again, his eyes raking over her with a warm, appreciative gleam meant to charm and flatter. “Just plain ol’ good luck, I’d call it.”
“Well, I wouldn’t,” she snapped, stubbornly refusing to be charmed or flattered. “What I’d call it is plain ol’ trespassing. You’re on Diamond J land, Mr. Madison, and I’d appreciate it if you’d turn that pinto around and ride back the way you came.”
“Well, now, that’s not very neighborly.” He took a moment to resettle his hat on his head, deliberately thumbing it back a bit so the brim wasn’t shadowing his face. “Downright unneighborly, I’d say. Especially considering as how I rode down here to see if I could offer you a helping hand.” He let his gaze drift downward, away from her face, and his seemingly ever-present grin warmed lasciviously. “So to speak.”
Jo Beth tightened her arms around her bent knees and tried not to squirm. “Really?” she said, injecting what she hoped was a credible amount of scorn into her voice.
It wasn’t easy.
The man was a living, breathing sexual fantasy. Her living, breathing sexual fantasy. She knew as well as she knew her own name that she could have him—right then, right there—just the way she’d imagined in those heated moments of self-induced rapture. All she had to do was say the word and he’d get down off that horse and climb into the water tank with her. She was absolutely sure of it. Just one word, and her frustrations of the last few weeks would come to what was sure to be a glorious end.
But damned if she’d say it.
Fantasy or not, the man was a cowboy. Worse, he was a four-time Pro Rodeo championship bull-riding cowboy. Which meant he was a true wild thing, more reckless, more feckless, more fancy-free and unreliable than the usual breed of cowboy. Trouble with a capital T, and she sure as hell didn’t need any more of that in her life.
She gave him her haughtiest glare, and tried to think of anything other than what he’d look
like soaking wet and wearing nothing but his black Resistol hat. “I thought you rode down here because you saw someone nosing around the water tank and were concerned they were up to no good.”
“Yep,” he said amiably, wondering exactly what it would take to make her lose her cool and rattle that ironclad composure she wore like a shield. “I surely was. But then I saw you slide down into the water and start…ah…” He hesitated and his gaze dipped downward again, as if he could see beneath the sparkling surface of the water to the place where her hand had been so busily engaged just a few moments ago.
Jo Beth felt every sensitive female part of her body begin to tingle, tensing with anticipation under the promise of that heated look, but she merely smiled—a small, icy, cowboy-withering smile meant to cut a man’s ego to ribbons—and raised an imperious eyebrow, daring him to say it flat out.
“Thrashing around in the water like you were doing,” he finished smoothly, as if that’s what he’d intended to say all along. “Well, it got me to worrying. It surely did. As far away as I was, there was no telling what kind of trouble you were having.”
“Trouble? Is that what you call it?”
The look in his hot-coffee eyes heated to scorching. His wicked cowboy grin turned a shade more knowing and intimate. “Unless you’d like me to call it something else.”
Jo Beth ignored the wild leap of her pulse at the invitation implicit in his words and manner. “What I’d like is for you to turn around and ride away,” she said, knowing she was lying through her teeth. What she’d really like was for him to shuck down to his birthday suit and climb into the water tank with her so she could see if the reality of him lived up to her fantasies.
“And I’d like to oblige you, Miz Jensen,” he said genially, lying in his turn. He thumbed the brim of his hat another half inch farther back on his head. “I really would,” he said earnestly, as if he actually meant it. “But my dear sainted ma raised me up to be a gentleman like my pa—”
Jo Beth snorted inelegantly.
“—like my pa,” he reiterated, giving her a doleful look of mock censure, “an’ she’d roll over in her grave for sure if I was to just up and leave you out here by your lonesome, all unprotected and vulnerable-like. Some fella who ain’t nearly as well-mannered as me might come along an’ try to take advantage of the situation.”
The attitude, the words, the tone, the ridiculously thick aw-shucks-ma’am-I’m-just-a-dumb-cowboy accent were all calculated to make him sound as innocent as a wet-behind-the-ears farm boy. Even the way he was wearing his hat, well back on his head with the brim framing his face like a halo, contributed to the impression of a harmless good-natured hayseed bent on doing the right thing.
But the heated look in his eyes, his sly Cheshire-cat grin, even the casual loose-limbed way he sat his horse was a blatant, unabashed sexual come-on, a challenge of the most sexual sort.
I’ve got what you want, he said, without saying a word. All you have to do is ask.
And, oh, it was tempting.
He was tempting.
Too tempting.
And he knew it.
The arrogant jerk.
That’s what came of having legions of panting, dewy-eyed buckle bunnies throwing themselves at his feet every time he so much as flashed that lady-killer smile of his. It gave a man an exaggerated impression of his appeal and made him think every woman he met was just dying to get down and dirty with him.
There was only one surefire way to regain her dignity and show him he had absolutely no allure for her.
“Well, then, if you won’t leave, I will.”
She put her palms on the rim of the tank behind her and pushed herself up. The movement was swift but unhurried, as natural as if she were rising, unobserved, from her bath. And then, using every last bit of self-control she possessed, she stood there for a moment, knee deep in the trough, and calmly, efficiently sluiced water down her arms and torso with the flat of her hands, just as she would have done had she been alone.
That would show him how unimpressed she was with his cowboy charm.
He didn’t say a word, didn’t so much as move a muscle, but she could feel him watching her, could feel the heat of his gaze following her hands as she briskly skimmed them over her own body. Without looking at him she knew he was completely, absolutely, utterly focused on her. Handsome-as-sin, four-time Pro Rodeo bull-riding champion Clay Madison was looking at her. And practically drooling with lust. The sensation was as physical as a touch, as heady as brandy fumes, as irresistible as a soft, sweet kiss in the dark.
Almost without conscious volition, she raised her hands back to her chest, placing her palms flat against her skin, and moved them downward for a second time, outlining the sleek wet lines of her body as she brushed the water from her skin. Her palms slid over the gentle swell of her breasts…caressed the firm, flat plane of her midriff and stomach…brushed ever so lightly across the patch of dark silky hair covering her pubic mound…
He made a strangled sound, something between a moan and a growl.
Jo Beth looked up at him, square into his eyes. What she saw there caused her to cross her hands over her pubic mound, instinctively, as if to hide it from him. But her shoulders remained straight and square, and her chin was well up. “What?” she said belligerently, trying to pretend she wasn’t the least bit intimidated.
He didn’t move his gaze from her face. “Do you want me to climb down off this horse and get into that tank with you?”
For one brief, delicious, insane second, she actually thought about saying yes. What could it hurt, after all? One hot, fast bout of slap-and-tickle with the fantasy cowboy who’d been driving her crazy for the past week might do her some good. It would get him out of her system, relieve the itch, and settle her down for the wedding tomorrow so she could concentrate on her maid-of-honor duties. No one would know. No one would care. And he’d be gone in a couple of days, so it wasn’t like she’d be in danger of actually getting involved in any kind of messy public relationship that would need explaining somewhere down the line. She could screw him and forget him, and that would be that.
On the other hand, he had the look of a man who might not be all that easy to forget. And that could be plenty messy in its own way, even if nobody ever found out.
“Well?” he demanded, his glare both furious and fascinated.
She opened her mouth. “Ah…” The word stuck in her throat, and the horror of it was, she didn’t know if that word was yes or no. “Ah…”
Clay tightened his hand on the reins, pulling the pinto’s nose up and around with one quick twist of his wrist. “Let me know when you make up your mind,” he said, and touched his spurs to the horse’s sides so that it sprang into a gallop from a standing start.
Jo Beth stood in the water tank, her hands still shielding the dark hair at the top of her thighs, her shoulders still square, and watched him until he disappeared up and over the hill. And then she sank down onto the side of the concrete tank because her knees were trembling too hard to hold her up anymore, and wondered just what the hell she would have said if he’d waited for her answer.
3
“LADIES. LADIES. PLEASE. Let’s have a little decorum here.” Jo Beth rapped the top of the coffee table with her empty glass. “And another shot. I need to make a toast.”
A slender blonde in a hot-pink, lace-trimmed satin chemise peered at her through an untidy fringe of spiky bangs, a half-empty bottle of tequila clutched protectively to her chest. “You just made a toast.”
“Well, I’m gonna make another one. I’m the maid of honor. It’s my job.” Jo Beth rose unsteadily to her knees and thrust her empty glass out across the table, waggling it back and forth under the blonde’s nose. “Come on, Roxy. Pour me another shot so I can do my job.” She waved her free hand expansively. “Pour everybody another shot.”
“Everybody” consisted of all six bridesmaids and the bride-to-be. They were ranged around the glass-topped coffee table in
Cassie’s living room in various states of dishabille, from Roxy Steele’s pink satin and black lace chemise, to Cassie’s white eyelet baby doll with embroidered forget-me-not blue flowers, to Jo Beth’s yellow cotton knit tank top and green plaid boxer shorts. Thanks to the professional manicurist Roxy had hired as her contribution to the festivities, they all wore Juicy Peach polish on their toenails and sported matching French manicures.
The table was littered with cold slices of half-eaten pizza, barbecued chicken wings and baby back ribs on paper plates, chocolate-smeared sundae glasses, an empty Sara Lee cheesecake box, and a pile of squeezed-out lime wedges. A phallic-shaped saltshaker sat, strategically placed, atop the centerfold of the most recent issue of Playgirl magazine.
They’d started the evening with two unopened bottles of Jose Cuervo’s finest. The first lay on its side under the table, its contents sacrificed to the evening’s merriment. The second bottle was barely half-full.
Roxy obligingly served it up, pouring shots all around. Most of it ended up in the glasses, but some sloshed over onto the table. Not much, though, considering the bartender was halfway sloshed, as well.
Jo Beth bent her head, licking stray drops of tequila off her fingers, then raised her glass and waited until all five of the other bridesmaids—and the bride—had raised theirs, too.
“To Rooster Wills, the groom-to-be.” Her tone was somber, her manner solemn and almost respectful, as if she had something of particular gravity to say.
“To Rooster Wills,” they echoed, equally somber and serious.
They clinked glasses. More tequila sloshed onto the table.
“May he have more sexual stamina and staying power than the bird he was named after,” Jo Beth said and tossed back the content of her glass in one dramatic gulp.
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