Turn Me Loose (Paradise, Idaho)

by Rosalind James

  “And those things to do wouldn’t include you.” His brown eyes were steady on hers, his mouth unsmiling.

  She straightened her back. And if it shoved her boobs out—well, she’d been faced with that choice since she’d been fourteen. Stand tall and have every guy in eyeball range stare at her chest, or slouch and cower and cover it up. She hadn’t cowered then, and she wasn’t about to start now. She held his gaze, and he kept his eyes high. But then, he’d already seen it all.

  “No,” she said evenly. “I’m not a fringe benefit.”

  “Not even an orientation lunch?”

  “Not even that.”

  She hadn’t needed that much self-control after all. Not one bit, in fact, except for the not-punching thing. She watched Travis’s rear view, all broad shoulders, tight butt, and long legs, disappear out the door, and it was like it had all just happened between the two of them. Like she’d just been that stupid, that impulsive, that . . . not trashy, she told herself furiously. Why was it only women who were “trashy”? That . . . mistaken. She’d call it that. That completely mistaken.

  It hadn’t been so bad that first Christmas after her divorce. Then, life had looked like a big wide world of possibilities. She’d just turned thirty, and she’d known that the new decade was going to be her best yet. Her own money, her own life, her own place, with nobody’s dirty dishes in the sink and nobody’s dirty underwear on the floor. Not to mention the Divorce Diet body she’d exercised into her best shape ever. She’d been out on the town and looking good. A brand-new start.

  And then another year had passed, there’d been one more candle on the cake, she was still out on the town, and it wasn’t that much fun. She wasn’t looking for a good time. She was looking for forever. And when you came from the wrong side of the tracks and you looked the way she did, it wasn’t hard at all to get a reputation, especially if you had a wild side. She knew. She’d had exactly that rep as a teenager. Every guy she’d gone out with had had a story to tell in the locker room, and some of them had even been true. She wasn’t going down that road again. Times might have changed, but a lot of folks in Paradise hadn’t gotten the memo. And she didn’t want a bunch of hookups with guys who hung out in bars anyway. She wanted strong and sweet and smart. She wanted sex, and she wanted it hot, but she wanted babies, too. She was holding out for a full-grown man. She was holding out for a hero, and it looked like she’d be holding out for a while. Fighting her insistent body all the way.

  It had been the maid-of-honor stint that had really done it, though. A winter wedding between her good friend, slightly nerdy professor of geology Zoe Santangelo, and Paradise’s formerly most eligible bachelor, ex-NFL star Cal Jackson. It had been something about the light in both their faces as they’d claimed each other, not to mention the fact that Rochelle had known that, under the wedding gown she’d bullied Zoe into choosing, her friend had already been five weeks pregnant. And maybe that Luke Jackson, Cal’s brother and best man and Paradise’s second most eligible bachelor, had spent half the ceremony looking at his girlfriend, Kayla, and clearly wishing he could talk her into a double wedding right then and there.

  Rochelle had been happy for all of them. Sure she had. And she’d also been jealous as hell.

  Which could have been why, a few weeks after that wedding, in mid-January when the weather was at its coldest and the winter at its darkest and bleakest, she’d gone to Spokane to visit her cousin Celine. An hour and a half from home and a hundred miles from everyone she knew. They’d ended up at a country bar on Saturday night with a bunch of make-believe cowboys, some office workers and salesmen in Dockers, and all the guys who’d taken off their wedding rings outside the door. Not too different from Paradise, in other words, minus the college students looking for a cougar.

  Except that he’d been sitting at a table, his booted feet stuck out in front of him with one ankle crossed over the other, his eyes on her, a beer bottle in his hand, the heat in his gaze making her have to look away fast every time she glanced his way. And she was glancing his way too often, there was no doubt.

  She’d been dancing with a dentist when it happened. She’d known he was a dentist because he’d told her so. The third time she moved his hand off her butt, she told him, “I’ve got great teeth myself. Next time your hand goes there, I’ll give you a dental impression you won’t forget.”

  “Mm. Nice,” he said. “But I don’t think so. I know what women like you want.”

  “Can’t wait to hear that,” she said. “Oh, wait. I can.” The song was ending. Thank heaven.

  “Luckily, it’s exactly what I want,” he said. “You’ve got an ass just made for my hand. After that, we can find out what else it’s good for.”

  The music had stopped in the middle of his little speech, and his words fell like stones into the relative quiet. Heads turned around them, although Rochelle barely noticed through the roaring in her own head. Her hand was already rising for the slap that was itching to get out when she heard the voice over her shoulder.

  “Way I see it, we’ve got two choices. I could take him out to the parking lot and kick his ass, or we could ignore him and dance. What’s it gonna be?”

  “You wish,” the dentist said.

  “Oh, no.” He’d stepped around her now, and Rochelle wasn’t one bit surprised to see who it was. “I don’t wish. I know. I’m just waiting on the lady here.”

  “He’s not worth it,” she said, her breath still coming a bit raggedly. “Let’s dance.”

  “Now, see,” he said. “I was hoping you’d be telling me what I wanted to hear.”

  His sleepy eyes smiled at her, even though his lips barely moved, and she got a hard flutter low in her belly that moved straight on down and set up residence. She forgot all about the dentist, because her guy put his left hand up, and her right one went up to join it as if it had been drawn there by a magnet. She could feel the sigh that went through his body when their hands touched, and his other hand was firm at her waist, letting her know, just like that, that he knew how to dance and all she had to do was follow. Her left hand settled on his broad shoulder, and he smiled down at her for real this time and said, “Oh, yeah. That’s what I’m talking about.”

  She’d have said something smart, but her mouth was too dry. So she just danced, and let him buy her a drink, and danced with him some more. And when the band played a slow one and Travis—his name was Travis, of course, because he wasn’t sexy enough already—pulled her up closer, she snuggled right up there until she was molded to his hard body, swaying and rocking and halfway to gone.

  “Damn,” she heard, and she pulled back a bit to look up at him. His eyes were smiling again, and the tingle that had long since become a buzz sent up a spark so strong, she shuddered.

  “Sweetheart,” he told her, “that’s just too good. Afraid you’re the only one I’m going to be taking out to the parking lot tonight.”

  “Yeah,” she managed to say. “Hell of a thing.”

  “Isn’t it, though?” He led her off the floor, and she grabbed her jacket and touched Celine’s shoulder with a “Don’t wait up.”

  The wind outside hit them hard, and she gasped, but Travis laughed out loud, a reckless edge to it. “Wow. Lets you know you’re alive, huh?”

  “Not . . . so much,” she said. “Lets you know you’re freezing to death.”

  “Come on.” He had an arm around her shoulder, was hustling her across to his car, a late-model SUV, and opening the door for her. Inside, he turned on the engine and blasted the heater, but didn’t put the car in gear.

  “We . . . waiting for something?” she asked when her shivers had died down and she could speak again.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Waiting for this.” He reached across the console, got one hand under her hair and the other one on her shoulder, pulled her into him, and settled his mouth over hers.

  He tasted like tequila and lime. He tasted like 100 percent pure hard man. His lips were firm and warm, and he took
his time. One big palm cradled her head, and he kept kissing her, long and slow and fathoms deep, while the motor purred and the radio played one soft country song after another. And still he kissed her. Little butterfly touches on the edges of her mouth, then his mouth drifted over her cheek to her temple, his thumb caressing the other cheek in a rhythm that had her hips moving along.

  She shifted in her seat, tried to get closer, and stroked the back of his neck, then sent her hand up, testing the texture of his hair and finding it perfect, short and thick and just right to dig your fingers into. Her other hand was on his shoulder, but there was too much jacket there, and she had to feel him.

  “Travis,” she gasped.

  “Yeah,” he sighed, resting his forehead against hers. “Yeah. You want to get out of here?”

  “I don’t know,” she rallied enough to say. “You do it the same way you kiss?”

  The faint light from the edge of the lot was enough to show her his mouth curving in a slow smile. “Oh, baby. I’ll do it so much better.” His hand traced the edge of her jaw, oddly tender. “How do you feel about letting a man undress you?”

  “Depends,” she said, closing her eyes against the feel of his hand, “on the man.”

  “Mm.” Another kiss on the sensitive outer edge of her mouth, his tongue coming out briefly to trace her upper lip, and she was shivering again. “Then let’s go see if I’m the man. I’m thinking slow, with a whole lot of kissing and a whole lot of touching. I’m thinking we make this last all night.”

  “You got that much to give?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, and she rocked back some. She hadn’t been expecting honesty. “But whatever it turns out I’ve got? I’m going to give it to you.”

  CONSEQUENCES

  He’d done it, too. He’d been all that and a bag of chips.

  She’d been startled when he’d driven only ten blocks or so before parking in the garage for the Davenport, Spokane’s most exclusive hotel. She’d figured him for a local, and had had some momentary second thoughts about what she was doing here. Another kiss in the car had put an end to those, though, maybe because he still hadn’t felt her up. She’d needed more, and she’d needed it in a hurry.

  “You a slow mover?” she asked him.

  “Could be,” he said, with another of those kisses at the corner of her mouth that drove her crazy. “Why don’t you come on in with me and find out?”

  So she had, and even though she hadn’t had sex in months, she remembered enough to know she’d never had it that good. Because he’d turned out to be a very, very slow mover. It had been exactly what he’d said: a whole lot of slow undressing, a whole lot of kissing, a whole lot of touching, and a whole, whole lot of “Oh, my God,” until she’d wondered, in some hazy corner of her mind, if a person could actually pass out from too much pleasure.

  When they were finally lying quietly together, his arms around her, her head on his chest, he said, “Wow,” and she couldn’t have agreed more.

  She smiled, feeling nothing but satisfied and lazy, turned her head to kiss the hard plane of his chest, and said, “Mm.”

  “You live here?” he asked. “Spokane? Say yes.” And that’s when she realized that she knew nothing more about him than his first name, however generously he’d shared his body.

  “This the getting-to-know-you part of the evening?” she asked. “My mama would be so ashamed of me. Blame it on the Cuervo, I guess.”

  His hand stroked over the curve of her bottom, and she lit up again despite everything they’d just done. She could hear the smile in his voice as he said, “Well, there’s knowing and knowing. We won’t tell your mama how well you let me know you, how’s that?”

  “No,” she said, and his hand stilled. “I don’t live in Spokane,” she went on. “I live in Paradise.”

  “No kidding. Think I’ve been visiting there myself.”

  She laughed against his skin. “It’s a town.” And then she realized, with a sick jolt, what that meant. “You really aren’t a local.”

  “Nope. But I’m likely to be back. No, I’m definitely coming back. Count on it.”

  She sighed at that, pillowed her head more comfortably against his delicious chest, and fell asleep.

  In the morning, he tucked the slip of hotel notepaper with her name and number on it into his wallet and said, “Wish I could stay. It feels like we just got started, doesn’t it? But I’ve got too much to do back home. I’ll drop you off, for now.”

  He’d dropped her off back at her cousin’s, and then he’d dropped right out of her life. Nobody to blame but herself. If you were looking for something more than a one-night rodeo, you didn’t go looking for it in a cowboy bar.

  So he was here now. So what? He wouldn’t be the only guy in the College of Engineering who had an idea about getting with her, and who wasn’t going to be getting anywhere close.

  And if he talked? She had to swallow hard at the thought of that. She hadn’t exactly held back that night, and neither had he. If he talked—that would make her life so much less comfortable. People said women gossiped, but in her experience, women couldn’t hold a candle to men in certain areas. Women didn’t usually spread the word in the workplace about the cute guy in the next office they’d taken home from the bar, and exactly how many ways he’d nailed her.

  She couldn’t do anything about that, though, not right now. So she set it aside and picked up her to-do list. And by the time five o’clock rolled around, she was almost too tired from the lack of sleep, not to mention all the emotion of the night—and the day—to care anymore.

  Rochelle couldn’t even go home and go to bed, because she still had to finish moving her sister. Talk about your Mondays.

  “I don’t want to live with you,” Stacy said from her spot on her bed, where she was planted as if Rochelle would have to pry her fingers loose and drag her out kicking and screaming. Which Rochelle was fully prepared to do.

  At least Stacy was looking perkier now. Rochelle guessed that was the benefit to being twenty-one. Her sister wasn’t showing any effects from the night before, whereas Rochelle had had to give herself a pretty stern pep talk in the car over here just to keep going. All she’d wanted to do was stretch out on the couch and fall asleep watching a movie.

  Mandy had accepted Rochelle’s explanation of Stacy’s sudden move with a martyred sigh and gone out to leave them to their packing, muttering about “having to find a new roommate now. Thanks so much,” despite the fact that she’d have no problem at all finding somebody with one week to go before school started, and that she’d be getting double rent as soon as she did. The loss of her company wasn’t exactly killing Rochelle, either.

  “No offense, Ro,” her sister went on. “I mean, thanks for being worried, I guess, but this is all a major overreaction. I’m fine. I didn’t even need to go to the hospital, not really. It’s not like they had to pump my stomach or anything. OK, I drank a little too much, but everybody does that.”

  “Yeah? Does everybody take that many pills, too?” Rochelle kept on methodically stacking shirts and jeans into one of the cardboard boxes she’d hastily scrounged from the university’s shipping and receiving office. Stacy had packed up her underwear and sock drawers, but now, her efforts were confined to looking mulish.

  Stacy let out a gusty sigh. “It’s no big deal. Lots of people do it sometimes. And look at me. I’m fine. I’m good. You went way overboard. Let’s just forget it, OK?”

  Rochelle swiveled on her haunches to look at her. “I wasn’t kidding. You’re moving in with me. We’re done talking about that. But what I want to know is, who gave them to you? Was it the guy you were out with? What’s his name?”

  Stacy got up and started stripping the bottom sheet. “His name’s Shane. And no. Of course not.”

  “Does he go to school here?” Rochelle pressed.

  “He went to college for a while.” Stacy seemed to be folding the sheet with extra care. “And now he’s got a good job. A lot b
etter than all the college graduates who are working in Starbucks. He says if you want to get ahead, you have to think for yourself. You can’t just go rung by rung. You have to jump. Like you.” There was defiance in her eyes, and for once, she looked straight at Rochelle. “You’ve got a great job, and you never went to college at all. You lucked into it, because of your personality and everything. That’s how it really works. I’ll stay in college,” she hastened to add, clearly seeing the expression on her sister’s face. “I still have my plan. I’m just saying, there’s more to it than that.”

  That wasn’t a warning bell. It was a five-alarm fire. “I didn’t luck into a damn thing,” Rochelle said. “I started out at the bottom and worked my tail off, and eventually, I impressed the dean enough that filling in temporarily became a permanent job I shouldn’t have been qualified for. And since then, I’ve been making sure he doesn’t regret his decision for a single day. This is as high as I’m ever going to get, too. I don’t have a college degree, and that meant I had to climb every one of those rungs by being better than anybody else he could have found. Everyone I know who’s gotten anywhere has climbed every rung, too. College degree or not.” She shook her head. This was getting them nowhere but sidetracked. “How old is this guy?”

  Stacy was folding the mattress pad now. “I don’t know. We don’t sit around looking at each other’s driver’s licenses.”

  “Do not try to weasel out of this. How old? And where’s he from?”

  Stacy sighed again. “Maybe twenty-five? Thirty?” Like those were exactly the same. “Which means he’s mature. I’d have thought you’d like that. And he’s from the city. Well,” she said with trace of a laugh, “from all over, really. He grew up all over the world, because his dad was a diplomat.”

  Yeah, right. The sons of diplomats didn’t end up in small-town Idaho. Rochelle didn’t say that, of course. She wasn’t an idiot. “Where’d you meet him?”