“Would you like to come in?” she asked.
More than I care to admit.
“I really shouldn’t,” he said. Inhaling the scent of her delicate perfume, Travis donned a casual manner. “But I wouldn’t mind taking a look at what you’ve done with the place.”
He stepped inside, and Lauren fumbled for the light switch. Travis couldn’t believe his eyes as they adjusted to the sudden glow. The change was amazing. For a woman who didn’t plan on sticking around long, Lauren certainly had put in a lot of work into fixing up the once spartan cabin.
Soft blue cushions on white wicker furniture invited him to sit down and put his feet up. Scattered on the gleaming hardwood floor were several handwoven rugs in a Native American design. Matching curtains fluttered against a window open to the night air, and a bouquet of sunflowers added a bright spot of color against aged log walls. An array of breakable knickknacks straight from a magazine personalized the space. A moveable island made of pine expanded the limited kitchen work area.
Beauty and efficiency lay in the loving details of her decorating touches.
“Grandpa would love this,” Travis said.
Though his grandmother had died when he was much younger, he knew she, too, would approve of Lauren’s effort to make a home out of their neglected old homestead. Lauren smiled at the compliment as if she’d just been awarded a blue ribbon, and Travis felt something unfamiliar take a hold of his heart. She looked so pretty and so very pleased with his reaction that he had to shove his hands in his pockets to keep from putting them all over her.
“Come on,” she urged, deliberately tugging one of his hands out of safekeeping. “Let me show you the rest of the place.”
Her fingers laced through his. A hot rush of awareness ran the length of Travis’s arm and tightened his groin. A wiser man would have made up some excuse to leave—like the sudden need to take an ice-cold shower. Swinging the bathroom door open, Lauren offered him the opportunity to do so. She presented him with a view of a familiar antique claw foot tub, all shined up and newly fitted with a hand-held showerhead. Candles, bubble bath and soft towels rested on a small wooden table alongside a modest collection of cosmetics. Three coordinated pictures of flowers hung in a line above the tub, and a full-length mirror placed strategically in front of a white woven bath mat brought to mind erotic images of a dripping wet Lauren stepping from the tub to dry herself in duplicate—the real her and the reflection of her.
There was no need to run any hot water from the tap to steam up Travis’s mental mirror.
“Nice,” he croaked, hoping she would assume he was referring to the room and not all the wicked things he imagined doing to her with that showerhead.
“Come on,” she urged.
Since the cabin consisted of only three rooms and a porch, that left just the bedroom for his perusal. Travis swallowed. If it had been hard not picturing Lauren naked in the bathroom, it was downright impossible not to imagine her sprawled out in all her womanly glory upon the soft pink bedspread that accessorized a headboard with roses painted on its porcelain knobs. Normally Travis would have felt out of place in such a feminine room, but somehow Lauren’s bedroom was just as inviting as the rest of the house.
If not more so.
Positioning herself on the edge of the bed, she looked up at him with such a sweet, albeit tipsy, expression that he wasn’t sure he could meet the challenge of leaving before he initiated something that they would both later regret.
Lauren shot him a rueful smile. “I never thought I’d see the day when I’d be entertaining Travis Banks in my bedroom.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” she parroted with a squeak that emphasized her own sense of disbelief. “Need I remind you that when you were a senior in high school, you couldn’t so much as be bothered to give a little nobody freshman like me the time of day?”
Travis put a pucker between his eyebrows as if he were taxing his memory. “I don’t recall you ever asking me for it.”
“I didn’t have the nerve,” Lauren admitted.
Travis sighed. If he’d somehow hurt her feelings back then, it was certainly not intentional on his part.
“Actually, I don’t remember a lot about my senior year other than how hard it was trying to fit my athletic schedule around chores at home and worrying about my grandpa who was dying of cancer. But, now that you mention it, I do vaguely recall you just about melting into the floor the few times I tried to so much as make eye contact with you.”
Lauren felt the blood creep up her neck. It was hard enough getting her fuzzy thoughts around the fact that Travis remembered her at all, let alone entertaining the idea that her hero’s feet actually touched the ground those many years ago. Back then it had never occurred to her that he might be struggling with anything more important than how to juggle cheerleaders and footballs at the same time. Lauren could tell by the way Travis’s voice softened every time he mentioned his grandfather that they had shared a close bond. Not unlike the one she shared with the father she had lost about the same time.
“I’m afraid you still have the same effect on me,” she confessed, referring to his remark about her melting away at the sight of him.
“You have a different effect on me now.”
Travis’s voice was deep and throaty and laden with palpable implications. That acknowledgment was enough to send Lauren’s already woozy sense of equilibrium into loop-to-loops. When she’d hid her secret crush behind a pile of schoolbooks, her adolescent brain could not have invented a more delicious scene than the one unfolding right now. Having gone to a great deal of trouble to put herself out there tonight, Lauren thought that it would be a shame to simply turn out the light on this evening without reexamining her old fantasies and indulging her curiosity at long last. Travis may not be the marrying type, but that wasn’t to say he wasn’t attracted to her. Or her to him.
From the very first time she’d seen it, Lauren had loved his face. The clean, fresh-scrubbed, all-American look of it. The humor and vision shining from those mercurial gray eyes of his. And the cockeyed, boyish smile that could get him out of trouble in any teacher’s class.
Especially hers.
Time had done nothing to diminish Lauren’s feelings for him. It had, in fact, only intensified them.
That he was looking at her as if he wanted to eat her alive emboldened her. Having worked up a good appetite herself, she couldn’t bring herself to turn away from such a sumptuous banquet. Just because this was a once in a lifetime feast, didn’t mean she should refrain from sampling the gourmet menu out of fear of ruining her taste for more ordinary fare.
Lauren forced herself not to melt when she made eye contact this time. Anticipation zinged through her like a jolt of pure electricity. The look Travis gave her in return was hot enough to cause spontaneous combustion. She doubted the portable extinguisher she kept under the sink would have the least effect upon the fire they were about to start.
“How about you tuck me in tonight?” she asked over the thunderous beating of her heart.
His voice sounded like it was being dragged over broken glass. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
Ignoring that counsel, she kicked off her high heels and lay back against the pillows, hoping to strike a seductive pose. Catching her reflection in the mirror above her dresser, she thought she looked pretty darn good, too, even though she felt somewhat ridiculous.
“I think it’s a great idea.”
“You’ve had too much to drink, Lauren. A gentleman doesn’t take advantage of a lady under those circumstances.”
Travis’s rumbling voice echoed off the walls and reverberated inside Lauren’s bones. Taking his gallantry as a personal rebuff, she recalled whispered conversations implying that he wasn’t always so chivalrous.
Apparently he just didn’t want her.
Lauren wondered what circumstances might provoke him to abandon such unexpected principles. The thought challenged a
womanly sense of defiance buried deep inside her. A coy smile toyed with the edges of her mouth.
“Who says I want you to be gentleman tonight? Rumor has it you’re not always so gallant.”
A muscle along his jawline jumped, and his gray eyes darkened to the color of gathering storm clouds. His voice was deep in his throat.
“Then I doubt you’ve been talking to any real ladies.”
“Maybe not,” Lauren agreed easily enough. She reached down to unbuckle her belt. “And maybe what you’ve heard about what kind of a lady I am has been exaggerated as well.”
Travis’s laughter boomed in the small room, wounding her. Clearly he wasn’t buying her femme fatale act. She sat up on the edge of the bed and confronted him with the boring facts of her life.
“Okay, maybe I’m no swinging single, but let me tell you being a lady isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
A note of wistfulness crept into her voice as she continued.
“Being on best behavior all the time has done little but leave me lonely. Don’t you want to be the one to unmask a terminally good girl and set her free at last?”
The look of amusement on Travis’s handsome face vanished. Desire took its place, but restraint made its presence known as well.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” he asked flatly.
Lauren’s throat went tight and her heart seemed to be pounding to get out.
“Positive.”
One hundred percent.
She’d never been more certain of anything in her life. She was tired of living life from the outside looking in. Tired of tamping down her own desires just because some pesky little voice in her head refused to let her take a risk. Lauren knew it was hopeless to think anything permanent would come out of this act of rebellion, of pure self-indulgence.
But that didn’t make her want Travis any less.
“Have it your way then. Just don’t go expecting more than I can give you afterward.”
Though his words were far from romantic, the sound of his zipper sliding down was the most erotic thing Lauren had ever heard. She held her breath. Nothing could have torn her gaze away from the sight of Travis stripping for her. Sandy hair dusted a well-muscled chest, trailed down a washboard stomach and disappeared beneath the waistband of a pair of jeans hanging precariously low on a pair of masculine hips. He tossed his shirt upon on the floor and was tugging his boots off before it occurred to him to ask one very crucial question.
“You are on birth control, aren’t you?”
Cursing herself for her lack of foresight, Lauren focused her gaze on his bare chest and mutely shook her head. Any fantasies she might have had about him being the one who wanted children in his previous marriage dissolved on the spot.
Travis swore under his breath.
Lauren supposed he had a right to be angry. As adamant as he was about preserving his bachelor status, he certainly didn’t need a baby complicating his life. Hers either, for that matter—at least until she met a settling-down kind of man who wanted children as much as she did. That didn’t lessen the sense of disappointment that swamped her at the thought that this night may well be over before it even began however.
“Don’t you carry something with you?” she asked meekly.
Travis glared at her. “I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but for your information, I’m not a walking drugstore and I don’t sleep around indiscriminately.”
Lauren was glad the local gossips had it wrong. Not that it helped do anything to solve her present predicament: that of wanting this man more than life itself and being in the position to do nothing about it. She doubted whether she’d ever be able to muster up the courage to throw herself at him again.
“Maybe we should just forget the whole thing,” Travis suggested in a tone that sounded less than chivalrous as he ran a hand through his hair in a gesture of pure frustration.
“Maybe I don’t want to.”
The petulance in her own voice surprised Lauren. She hadn’t waited this long and worked herself into such a state to let opportunity pass her by so easily. All of a sudden she didn’t care if she sounded forward. She didn’t even care if she sounded desperate.
The last time she’d had sex she’d been too inexperienced and nervous to truly enjoy the experience. Tonight was going to be different. Tonight would fulfill the fantasies of a girl who’d never allowed herself to do more than dream of Travis Banks between the sheets of her lonely twin bed.
“Don’t you have something at home?” she asked. “For emergencies.”
The hard, searching look that Travis gave her left her feeling weightless.
“We’re not at my house. If you really want to do this, I suppose I could run over there and check, but you have to promise not to pass out in the meantime.”
As if she could possibly fall asleep! The chances of that happening were as likely as Travis reappearing with a wedding ring instead of a prophylactic. Worried that she was risking the humiliation of waiting naked for him when he had no intention of coming back, Lauren asked for the bare minimum in terms of commitments from him.
“I’ll promise—if in return, you’ll promise not to get lost on the way.”
Travis’s expression turned feral, and his voice lowered to a growl.
“Don’t even think about falling asleep. I’ll be right back.”
With that, he disappeared into the night, leaving Lauren feeling as powerful as a magician. And as helpless as a bunny plucked from a black top hat by the swish of a wand.
Travis hadn’t bothered putting on his shirt. Lauren hoped the cold air on his bare skin would motivate him to hurry, although if he was anywhere near as hot as she at the moment, nothing short of fulfillment was likely to have any effect on his temperature. However the second that she heard the front door close behind Travis, her bravado deserted her. Her mind raced with unanswered questions that immobilized her with fear.
What if I can’t please him?
What if sex ruins our relationship, and I end up losing the only nice affordable rental in the county?
And what does one wear to a full-fledged seduction?
Never having bothered to replace the old nightgown she’d given to Goodwill, Lauren had simply been sleeping in the nude since moving out of her mother’s house. As tempted as she was to slip into an oversize T-shirt, pull the covers up to her chin and make herself invisible again before Travis could get back, she had no intention of letting him know just how nervous she really was.
Now was not the time for belated caution.
Now was the time to go all out and make her dreams come true—if only for this one very special night.
Six
Stumbling through sagebrush and clumps of cactus in the dark, Travis cursed his weakness as a man. It bothered him that Lauren considered him some kind of playboy. Especially since nothing could be farther from the truth.
Oh, he’d be the first to admit that he was no saint. He wasn’t cut out for a lifetime of celibacy, but that didn’t mean he’d bed down with any woman who gave him the slightest encouragement. In fact, he hoped the ancient condoms he kept stashed away in the back corner of his underwear drawer hadn’t outlived their shelf life.
With the notable exception of Lauren, all the women he’d been with since his divorce all claimed to be on birth control. They had been quick to assure him they were looking for nothing more than a good time. If any of them had a change of heart after getting to know him better, Travis promptly replayed his standard message about not being interested in long-term relationships.
He couldn’t help it if that earned him a reputation around town as a cold bastard.
He’d learned the hard way that it was far better to err on the side of honesty than to marry someone just because it might make her happy. As hard as he’d tried to make his marriage work, there wasn’t a man alive who could make Jaclyn content. Every time he signed another outrageous alimony check, he counted himself lucky to have gotten
out of the relationship relatively unscathed. Until he saw someone going gaga over a baby and the weight of his loss crushed the air from his lungs.
That somber reminder did little to cool the desire throbbing through his veins, a testimony to the power Lauren held over him. Sharper than cactus barbs, the sting of conscience urged him to stop this insanity before someone got hurt. He assured himself that she knew exactly where things stood between them. Hadn’t he been completely up front with her from the outset?
Besides, just because Lauren was ready to make love to him didn’t mean she would be expecting an engagement ring in the morning. He was probably just being paranoid. She certainly hadn’t made any noise in that direction so there was no reason to expect that she would.
At least that’s what he told himself over and over again as he marched toward her cabin beneath the full moon, all the while clutching a handful of condoms as if he were holding the Holy Grail.
Disheveled and sexy as hell, Travis looked as though he had run the short distance in record time. The effort had done nothing to lessen the yearning shining in his eyes. That predatory look made Lauren tremble from the inside out. Opening his hand, he held out a small cellophane packet.
He sounded out of breath as he gave Lauren yet another chance to back out. “If you’ve changed your mind, now would be a real good time to tell me.”
Having no idea how many condoms came in a pack, Lauren hoped her voice wouldn’t betray her ignorance. She feigned a wicked smile and patted the pillow next to her.
“I just hope you brought enough.”
Travis’s laugh rumbled out of a place deep in his chest as he pulled her off the bed and onto her feet. “And how many do you think I’ll need to satisfy you?”
Lauren had no idea. Barely managing to pull off her shoes and nylons and belt in the time he was gone, she was happy to leave the remainder of her undressing in his capable hands—especially considering that her own hands were none too steady. Travis reached around her to undo the zipper running down the back of her dress. It fell open revealing the curve of her back. She shivered.
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