“I’ll trust your judgment,” she said quietly.
As she said it, her gaze never wavered.
And Duke felt the full weight of responsibility settling on his shoulders. She was leaving more than their going or staying up to him, and they both knew it. He would also be the one to decide if tonight was the night they finally made love.
He could make her respond, make her forget her reservations about their relationship with just a kiss. It would be a simple matter to seduce her...if he dared. Whatever he decided, he would have to live with the decision forever after.
12
She could live with this, Dani told herself staunchly as Duke drove through the blinding combination of rain and sleet in search of a decent-looking motel. They were adults. Nothing was going to happen beyond getting a good night’s sleep unless they both wanted it to.
Unless, of course, her hormones overruled her head, she thought grimly. Maybe she should play it safe and put up more of a fight to go straight back to Los Pinos. She glanced at Duke’s tense expression. When he gazed over at her and gave her a quick smile, she felt her pulse zing dangerously. Suddenly, a tactical retreat seemed like a very good idea.
“Are you certain we can’t get back tonight?” she asked, peering out the window at the leaden sky. “It looks as if it might clear up,” she added with unjustified optimism based on a pinprick-sized patch of blue in the distance.
“Do you believe in the tooth fairy, too?” Duke inquired, not taking his eyes from the hazardous road.
“You don’t have to be sarcastic,” she said, but she could see his point. The road already had an inch or more of swirling water on it, more than enough to send a car off in a skid and dangerously close to enough to have it stall out. Despite that tiny bit of blue, most of the sky was filled with stormy, rain-filled clouds.
“Why don’t you help me out by looking for a half-decent place to stay,” Duke suggested. “I passed one motel a block back, but it looked like a dump.”
Dani had seen it, too. To describe it as seedy-looking would have been a compliment. Duke would have had to drag her kicking and screaming into a place that crummy. “You drive. I’ll look,” she said resignedly.
It took another fifteen minutes before she spotted a motel with a Rooms Available sign lit and a small, cozy-looking restaurant attached. It wasn’t exactly a luxury resort, but it would do. Perhaps even more important from her perspective, there wasn’t the slightest suggestion of a romantic retreat about it, at least if taste was any factor at all. It was very much bright lights and gaudy ambience.
“How about that one?” she asked. “It looks clean.”
Duke followed the direction of her gaze. His expression turned skeptical. “You don’t mind the flashing neon and the water-bed option?”
“The water bed is just that, an option,” she said firmly, even though her stomach turned flip-flops at the thought of climbing into one with Duke. “As for the neon, who cares what’s flashing outside. We’ll be asleep.”
“Your choice,” he said and swung the car into the parking lot. “I’ll see what’s available.”
“Duke?”
“Yes?”
“Skip the water bed. I want an ordinary mattress.”
“All to yourself?” he inquired, his tone light.
She thought about it for no longer than a heartbeat, but apparently that was long enough for him to interpret the message of uncertainty.
“I’ll get two rooms,” Duke said, taking the decision out of her hands.
If he was upset, he didn’t show it. Still, Dani stared after him, already regretting her cowardice. Would it be so awful to steal just one night with this man?
The answer to that was a straightforward, unequivocal yes. One night would never be enough. Despite her very best efforts, he had gotten to her. She had ignored danger signs, alarms and warning bells. She had allowed herself to fall for him—and for his kids—but it wasn’t going to work.
Not for lack of interest, of course. Duke wanted her. She wasn’t mistaken about that. He also considered her good mother material. She had recognized that as well. But he didn’t love her. There was a part of himself he always held back, even when he was flirting the most outrageously. In the end, that inability to love her wholeheartedly was all that really mattered. She wouldn’t settle for less than the surrender of his heart.
Of course, she, too, was holding back, she reminded herself. It made them quite a pair.
She peered disconsolately out the window just in time to see Duke dashing back to the car. His clothes were soaked. Water dripped from his hair and ran down his face. He looked as if he’d just climbed from a shower with his clothes on. The image sent heat shimmering through her.
Duke, however, was shivering. “Bad news, darlin’. There’s only one room left. We’re going to have to share.”
Dani’s heart began to hammer. She couldn’t demand that they search for someplace else. They’d passed almost every motel within miles of the horse show. They were either shabby or fully occupied. Duke was too soaked to be driving around anymore, anyway. Fate, it seemed, had stepped in.
“It has two beds, though,” he said as he pulled up in front of the room at the very end of the row facing the street.
Dani blinked and stared, taken aback by the belated announcement. “What did you say?”
“Not to worry. It has two beds.”
Relief washed over her, followed almost instantly by disappointment. The latter, combined with a healthy dose of frustration, made her cranky.
Reluctantly, she followed Duke, coming to an abrupt halt just inside the doorway. There were two beds, all right, both of them seductively huge. The motel might have an uninspired, gaudy exterior, but the rooms themselves were generously sized and decorated with expensive, but still garish taste. There was a lot of red, she noted, with a startling dash of purple thrown in. Through the open doorway she could see that the bathroom was tiled in a vivid pink.
Duke caught her expression and grinned. “If you think this is bright, you should meet Mrs. Perez at the registration desk. She’s wearing an outfit that would blind anyone without sunglasses. She says everyone needs color in their lives. It cheers them up.”
He crossed the room to stand in front of her. “Are you feeling cheered up?”
“Not exactly,” she said, though she was rapidly getting there. She made one last desperate pitch for sanity. “Are you absolutely sure we couldn’t make it back home?”
Duke didn’t appear to mind the question. He seemed to sense her need for reassurance.
“Absolutely,” he said emphatically. “It’s pouring rain, mixed with hail. Another hour of these plummeting temperatures and the roads will be sheets of ice. I don’t want to take a chance skidding on the highway while I’m trailering three horses back home. We’ll pick them up in the morning and get an early start. Maybe the weather will break by then.”
“And maybe it won’t,” she observed. “Then what? You going to settle down in Fort Worth?”
“You ever known it to rain for months on end in Texas?”
“No, but I’ve never known a man to be scared by a little shower before, either.”
“Darlin’, we made the right decision. Mrs. Perez says a tornado touched down not twenty miles north of here. You can’t see across the road. This isn’t a little, inconvenient shower we can wait out. It’s a full-blown winter storm and way too unpredictable to be on the road.”
“Whatever you say.”
The truth was she was having a full-scale attack of jitters. Ever since she’d gotten a look at those beds and all that provocative red, she’d felt caught up in an irresistible web of sensuality. In the pit of her stomach, she had that hovering-on-the-edge sensation that the room itself was just daring her to behave wickedly.
Given her own sadly deficient resistance, she
told herself she didn’t want to spend the night within fifty miles of this man, not with the spark of pure lust she’d been spying in his eyes these past months. Heck, in these past few minutes.
Worse, she suspected it was reflected in her own eyes. The man made her hotter than West Texas pavement in the midday August sun, she conceded as Duke went into the bathroom and turned the shower on.
He stuck his head out the door. “Sure you don’t want to join me?” he inquired, regarding her hopefully.
“Very sure,” she lied.
“I won’t take long,” he promised. “Then I’ll put on some dry clothes and we can have dinner. The restaurant stays open until eight. Mrs. Perez says it has the best Tex-Mex in this part of town. Her husband’s the cook.”
“Could be she’s prejudiced.”
He winked. “I wandered in and got a whiff of what’s on the menu. Could be she’s right. The aroma was downright decadent. It made my mouth water.”
There was nothing Dani liked better than fiery Tex-Mex. Maybe that heat would take her mind off the steam being generated in this motel room. “That’ll give me something to look forward to, then,” she said.
He grinned. “I thought spending the night all alone with me would be temptation enough,” he taunted, then closed the door in her face before she could respond.
Why did he have to be right? she wondered with a wistful sigh. She didn’t want to be attracted to Duke Jenkins. She sure as heck hadn’t wanted to kiss him, the first time or the last or any of the times in between.
Okay, let’s be honest here, she corrected. She had wanted to experiment with one little kiss, but she hadn’t wanted to like it. She’d wanted to hate it. She’d wanted to be so turned off that she would never, ever be tempted to throw herself into his arms the way she was right this minute. In that state of mind how could she ignore the pull of those mammoth beds? One kiss now and it would be all over, except for the morning-after regrets.
She’d lost count of the exact number of times he’d managed to steal a kiss since they’d met. She just knew it was enough to make sure she craved them. She’d moved them straight to the top of her list of things to avoid at all costs, way, way above hot fudge sundaes.
Which just proved how totally and thoroughly perverse she was. She knew the pitfalls of a relationship with a man like Duke. Ironically, she had conceded now that he was nothing like Rob. He probably wouldn’t dump her on a whim without the slightest consideration of his boys. In fact, he was very much a single father whose first obligation was always going to be to his sons. And at the moment, what he wanted most to give them was a mom. In fact, she suspected that at least fifty percent of his actions lately had been calculated to claiming her not for himself, but for them. Making her the substitute mom for his kids would create a strong bond, but not strong enough to withstand the lure of another woman he might someday decide he wanted all for himself.
Nobody knew the danger of playing with that particular fire better than she did. That didn’t seem to stop her from shivering like a wisp of grass in the wind every single time he touched her. Thinking about him only a few feet away, naked, was enough to send shock waves through her.
He was going to touch her tonight, too. Any minute, in fact. She just knew it, knew it with the certainty of a woman who was head over heels in love and searching for signs and portents in every single glance and innocent caress.
He was going to brush one of those oh-so-casual kisses across her forehead. She was going to subconsciously moisten her lips and then, wham, his mouth was going to slant across hers, and there would be no stopping what happened next. Pent-up sexual frustration had a way of exploding sooner or later. This was definitely later, which meant the explosion was likely to be of atomic proportions.
* * *
Duke started his shower with the water as hot as he could stand it, hoping to chase away the chill that had cut all the way through to his bones. It didn’t heat him nearly as fast as thinking about Dani being right outside the door, maybe resting on one of those impossibly huge beds.
He chuckled at the memory of her expression when she’d seen them. She’d looked flabbergasted, panicky and then, in surprisingly short order, wistful. He took the last as a very good sign.
Not that she wasn’t sending out more mixed signals than an inexperienced Ham radio operator. He knew in his gut that it wasn’t a question of her being indecisive. He figured she’d already made up her mind that she wanted to make love. She just hadn’t figured out how to deal with the aftermath, the inevitable, unspoken questions that always tumbled through a woman’s mind when she wasn’t sure where a relationship was headed.
Duke figured he had enough answers for both of them. This wasn’t going to be a one-night stand, if that’s what she feared. It was simply going to seal their fate, tie up the deal like a signature on a contract. He would go home from Fort Worth with two palominos, one skittish pinto and a fiancée.
“Now, that’s romantic,” he muttered under his breath. “Tell her that and you can kiss marriage goodbye.”
Fortunately, he’d had the foresight to plan the rest of their evening with more care. He’d done more than peek into that restaurant. He’d spoken to Mr. Perez and planned an evening that would bring tears to her eyes and, with any luck at all, melt her heart.
By the time they got to the restaurant, there would be a bouquet of fresh flowers to replace the artificial ones on the table. Instead of a dripping red candle in an old wine jug, there would be half a dozen thick white candles casting a glow from fancy silver holders. Mr. Perez said the family had brought many pieces of fine silver from Mexico, and they would be happy to share them on such a night. And, yes, he had the perfect bottle of champagne. Like his wife, Mr. Perez had the soul of a romantic. He’d understood immediately what Duke was after.
“Very big night, sí?”
“Very big,” Duke had agreed. The most important of his life.
Just thinking about the dinner and his plans for after raised his body temperature to a shade under unbearable. Suddenly, he had to shut off the hot water and replace it with cold. Which meant he left the shower right back where he’d started, chilled to the bone and shivering.
He wrapped a towel around his waist and stepped back into the room to grab his clothes. At the sight of Dani sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, her eyes glued to the TV, he halted in his tracks.
“What the hell are you watching?” he demanded as he glimpsed bodies writhing on the screen.
“Cable,” she said, her voice breathless and vaguely stunned.
Choking back a chuckle, he inquired lightly, “X-rated cable, by any chance?”
She nodded, but never looked away from the screen. Duke didn’t dare follow her gaze for more than a flash. Too many images like the one on-screen, and they would never get out of the room for dinner.
Dani tilted her head to follow the unlikely angle of the action. “Can you imagine?” she murmured.
“Dani?”
“Hmm?”
“Turn it off.”
Her head snapped up, eyes wide. “What?”
“Turn it off,” Duke said in a choked voice.
“But why?”
She studied him intently. Duke recognized the precise instant when she noticed his arousal. Suddenly, she grinned impishly.
“It’s very educational,” she told him.
“Any education you need along those lines, I’ll be glad to give you firsthand.”
Color bloomed in her cheeks. That wistful expression flared in her eyes. She fumbled with the remote and turned the TV off. There hadn’t been all that much talking going on in the movie, but the absence of even that much background noise left the motel room way too silent. Duke could practically hear the wheels in her brain turning as she tried to reach a conclusion about his intentions—and her own.
Now
what? He heard the question as clearly as if she’d spoken it aloud. He wished the answer were half as clear. He could tumble her onto that bed right this second. The invitation was plain in her eyes.
But he’d had a plan, he reminded himself. A good plan. One that would win her heart, as well as her body. It didn’t start with a quick roll in the hay, even if that would put an end once and for all to this awkward indecision that hung over them. She deserved a little wining and dining.
“I’ll be dressed in a minute,” he said, his gaze still locked with hers.
Before he could change his mind, he went back into the bathroom and slammed the door. Desire made his pulse race and left his fingers unsteady. It took him twice as long as it should have to drag on his clothes, run a comb through his hair and a toothbrush over his teeth.
He even pulled a bottle of that after-shave from his bag, the kind Josh and Zack thought all girls liked, and splashed on a little. He supposed there was something to be said for the spicy scent the boys had chosen for him one Christmas, but as far as he could tell, there was nothing wrong with plain old soap and water.
He gazed at himself in the mirror and shook his head. What was wrong with him? He was acting like a besotted schoolboy. If he wasn’t careful someone would get the idea that he was in love. Of course, he knew better. With any luck, Dani wouldn’t see through the charade and guess that he thought love was a fool’s game.
Before he could have another bout with second thoughts about shortchanging her, he opened the door. “Ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she said, “since I only have the clothes on my back.”
“Just be thankful you didn’t get drenched the way I did,” he said. “Do you want to drive back up to the restaurant or make a dash for it? It’s undercover most of the way.”
“Dashing will be fine.”
The Heart of Hill Country Page 34