BELLA WAS CONVINCED there was nothing more compelling than the feel of wearing the jacket belonging to a man whose very existence represented true masculinity. It permeated her with his warmth, his scent and his aura in every way. She was filled with an urge to get more, to know more and to feel more of Jason Westmoreland. And as she stared at him through the car’s window as he pulled out his cell phone to make arrangements for their lunch, she couldn’t help but feel the hot rush of blood in her veins while heat churned deep down inside of her.
And there lay the crux of her problem. As beguiling as the feelings taking over her senses, making ingrained curiosity get the best of her, she knew better than to step beyond the range of her experience. That range didn’t extend beyond what the nuns at the private Catholic schools she’d attended most of her life had warned her about. It was a range good girls just didn’t go beyond.
Jason was the type of man women dreamed about. He was what fantasies were made of. She watched him ease his phone back into the pocket of his jeans, walk around the front of his truck to get in. He was the type of man a woman would love to snuggle up with on a cold Colorado winter night…especially the kind her parents and uncle had said she would have to endure. Just the thought of being with him in front of a roaring fire that blazed in a fireplace would be an unadulterated fantasy come true for any woman…. And her greatest fear.
“You’re comfortable?” he asked, placing a wide-brimmed Stetson on his head.
She glanced over at him and she held his gaze for a moment and then nodded. “Yes, I’m fine. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
He backed up the truck and then they headed out of the parking lot in silence, but she was fully aware of his hands that gripped the steering wheel. They were large and strong hands and she could imagine those same hands gripping her. That thought made heat seep into every cell and pore of her body, percolating her bones and making her surrender to something she’d never had before.
Her virginal state had never bothered her before and it didn’t really bother her now except the unknown was making the naughtiness in her come out. It was making her anticipate things she was better off not getting.
“You’ve gotten quiet on me, Bella,” Jason said.
She glanced over at him and again met his gaze thinking, yes she had. But she figured he didn’t want to hear her thoughts out loud and certain things she needed to keep to herself.
“Sorry,” she said. “I was thinking about Friday,” she decided to say.
“Friday?”
“Yes. Pamela invited me to dinner.”
“She did?”
Bella heard the surprise in his voice. “Yes. She said it would be the perfect opportunity to meet everyone. It seems all of my neighbors are Westmorelands. You’re just the one living the closest to me.”
“And what makes you so preoccupied about Friday?”
“Meeting so many of your family members.”
He chuckled. “You’ll survive.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Then she said, “Tell me about them.” He had already told her some but she wanted to hear more. And the ladies who came to visit had also shared some of their family history with her. But she wanted to hear his version just to hear the husky sound of his voice, to feel how it would stir across her skin and tantalize several parts of her body.
“You already met the ones who think they run things, namely the women.”
She laughed. “They don’t?”
“We let them think that way because we’re slowly getting outnumbered. Although Gemma is in Australia she still has a lot to say and whenever we take a vote about anything, of course she sides with the women.”
She grinned. “You all actually take votes on stuff?”
“Yes, we believe in democracy. The last time we voted we had to decide where Christmas dinner would be held. Usually we hold everything at Dillon’s because he has the main family house, but his kitchen was being renovated so we voted to go to Ramsey’s.”
“All of you have homes?”
“Yes. When we each turned twenty-five we inherited one hundred acres. It was fun naming my own spread.”
“Yours is Jason’s Place, right?”