10
JESSE AWOKE TO a cold, empty couch and an even colder attack of conscience the next morning. Stretching the crick out of his neck, he wondered how he could have gotten such a good night’s sleep while twisted pretzel-like around Kyra on his office sectional. He’d held her while she fell asleep and it bugged him he wasn’t holding her now.
Somehow, she’d slipped out of his grasp early this morning before he could discuss a few things with her. He’d done a hell of a job staving off those irritating scruples last night while he’d been losing himself in Kyra. But this morning he couldn’t escape the bare facts.
He’d somehow managed not only to sleep with his best friend, but a virgin to boot. Firsts for him on both counts.
The crick in his neck throbbed back to life with a vengeance as he scrubbed a hand through his hair and tried to figure out how to handle this latest development in his shifting relationship with Kyra. He’d slept with more women than he cared to admit to, yet in all those encounters he’d never been with a virgin.
The fact that Kyra had never been with anyone else scared him. The fact that she’d deliberately chosen him for her first time demonstrated a level of trust she had no business bestowing upon him.
What if he’d messed up her first time?
A guy ought to be informed of those preexisting conditions, damn it.
Scooping his jeans off a purple Tampa Devil Rays hassock, Jesse decided to tell Kyra as much. And more. Just as soon as he located her, he would demand to know what it meant that she’d squandered her first time on someone like him.
Unless of course, she hadn’t squandered it in her mind.
What if her choice of an experienced stud had been very deliberate? A possibility which seemed all the more likely given how damn practical the woman had been her whole life.
He was surprised how much the idea stung. She wouldn’t have used him like that, would she?
Jesse jammed his arms through the sleeves of his T-shirt and shoved on his boots, determined to get some answers—and, God help him, a commitment—from his wild and wicked best friend.
* * *
KYRA HAD HALF hoped Jesse would find her and demand she come back to bed this morning. As she hung the grooming tools she’d used to brush out Sam’s Pride on the stable wall, she thought about how amazing her night with Jesse had been.
So amazing, in fact, she wondered if sex could be addictive. She couldn’t even ride her horse around the exercise arena without getting totally turned on by the rhythmic movement between her thighs, for crying out loud.
Obviously, she was a woman in need of a little extra sexual attention. And, in her defense, she had put off sex long enough in life where she felt like she deserved some making up for lost time anyhow.
But as she led Sam’s Pride into his paddock, Kyra heard the determined clomp of Jesse’s boots across the gravel driveway out front. The purposeful stride of a normally laid-back man gave her the sinking feeling he wasn’t daydreaming about making up for lost time today.
As he rounded the corner of the stables, Kyra noticed he still wore his jeans and T-shirt from yesterday. He was a little rumpled, but if anything, the tousled dark hair and wrinkled shirt only added to his sexy, bad-boy appeal.
Of course, Kyra had always known there was a lot more to Jesse Chandler than a charismatic aura and bedroom eyes. It was just tough not to get distracted by them. Especially when she had sex on the brain.
He closed the gate to the paddock behind Kyra with a bit more clang than usual. Turning to face her, he met her gaze head-on. “Leaving in the middle of the night is my M.O., you know.”
Unsure where he was headed with his comment, Kyra merely smiled. “Good morning to you, too.”
“So if you’re trying to send me a reminder that our relationship has definite boundaries, you’re singing to the choir.” He jerked a thumb toward his chest. “I wrote the book on boundaries.”
“Trust me, I wasn’t trying to send any message, I just woke up with a major cramp in my calf.” Sex in Kama Sutra positions was awesome, but falling asleep in those positions was definitely not relaxing. Kyra had been too enraptured after her second off-the-charts orgasm to move, however. “I figured I’d walk it off and check on Sam’s Pride before Clint arrived to work with him this morning.”
A little of the stiffness slid out of Jesse’s shoulders. Had he really been worried about her?
The notion caught her off guard.
“I shouldn’t be offended you fled the scene?” He reached to stroke Sam’s Pride’s nose as the horse moved toward the gate and involved himself in their conversation.
It surely soothed a woman’s ego to have a man be so concerned about her pleasure. Kyra couldn’t help the warmth unfurling in her chest as she carried a fallen bale of hay over to a neatly stacked pile that had been delivered to the ranch the day before. “Definitely not.”
“Good.” Giving the horse a final pat, Jesse turned the full force of his attention on her. “Then we can check that off my list and move right along to why you didn’t tell me ahead of time that you were a virgin.”
The bale of hay slipped from her fingers and fell to the ground with a thud.
“Excuse me?” The small voice that tripped along the morning air seemed to belong to someone else.
Jesse tossed the hay bale near the pile then maneuvered a few of the other rectangular packs into a makeshift seating area. He guided Kyra onto one stack of hay and then dropped down onto a similar heap in front of her.
“I want to know why you didn’t say one word about—” he peered around the yard one more time as if scouting for potential eavesdroppers “—last night being your first experience.”
Kyra sighed. Apparently men could tell about these things. “The first-time thing doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.” The stubborn tilt of his chin suggested he probably wouldn’t let the matter rest anytime in the foreseeable future.
Embarrassment flustered her. Made her snappish. “Is this typical morning-after protocol?”
“I’ve never had a morning-after with a virgin before so I guess I don’t know. Honestly, Kyra, my mind is so freaking blown from last night I couldn’t think straight right now if my life depended on it.”
The warm swell of happiness she felt at his words unsettled her. When had it become important to her that she hold a special place in his memory? “You’ve never been with another first-timer? Ever?”
“Not even one.”
A small sense of satisfaction chased away some of her lingering embarrassment. Besides, she was outside among her horses, sitting right in a big pile of hay with a guy who’d taught her how to drive and still changed her oil. She ought to at least feel safe enough to tell him the truth about last night. Unfortunately, sharing her first time with Jesse had tangled her emotions in ways she’d never anticipated. “I couldn’t tell you because I was afraid you’d change your mind about going through with it if you knew.”
“Of course I would have changed my mind. You can’t just give a gift like that to a guy like me.” He plucked out a single blade of straw from the bundle and tucked it behind one ear.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I trusted you enough to go into business with you. Why wouldn’t I trust you with my body?”
He shook his head as he pulled another strand of hay from the bale and proceeded to tie it around her wrist. “That’s the most twisted bottom line I’ve ever heard.”
“But utterly practical.” Her eyes roved over his sexy male body sprawled back against a hay bale. “And now that I’ve answered your question, do you want to come back to my house and see if I can improve upon last night’s performance?” She fingered the collar of her white V-neck T-shirt, her wrist adorned with the bracelet made of hay. “I’d like to get a good grade from my teacher.”
She watched Jesse’s eyes dart to her fingertips and lower. He licked his lips...almost allowed her to divert him...and then cursed.
“Hell no, Kyra. I’m trying to have a meaningful conversation here. You can’t use sexual distraction to throw me off the course.”
“Don’t tell me—you wrote the book on sexual distraction too?”
“You damn well bet I did.” He reached for her hands, stopped them from fiddling with her neckline. “But I’m not going to lose sight of what I came here to get this morning.”
She waited.
And waited.
Until finally he nudged the words past his lips. “A commitment.”
She couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d announced a desire to take up croquet. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m completely serious.” His steady brown eyes attested to the truth of that statement. Too bad he also looked like he’d just taken a bite of an exotic dish he was already regretting.
“You don’t have to do this, Jesse.” Hurt welled up inside her that he would think he needed to offer something after last night. “Moreover, I don’t want you to.”
His mouth dropped wide-open. “You wanted me enough to sleep with me but not enough for anything else?”
“Of course not. But—”
“Then it’s all settled.” His jaw muscles flexed—a surefire sign of stress. “We are going to date. You and me. Exclusively.”
And he looked about as happy about it as lancing a boil on a horse’s butt. As if following up last night with a dating invitation was a necessary evil to be dispensed with as quickly as possible.
Anger, far more comforting than the hurt, broke free. “The hell we are! Jesse, it was one night. You’ve had a zillion and one nights with other women and you’ve never grilled them about dates afterward.”
“Last night was different and you know it.” He glared at her in the warm February sunlight, his dark eyes illuminated to three different shades of brown by the Florida sun. “Last night was special.”
She felt some of her anger melting away at his words. Part of her wanted to believe him. But damn it, the man was known countywide for sweet-talking his way into just about anything. How could she really trust him on this?
“So special you’re going to force yourself to endure my repeated company?” She wouldn’t allow herself to get sucked in by all that charm. The hell of it was she would have been more than a little tempted by his invitation if it had been sincere. “Come on, Jesse. I’m sorry I didn’t own up to being a virgin.”
He shook his head as if her apology solved nothing. “If last night was special enough to you that you saved yourself for it, then it must have been special enough where you can be my girlfriend for a few weeks.”
That was his idea of commitment?
Kyra couldn’t believe he called a few weeks a commitment. She vowed to open her phonebook first thing this afternoon and find the man a Bad Boys Anonymous.
“Fine,” she agreed, relieved to have sidestepped a bigger obstacle with Jesse but just a little stung that he had already carved out a distinct time frame for their commitment. “But you’re being ridiculous.”
He nodded. Harrumphed. “We’re still doing a real date.”
“Great.” She stood, shuffled her bale of hay back into place, and wished she were back in bed with Jesse instead of agreeing to something he didn’t want. Back in bed where things were less complicated, where she didn’t have to face all the churning emotions over what should have been a simple, sensual encounter.
“You and me. Alone. Very romantic.” He shoved to his feet and tossed the bales of hay back onto the pile with so much force there was dried grass flying out of the stack in every direction.
“You’re terrified, aren’t you?”
His jaw flexed again. “I can’t wait.”
Yeah, right. She struggled not to roll her eyes as he walked back toward the barn where he parked his motorcycle. She struggled even harder not to feel the hurt welling up inside her.
As he reached the barn door he shouted the final instructions in this morning’s list of commitment demands. “I’ll pick you up tonight at seven.”
* * *
“SEVEN O’CLOCK TONIGHT?” Greta parroted back Clint Bowman’s dinner request as the tall, attractive-for-no-good-reason cowboy lounged against her doorjamb. She hadn’t seen him since he’d given her a ride and tried to coerce her into a date.
And although she hadn’t been expecting him this afternoon, she’d known even before she opened the front door who would be on the other side. The man had major chemistry even though he wasn’t classically handsome like Jesse. She could feel Clint Bowman even before she laid eyes on him and she didn’t like it one bit.
How could she be attracted to someone so rough around the edges?
Clint smoothed the brim of his hat with one hand while he held the Stetson in the other. “That’s the time I heard Jesse and Kyra agree on for dinner. I was pulling in with my truck just as Jesse jumped on his bike to leave.”
“And that was at nine o’clock this morning?” she prodded, hating to think Jesse had spent another night with his too-cute business partner and that she’d somehow misunderstood Clint’s story.
Then again, Greta was having more and more trouble even coming up with a mental image of Jesse lately so she had to question how much the news truly bothered her. The only man she ever seemed to see in her mind’s eye these days was the rugged male wrapped in muscles who stood on her doorstep.
Nodding, he stared at her hastily tied bathing suit cover-up as if he had a good idea what she was wearing underneath it.
Nothing.
“I get to the Crooked Branch right around nine every day to work with Kyra’s horse.” His knowing gray eyes fairly crackled with heat by the time he met her gaze again. “But what do you think about dinner? You still in the market to make Jesse sit up and take notice?”
Clint’s hot stare made her knees weak. Her breasts tightened beneath her cotton beach robe. Her body definitely wanted this man.
Fortunately her brain knew better. She’d always avoided men she couldn’t control. And she especially avoided men with whom she couldn’t control herself.
Greta had the feeling Clint Bowman fell neatly into both those categories.
“I’m in.” Maybe all she needed was to see Jesse again and remind herself how perfectly he fit her vision of high-class suburban lifestyle. Besides, Jesse possessed an innate chivalry toward women that assured her he would never turn into the verbally abusive sort her father had been. “But how will we know where to have dinner?”
“Why don’t we meet at the ranch right about seven, too? We can always follow them to whatever restaurant they hit. Shouldn’t be too much of a coincidence in a town this size.” His gaze dropped south again. “Did I catch you sleeping?”
And just like that, Greta was certain Clint knew she was naked underneath the yellow knit cover-up.
Her skin tingled from her ankles to her elbows, but it downright burned in all the best places in between. “Hardly.”
“Sunbathing?”
“No, I—”
“Not that a woman ever needs an excuse to run around the house naked as far as I’m concerned.” He flashed her a sexy, unrepentant grin as he replaced his hat on his head and backed toward his shiny blue pickup truck. “See you at seven?”
She had a good mind to say no. In fact, the sooner she put some distance between her and the cowboy badass who made her blood simmer, the better off she’d be.
But then how would she ever make Jesse notice her or rescue her from boorish guys like Clint Bowman?
“I’ll be there.” She draped herself in a little extra hauteur for good measure—and to help maintain some definite boundaries with Clint. “I just hope you can control yourself because my outfit tonight will make nakedness seem positively tame.”
“I’ll be the epitome of restraint.” He levered open his truck door. “But if lover boy doesn’t take notice by the time our last course rolls around, all bets are off.”
“Meaning you’re only going to be able to restrain yourself for so long?” Surely she was a sick woman that his wolfish look sent a little thrill through her when she was planning to seduce...her gaze gobbled up the curve of Clint’s oh-so-fine ass.
Wait. Jesse. She was planning to seduce Jesse.
“Meaning that if you’re still sitting with me at eight o’clock, I’m considering you fair game for dessert.”
He angled himself inside the truck cab and shifted into Reverse before she could think of a retort.
Damn the man.
But Greta had no intention of allowing Clint Bowman and his sexy-as-sin body tempt her away from her Great American Dream. The trick would be to intercept her quarry before seven o’clock tonight.
She hadn’t managed to survive on her own since she was fourteen without accumulating a fair amount of goal-setting skills.
And right now, she had one goal in mind to complete her mental vision of where she wanted to be in life, one man who would be the perfect counterpart to her suburban lifestyle complete with a rose garden and filled with voices raised only in laughter.
The most charming man she’d ever met.
Jesse Chandler.
* * *
A BLACK CLOUD seemed determined to follow Jesse around ever since he’d uttered the damning word commitment to Kyra.
That same day his jigsaw broke, spinning a piece of nearly completed crown molding into the blade sideways before it conked out completely. He’d ruined a detailed piece that would take hours to reconstruct.
Then his customer’s financing had fallen through for the first custom home he was supposed to have started on Monday, leaving him scrambling all afternoon to shuffle his spring schedule and fill the void.
Now as he sped up the rural county route toward the Crooked Branch on his Harley, it started to rain.
And then pour.
By the time he reached the ranch his khakis molded to his thighs like a wetsuit. Even worse, the rain hadn’t let up a bit so he wouldn’t be able to take them to dinner on the motorcycle.
If they wanted to go out for his first date as part of a couple in his entire lifetime, he’d have to ride shotgun in Kyra’s pickup.
The joys of commitment.
Jesse sensed the black cloud stalking him as he parked his bike in the barn and swiped the worst of the raindrops off the seat. No, wait.
That wasn’t just a dark mood stalking him.
Footsteps sounded behind him. Too close.
A black cloud in stilettos and not much else stood behind him. Greta Ingram appeared every inch the world-renowned cover model as she struck a pose in a tissue-thin scarf she’d knotted at her navel as if it was a dress.
Objectively speaking, Jesse knew she must look gorgeous, but all he could think in his current frame of mind was that she had to be damn near freezing.
He couldn’t afford the complication of her tonight. He barely knew what role he was supposed to be playing in Kyra’s life anyway. And he’d already spent enough time trying to send Greta a message she refused to hear. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
Her trademark full lips turned even more pouty. “Tell me about it. A barn is hardly my idea of mood-setting ambiance. What do you say we go back to my place for a few hours and I’ll show you some more of my yoga moves? I’ve been working on limbering up my neck muscles and you’ll never believe what I can reach with my tongue.”
She hovered closer, almost as if she was going to start teasing him with yoga tricks right here in the equipment storage barn.
“Greta, I can’t see you anymore. Ever.” He hated having to spell it out in such stark terms for her but her following him around had gotten way out of control. At one time her over-the-top antics might have swayed him, but he didn’t feel even remotely interested tonight.
Oddly, he could still only think of one woman naked today. Even after a night in Kyra’s arms Jesse could only think about her. Despite the hellish day he’d been having and the fact that he’d gone and devoted himself to some kind of relationship with her, he had thought about being with her nonstop.
Still, Greta looked at him like he’d lost his marbles. She put her fists on her hips and stood toe-to-toe with him. “Excuse me?”
“I’m seeing Kyra now,” he told her, amazed to discover the words didn’t feel as awkward as he’d feared they might. In fact, the declaration felt damn good. “And I know for a fact she’s not going to appreciate you following me around. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go meet her for dinner.”
Jesse saw the steam start to hiss from her ears, but he couldn’t find it in his heart to care anymore. He was still too caught up in the revelation that it hadn’t really hurt to talk about Kyra as his girlfriend.
What if he could pull through on this commitment thing after all?
He nudged around Greta, making his way toward the door. The rain had slowed, but it hadn’t stopped. Clint’s truck was pulling into the driveway, an odd occurrence for seven o’clock in the evening.
Or so he hoped.
The horse whisperer hadn’t seriously thought he could make time with Kyra behind Jesse’s back, had he? Before Jesse could think through what to do about Kyra’s admirer, Greta hustled around him to plant herself in his tracks all over again.
“What are you doing?” He held his hands up but he didn’t intend to surrender to this woman.
He was a committed man, damn it.
The rain pounded down on them. Jesse didn’t care much since he was already soaked. But Greta’s scarf turned X-rated within seconds. Not that he noticed.
She shouted at him through the rumble of thunder, her eyes lit by a fire within. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m putting up a fight!”
He hadn’t fully processed the comment when she grabbed him by the arms, plastered her wet body to his and fused their mouths in a no-holds-barred kiss.