Dangerous Tease (21 page)

Everything clicked together. “The governor's daughter?” Cy had told her in Vegas he was protecting the governor's daughter from an assassination plot by the Callandriello family.

“Yes. If I'd have known everything that had happened was putting you in danger, I never
would have let Cy come with me.”

“Like you could have stopped me.”

Marlene pushed her dark bangs from her face and stared up at Cy with her hands on her hips. She didn't say anything. She didn't have to. Cy, who stood at least a foot taller and was a hundred pounds heavier, grimaced and turned his attention back to his sister.

“Are you okay? How about the hand?”

“The doctors want me to stay
another night, but after that, they said I'll be tired but recover completely. I'll be like my old self in a few days.” She lifted her bandaged hand off the bed, staring at it as if it were an alien. “As to the hand, I have to wait and see, but I'll be painting again. The only way I'll give it up is if I lose all my fingers on both hands, and then I'll figure out how to paint with my toes.”

“And is that what you plan to do? Go back to Vegas and paint?”

The plan gelled together in her head in an instant. It was perfect. She wanted him. He wanted her. Time to break out her kickass princess attitude and slay a dragon. “Hell no. I know exactly what I'm going to do.” And it wasn’t going to happen in Vegas.

T
he end of the lunch crowd filled The Harvest Bistro to capacity and Josie weaved her way between the tables with a nine-ounce steak and rosemary potato wedges drizzled with olive oil in one hand and pan-seared salmon with mixed greens in the other.

When the doctors told her she’d be right as rain within a month after leaving the hospital, she figured they were full of shit.
But true to their word, she felt fine. Her right hand got tired easy, but Dr. Coll said that would go away in time too. It had been four weeks since she'd last seen Sam Layton in her hospital room.

Four very long weeks.

Not that she'd been sitting around waiting for his call or chasing after him. No. Her plan involved doing the one thing she was sure he never expected. Ignoring him. Eventually,
he'd break, she was sure of it, but she didn't know how much longer she'd be able to hold out. Odds were she'd be knocking on his door in less than forty-eight hours.

In the meantime, she'd sweet-talked Celestine into renting out the studio cabin to her for the foreseeable future and had spent the majority of her time painting. The thought of going back to Vegas after all that had happened make
her sick to her stomach. She liked the pace and friendliness of small town America. Of course, now she needed a job and she figured waiting tables in Dry Creek couldn't be that different than in Vegas. She'd been filling out an application to work at Harvest when the lunch crowd had swarmed the place, so she'd offered to help out until it slowed a bit.

“So has that son of mine shown his face
yet?” Glenda Layton spread her napkin on her lap and glanced approvingly at her salmon.

“I haven't seen him.” Josie put the steak in front of Bob Layton.

“No one has. I swear that boy has burrowed underground.” She eyeballed her husband of forty years. “I thought you were going to have a talk with him.”

“I did.”

She tossed up her hands in frustration. “And?”

“We talked.” He shrugged and concentrated
on his lunch.

Glenda huffed. “Bob, getting information out of you is like pulling the teeth of a pissed-off bull.”

“You always were full of piss and vinegar, Glenda. One of my favorite things about you.” He started cutting his steak. “Well, that and your legs.”

A shadow fell over the table.

Josie looked over her shoulder to see Sam wearing a bright-red sweater and jeans with worn cuffs. Bits
of blue paint had dried in his hair.

God, he smelled delicious, like hot, sexy man. All she wanted to do was slide her hands underneath the cherry wool and touch his hard chest or, maybe, her hands would travel downward to the button on his jeans. She clenched her thighs together at the mental image.

He smirked at her as if he knew exactly what she was thinking and completely approved.

In a
heartbeat, she decided to bolt before she lost her battle with self-control. “Okay then, I'm gonna run and see if the waitresses need any more help.”

She spun on her heel to flee. Warm, strong fingers wrapped around hers. “How are you?”

Nervous. Excited. Horny
. “I'm okay, how about you?”

“I meant, how are you feeling since you left the hospital?”

Except for missing you? Perfect
. “I didn't
believe the doctors when they said I'd be right as rain in a few weeks, but they were right. I couldn't take sitting around the cabin anymore and had to break out.”

“I heard you're staying in Dry Creek.”

“Yeah, despite everything, I like it here.”

“I like it with you here too.” He took a step closer, sexual energy coming off of him in waves. “And you already got a job, a place to live?”

Her
clit throbbed between her legs. They'd never made it through a conversation without her wanting to drag him to the nearest horizontal location; hell, vertical would work too. “This is my audition, I guess you could say, so I better get back to it.”

“I'll be waiting.” He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed the tattoo on the inside of her wrist.

A shiver skipped down her spine and made
everything south of the border tingle. “What if I don't want to talk with you? It
has
been a month.”

“It's true I have a lot to make up for, but I think you'll give me an A-plus.” His thumb caressed the spot where his lips had been.

God, she didn't realize just how much she'd missed his touch. Since the day they met, they hadn't been able to keep their hands to themselves. It was as if their
bodies had known this was something special long before their own stubborn wills were willing to admit it. Her stomach flipped and flopped. This was the beginning and she couldn't wait to get started.

“Give me fifteen minutes.”

Josie dropped off a few more orders, handed over her application to Claire and hunted down Sam in the dining room. She found him sitting at the bar in a side room, drinking
a black cup of coffee.

Grinning like a fool in love, she sat down on the stool next to him. “Hey there, hot stuff.”

He didn't answer, but instead slid a wooden rectangle across the mahogany bar to her. The length of a business envelope, the intricately carved box had an inlaid oak R in the middle of the lid. She caressed the letter and recognition hit her like a splash of water.

Rebecca's Bounty.
The cave. With everything that had happened, she’d completely forgotten about it.

“How'd you get this?”

“Hank's deputies recovered it as evidence. With Snips' death, he closed the case and released everything. I told him I'd bring this to you.”

“But it's not mine. This is your family's legacy.” She glanced out at his parents, laughing about something as they ate their lunches. “Your mom, she'll
want it.”

“No. You found it. Whatever is in here, it's yours.”

“You haven't opened it?”

“It's not mine to open.”

Her hands shook as she fiddled with the latch. She pushed a lever and it clicked. The golden clasp popped open. Inside were several gold coins with the profile of a woman with flowing hair imprinted on them. She picked one up and held it in the palm of her hand. The word “liberty”
and several stars were engraved on it, along with the year eighteen sixty-five.

Sam picked one of the coins up out of the box. “It's a Liberty Head gold coin. Rebecca must have brought them West with her from St. Louis.”

A large bleached canvas pouch lay to one side. Its heft surprised her when she lifted it from its spot. She carefully untied the string at the top and reached inside, only
to touch dozens of cool stones with sharp edges. When she pulled one out, the large bright-green emerald with small diamonds surrounding it shone in the light.

“Her earrings.” She didn't even bother to try to keep the awe out of her voice.

“You should try them on.” Sam pushed a curl behind her ear, exposing her lobe to his perusal. Lust and something that looked a lot like love brought out
the gold in his tawny eyes and his thumb stroked her bare ear and trailed down her neck.

Although they'd seen much more of each other, the intimacy of the moment shook her.

“No way. I don't have the best record as of late. I can't imagine what would happen to these babies if wore them.” She dropped the earring back in the pouch and handed it to Sam.

Only the velvet lining and a rolled-up
piece of paper remained in Rebecca's treasure box. Slowly, she opened the scroll, revealing a charcoal sketch of McPherson's Bluff. With a few strokes Rebecca had managed to showcase the true depth and foreboding hope the bluff represented.

A chill sent goose bumps running up Josie's arms. “If it would be alright, I'd like to keep this.”

“It's all yours. Everyone in the family agrees that the
treasure belongs to you. People have spent decades looking for Rebecca's Bounty and you're the one who found it.”

“But it's got to be worth—”

“A lot, yeah.” He shrugged his broad shoulders.

Her mind raced. The gold and jewelry had to be worth millions. There had to be enough value in Rebecca's Bounty to finance several decades of painting, if not a lifetime. She'd be able to help with her
mother's medical bills.

Finally, she was free to do whatever she wanted. Her whole life was about to change. She'd had to go through hell first, but everything had fallen into place. It wasn't just the treasure though, she'd found something much more valuable and completely unexpected. Sam.

“Look, you found it. It's yours. Take it as a sign that your luck is about to change.” His stool screeched
against the floor when he scooted back and stepped down. “Come on, there's something else I have to show you.”

“You wanted to show me your house?” Josie didn't know what she'd been expecting, but parking in front of Sam's one-story house sure wasn't it.

He laughed, the honeyed sound warming her from the inside out. His fingers held hers
as they walked hand-in-hand to the front door. “Close your eyes.”

The words tickled her ear and when she closed her eyes, all she could picture was her tongue flicking across his peach nipple. In response, her own nubs hardened against the smooth silk of her leopard-print bra.

“We're going to have to revisit this position.” Sam pressed against her back, his rigid cock nestling in the crack
of her ass. “I like making you guess what's going to happen next.”

Sam reached past her and the click of the doorknob reached her sensitive ears. He eased her forward into the living room. Inside, he drew his lips down the side of her neck, ending with a gentle nip at her collarbone. “Take a look and tell me what you think.”

Gone were the eggshell-white walls and bland window blinds. In their
place were bright, pale lapis-blue walls and soft gray curtains. Her bottom lip shook and her heart went into overdrive. “This is the equivalent of some people going out and getting a full body tattoo.”

“Yeah, I think I threw poor Ned at the hardware store into shock when I asked for a gallon of something besides white or cream.”

“I can imagine that. But why did you do it?”

He took her face
between his large palms, burying his fingers in her hair. “Because I've always been horrible at saying what I feel. In my defense, I've never had much to say about my emotions one way or another. With you, there's so much I want to say, but I just can't put it into words.”

“You did just fine at the hospital.”

He shook his head. “The exception that proves the rule.” He paused, his gaze focusing
on the painting of McPherson's Bluff above the couch as if he could find what he wanted to say hidden in the brush strokes. Expelling a deep breath, he turned his attention on her. “I'm not very good at saying how I feel about you, Josie, but I promise I'll always show you.”

“I'll show you too.” There were a million things Josie wanted to talk about, but it was the time for action. She leaned
into him and captured his mouth, her tongue demanding entrance, and all the fear, uncertainty and hunger of the past few weeks rushed to the forefront.

Her hands snaked around him, sneaking underneath his soft red sweater. A T-shirt tucked into his jeans blocked her from skin-to-skin contact and she wanted to shred the cotton to get at him, to touch and taste his warm skin. She yanked the shirt
from his jeans, exposing a slim patch of bare skin along his lower back. Electricity sparked between them, traveling from her fingertips to her clit in a bolt of passion. Weaving her hand between the cotton and his skin, she pushed the material higher, but not enough.

Sam broke the kiss and pushed her back a few inches, pulling his shirt and sweater off. “Take your clothes off.”

The bass vibrations
in his voice turned her belly into molten want. She smirked and trailed her fingers down the deep V of her emerald-green shirt. Enjoying the pained pleasure reflected in his hazel eyes, she inched her fingers over her right tit, lingering on her nipple, before heading south until she grasped the shirt's hem between two fingers.