Second Chance Bride (Montana Born Brides) (3 page)

Good. She just needed to stay in control. Who was the client here after all? She made a move to twist out of his arms, to sit down on the big wide bed. “I’ll just get my boots off—
“ But he stopped her descent, her shoulders held fast in his big hands, fingers squeezing into her flesh, and she knew that if her knees buckled under her right now, she would not fall.

And given the way the muscles in his arms and chest had contracted as he’d supported her, it was a wonder her knees hadn’t buckled.

Forget muscles!

Think boring.

Five times eight is forty.

Six times eight
—

“How about we leave the boots on, cowgirl, at least for now
.” His voice was husky low and so sexy that there was only one way for her pulse to go and that was into overdrive. And that was before he dipped his mouth to her throat, drawing her closer as his lips set fire to her skin, sending her senses damn near into meltdown.

She heard a sigh, and realized it had come from her, as he collected her close against his chest, his hands molding her to him, from shoulder to waist to butt, his mouth doing wicked things to her skin, the drumbeat of her blood blocking out rational thought, so that she wondered the point of an eight times table
, anyhow?

It made no sense at all.

Nothing made sense beyond the desperate need to lace her arms around his neck and drink in the feel of him, hot and hard against her.

God, but he smelt good, of clean skin and lemon soap and all overlaid with the scent of masculine desire.

She shuddered against him. He was like Christmas and New Year all rolled into one; the surprise package under the Christmas tree and the fireworks on New Year’s Eve. He was the birthday present she’d always wished for and never gotten, and the blessing she would have given eternal thanks for at Thanksgiving.

He was the lover she’d imagined meeting when she’d knocked on that ordinary door on an ordinary house in a middle
-class suburb in Perth.

And didn’t that sluice a bucket of cold water over her right there? How cruel life was that it would send her a man who could make her feel like this now. Here. In this place.

A place where she had no wish to feel anything, least of all this heavy, pooling heat between her thighs.

Vaguely was she aware of the towel at his hips tugging loose between them and falling away at the same time as his hand curled over her breast, his thumb tracing the line where skin disappeared under fabric.

His mouth moved lower and he kissed her there, his tongue flicking fire across the skin of her breast and she gasped, knowing she’d lost any semblance of control—times tables long forgotten, her senses in disarray.

A day or two more
—a few more clients—and she’d be used to this.

And part of her rebelled.

She didn’t ever want to get used to this.

She didn’t ever want to be numb to something that felt so good.

Didn’t want something that felt so good as to be ultimately meaningless.

She felt his hands at her back, felt a tug and a loosening and his hands easing the corset down and her nerves turned to panic with the knowledge that she couldn’t do this
—could no more turn off from what was happening than pretend that up was down or that night was day.

Couldn’t bring herself to do this, whatever the reason, and
knew that her mother would never in a million years expect her to.

“Actually, you know, maybe not,” she said, wriggling away on an bubble of panic that came out half way to laughter, while her fingers held on tight to the front of her loosening corset.

He growled approvingly against her ear, his warm breath threatening to break her resolve as his hands skimmed her body and honed in on her panties instead. “You want to keep it on with the boots? Kinky.”

“No!
Yes!
” She shook her head and tried to wriggle away. “But no, that wasn’t
actually
what I meant.”

“So what—
” he said, not letting her go and nuzzling the skin below her ear so that she almost purred with it, “—did you mean?”

She pulled herself away from his hot
-as-sin mouth. “I meant, you seem like a nice guy ’n’ all… ” She searched for the words. “But I’d rather not have sex right now, if it’s all the same to you.”

Finally she had his full attention. The hands at her hips stilled as he pulled his head back to look at her. “You’d rather
—
what did you say
?”

The hungry growl in his voice was gone, she noticed, replaced by a tone a lot less friendly. And it was a shame to make him mad when he seemed like a nice guy, but she guessed he had a right to be just a little cranky. She shrugged and smiled apologetically.
“I don’t know about you, but it’s just not working for me.”

His hands fell away from her, his blue eyes disbelieving, his lip tugged up into a what-the-hell without the words. “You’re kidding me, right?”

She shrugged. “I’m real sorry, truly I am, but under the circumstances, I can’t see the point of going on with this. So—uh—if you don’t mind, you might put your clothes back on and—” her fingers did a little walk in the air between them—“go?”

His face screwed up. “Is this some kind of game
? Because I didn’t pay for the innocent virgin package or the comedy bedroom capers. Straight-up sex, that’s all I’m here for. That’s what I chose you for.”

She swallowed and held her ground, which he wasn’t making any easier for her. He looked gorgeous even when he was angry. Angry, naked and utterly gorgeous. There should be a law against it.

“Well, there’s the problem in a nutshell right there,” she said, clutching her loose corset to her breasts like a shield. “Because I didn’t choose you.”

“What?”

“Nobody asked me what I wanted.”

“What?”

“I’m real sorry.”

“You already said that,” he growled, as he plucked up his underwear and his jeans and thrust his legs through the holes like he was punching fence post holes in the ground. “Okay. I’m going.”

She swallowed. She felt bad, she really did, just not bad enough to change her mind again. “I’m sure Bella will give you a refund. Or maybe Jasmine—“

“Forget it.” No way was
Mitch staying in this nuthouse a moment longer. He swiped on his shirt, stuffed his feet into socks and shoes. “What is your problem anyway?”

She blinked up at him and for a moment he feared those big green eyes were going to spill with tears, reminding him of another time and another’s tears. Being spun back to that time was just what he needed to get the hell out of here before things got a whole lot uglier. “Forget I asked,” he growled, as he pulled open the door. “I don’t want to know.”

“I’m hoping to find work.”

Mitch was nursing what was left of his second beer at a table in the front bar of the York Hotel when he heard it: the unmistakable twang of an American accent. A strikingly familiar American accent. His head snapped up and sure enough, she might be baring less skin than the last time he’d seen her, and have tied her hair back into a long rope of a braid for sure, but it was her. With hair that color, it couldn’t possibly be anyone else.

And for the space of a second, until the shock of seeing her again dissipated and her words actually registered in his brain, he was half thinking she must have followed him here. Except he’d left Bella’s more than an hour ago and there was no reason after what had happened
—or more to the point, what hadn’t happened—that she’d want to follow him anywhere. He was in no rush to renew their acquaintance. He pushed back in his chair, shrinking back into the shadows, wishing he had a hat to pull down over his face like they always did in the western movies he used to watch as a kid.

She let the big
backpack drop from her shoulder onto the floor where it landed with a heavy thud. A backpacker then, he thought, as his eyes took in the view of her from the back in a little white shirt and faded jeans. That made sense. The west was full of backpackers, come to make their fortune, or at least enough money before moving on, while it seemed the rest of the Western Australian population was busy working at the mines.

“Are you hiring at the moment?” he heard her ask the young bar
man, who, given his accent and his blonde northern European looks, was no doubt a backpacker himself.

The young bar
man shrugged. “You’ll have to ask the boss,” he said, gesturing towards the fifty-something woman returning from the lounge bar behind. “Maude does all the hiring.”

“What’s that, lovey?” the woman said, hearing her name.

“This girl wants to know if there are any jobs.”

“I’m new in town,” Mitch heard her say, “And someone at the
bakery told me she’d heard you had a vacancy.”

The woman frowned and tossed
a dish towel over her ample shoulder before placing her hands wide apart on the bar and all but resting her bust on the counter. “Yeah we did. But I’m sorry lovey, not any more. We just hired a new girl yesterday.”

“Oh.”
He saw her shoulders drop even though she managed a tight smile. “Okay,” she said, wearily, “thanks anyway.”

She was lugging her pack from the floor and already turning to leave when he heard Maude say, “Have you tried Bella’s? They’re always looking for new girls.”

He saw her eyelids droop, witnessed the intake of breath, before the girl turned back with a weak smile and said, “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

And then she was gone.

Mitch sat there for a while after she’d left, contemplating the foamy residue sliding slowly down the sides of his glass. So the cowgirl had lost her job. Or given it up. Either way, he shouldn’t feel bad, it was clear she wasn’t cut out for it. It wasn’t like he’d done anything wrong.

Damn it, he hadn’t done anything at all.

Other than leave Bella’s a few hundred bucks poorer and a whole heap less satisfied.

So much for no complications.

The wooden bench outside the York Hotel had been soaking up the summer sun and was way too hot to sit on for long, but Scarlett had only realized that once she’d sat down and felt the sun’s bite through her jeans. But right now a too-hot slab of wood beneath her butt and the sting of the sun on her shoulders were the least of her worries. Because she had walked the length and breadth of the main street looking for work and all she had to show for it were pairs of aching feet and shoulders. And the soul-destroying realization that Scarlett Buck had failed in spectacular style yet again.

It really shouldn’t come as a surprise, she figured, given her life history, and yet this failure stung more than most. Maybe because there was no getting out of this one: no
older-by-five-minutes sister close by to help her out of a sticky situation, no Aunt Margot to run to when her sister had despaired of her and there was no one else to turn to.

So she was stuck here, half a world away and
at least fifteen hundred dollars from home and it was nobody’s stupid fault but her own that she was even here. Nobody else to blame for spending her entire bank balance on a one-way ticket to Australia when everyone had warned her against it and she’d gone ahead and done it regardless. And nobody to blame but herself that she’d taken a second to email Tara, all excited when she’d got the gig at Bella’s to tell her she’d be home in no more than a week or two.

So premature.

So typical.

So stupid!

And now Tara was wanting to know her flight details and when she’d be home and when Scarlett could be the one chasing her mother’s appointments rather than her sister having to fit them all in to her shifts.

Which would all be perfectly fine and reasonable given Tara had shouldered the load and ferried their
mom back and forth for her medical tests and shopped and cleaned for her while Scarlett had been traipsing half way around the world in the—okay, what had turned out to be futile—pursuit of true love. Except she wasn’t going to be coming home any time soon after all.

What was she going to tell her sister now? That she’d been so turned on by her first client in her new job, that she’d freaked like some tensed-out virgin and been told to pack her things and go? What would her police officer
twin sister make of that?

She could hear her entirely calm and sympathetic response right now.

“You took a job in a brothel?”

“It’s not that bad, it’s legal here, just like in Reno.”

“It’s still a brothel!”

“But it’s okay, because I left before anything actually happened—
”

“But you took a job
—
in a brothel
!!!”

By that stage, her strait-laced police officer sister would be practically foaming at the mouth, and things would most likely go downhill from there.

No, it was better Tara didn’t know.

Ever.

Because then there was no chance she might tell their mom. God knew, their Mom had way too much to deal with right now as it was.

Early
Onset Parkinson’s.

When her sister had told her the news, she hadn’t believed it. Only old people got Parkinson’s, didn’t they? And Mom was what? Forty
-five? Surely she was way too young. But no, the doctors were certain that the sometime falls she’d been having, the shakes and unsteadiness that she and Tara had put down to a couple of bourbons at night, had a far more sinister cause.

Who could blame their
mom for getting depressed about it? Who wouldn’t be depressed when there was no cure and when you knew that bit by bit, you would lose control of your movement and functionality and everything in life you took for granted. And now her mom needed her and she needed to be with her mom and instead here she was, stuck in some tiny podunk Australian town with no quick way of getting home. God, she was all kindsof fool. But she would make it up to her mom and her long-suffering sister one day. Come hell or high water, she’d make it up to them.

Tears squeezed unbidden from her eyes and she cursed and pressed the heels of her hands into her
face. Dammit, she would not cry! She might be bone tired and in a tight spot, but she was twenty-six years old for heaven’s sake. She would not damned well sit here and feel sorry for herself! She’d never get home to help her mom that way. No, she’d pick herself up and dust herself off and find a job and somewhere to bunk down for as long as it took to save up enough money for the fare and then she’d go home. End of story.

She swiped the tears from her cheeks and blinked to clear her vision as she stood, swinging the pack over her shoulder in the process.

She didn’t see the man coming.

She didn’t see anyone coming for that matter.

But she sure as hell felt him.

It took a few moments for Mitch’s eyes to adjust to the sunlight when he left the relative darkness of the pub, and by the time he saw her, sitting on the bench at the edge of the veranda, he was already half
way to her. His footsteps slowed. God, what were the odds?

Then again, who needed odds? It was small town coincidence, he decided, and pure dumb luck.

He almost turned around and walked the other way but why should he? She was the one with the problem, after all. Besides, just like she hadn’t noticed him in the bar when she’d turned up half an hour ago, she hadn’t noticed him now, hadn’t so much as turned her head towards him—or anyone else walking by for that matter. Just kept staring blindly out across the wide Kalgoorlie street, seemingly oblivious to the moving streetscape and everything and everyone around her. She looked younger than she had at Bella’s, looked lost and lonely and at the end of her tether, and for a moment he was reminded of another girl, lost and lonely and desperate.

No!

Not your problem
,
he told himself. She’s not Callie. It’s just the guilt talking.
Move along, nothing to see here
.

Someone lurched into him from behind and belted out a curse, before staggering off along the veranda, more than a couple too many
beers under his belt.

She noticed none of it. Just muttered something before dropping her face into her hands.

Perfect. She was so focused on whatever was on her mind, she wouldn’t even notice when Mitch walked right on by. Which he was seconds from doing when the drunk in front of him lurched suddenly to the right at the same moment that the girl sprang up and around, the pack on her back connecting with the guy and sending him sprawling. The drunk stumbled, wrong-footed, across the veranda, before crashing into the pub wall with a loud, ‘Oof!’ and all hell broke loose.

“I’m sorry!” she cried, reaching for his arm to steady him, her eyes big and too late noticing the world around her
, once again. “Are you okay?”

“You bloody bitch!” the drunk
bit out, peeling himself off the wall slowly before wheeling around with a speed that should have been impossible given his intoxicated state.

“A
h hell,” Mitch muttered, knowing dumb luck wasn’t done with him yet.