Tex Appeal (19 page)
Authors: Alison Kent Kimberly Raye
“Oh.”
He didn’t think she could look any paler, but she proved him wrong.
Macy swallowed hard. “You’re happy with what we agreed on?”
“Hell, no.” Because he was very much afraid that she was going to turn and run, he shifted her onto the stool next to his, then rose. “I wanted to postpone this conversation until I had time to show you that things will be different this time.”
“What things?”
“Everything.” He grabbed her shoulders. “Everything has been different with you from the very beginning, and I didn’t know how to handle it. I still don’t. I tried to tell myself that we were just having extraordinary sex and it would fade.”
Panic spiked inside him again when he saw more tears fill her eyes. Cade drew in a deep breath. He had to make her understand. He had to understand it himself. Dropping his hands, he took a step back. “Remember yesterday when I told you how I felt when I first saw this ranch? I knew that I had to have it because it was…just right. I knew that I had to build a life here.”
She nodded, and the fact that the tears hadn’t fallen yet helped to settle some of his nerves. “The same thing happened two months ago during those three days that we spent together. I didn’t fully understand it then. But it scared me to death. So when Leonard bolted, I ran.”
“You said you left because of your job.”
“Yeah. Well, that was the truth, but not the whole truth.” He gripped her shoulders again and looked into her eyes. “This is the whole truth—as much as I know of it anyway. Two months ago when I walked out on you, I couldn’t face the fact that I was falling in love with you. I didn’t fully realize that I had until yesterday when I saw you standing in my kitchen. Even then I was afraid to tell you. But I’m telling you now. I love you. And I don’t want to get over you. I don’t think I could.”
She simply stared at him, and his panic spiked again.
He gave her a little shake. “To hell with ground rules. If you insist on laying some down, I’ll just break them.”
“What do you want?”
He drew in a breath and let it out. “I want you. Here in my home. In my life. And…shit. Now you look more thunder-struck than when you saw the steaks.”
Macy pressed a hand to her heart, which was bouncing up and down like a demented basketball. “I need a moment here.”
“You look like you could use CPR.” He handed her a flute of champagne. “Take a sip. I’m going to shut up before I put you in a coma.”
She took a drink and studied him over the rim of the glass. He looked frustrated and afraid, and suddenly she felt perfectly calm. “I guess it’s my turn to talk. Maybe you should sit down.”
He did, but he met her eyes steadily. “Whatever you have to say, you should know I’m not going to walk away this time.”
“Me neither.”
“I know that I haven’t given you any reason to believe me yet. And if you try walking away—what? What did you say?”
His stunned expression made her smile, and she covered the hand still gripping her shoulder with her own. “I’m not going to walk away either. And I don’t want any ground rules. I just want you. I want to explore what we can have together and build a life together. I love you, Cade Dillon.”
“Thank God,” Cade murmured as he leaned toward her and took her mouth with his.
Before she let herself sink totally into the kiss, she pressed a hand against his chest and drew back. “It’s not going to be easy. We both have careers. Danny says the TV station is talking about giving me a regular spot on the
News at Noon.
And the
Austin Herald
has offered me a weekly column on cooking.”
“Congratulations.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Easy would have been if we could have walked away from this. So we’ll have to make do with complicated.”
“Okay.”
“Now for the important question. Do we eat the Sexy Supper before or after we make love?”
Smiling, Macy framed his face with her hands. “I’ve always thought that cold steak and warm champagne was an extremely sexy supper.”
Cade’s laughter filled the kitchen as he swept her into his arms and headed toward the stairs. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Macy Chandler.”
“Same to you, Ranger Dillon.”
N
UMBERS
never lied. Nevertheless, Sophie Cameron took one more look at the results on the Valentine’s Day promotions that she and Jarrod Tucker had helped create for DITH’s newspapers in Houston, San Antonio and Austin. They’d encouraged the editors of the local “Sex in the Saddle” columns to run contests tied to Valentine’s Day. The incentive had been a bonus for the editor and staff whose paper received the most entries.
Sophie had examined the numbers six ways to Sunday, and Kate Sinclair and her staff at the
Austin Herald
were clearly the winners. Not only had their contest entries beat out the other cities by a margin of three to one, but the
Austin Herald
’s circulation had increased by nearly five percent during the contest; those numbers had not only held steady in the two weeks since Valentine’s Day, but they’d continued to increase. Kate had done a phenomenal job.
Sophie once more glanced down at the report that had arrived on her desk that morning. The odd feeling right beneath her heart had begun the moment she’d first read the results. She picked up her pencil and drew it through her fingers. No that wasn’t strictly true. The odd feeling had started back on New Year’s Eve, the moment that she’d made that stupid bet with Jarrod.
It had been her idea to wager the course of their future relationship on which city received the most contest entries in their Valentine’s Day promotion. She’d given him Houston and she’d taken San Antonio. If he won, they’d sleep together. If she won, they’d keep their relationship strictly professional.
But they’d left Austin to chance. If the
Austin Herald
won, then they’d accept it as fate that they were meant to be together.
Sophie pressed a hand to her heart and rubbed. Hello? What had she been thinking? Then, disgusted with herself, she tossed down the pencil and swiveled her chair so that she could look out the window. Clearly, she’d been looking for an excuse to give in to her hormones—the ones that had gone into overdrive from the moment that she and Jarrod had begun to work together.
She wanted Jarrod more than she’d wanted any other man in a long time. And the proof? The damn bet. Hadn’t she given him great odds?
Turning back to her desk, Sophie glanced at her watch. Four-thirty. She had to call Kate Sinclair and give her the good news. Then she had to tell Jarrod. Her heart did a little bounce.
In the nearly two months since they’d made the bet, Jarrod hadn’t once referred to it. Nor had he initiated any kind of a move on her. They’d worked side by side on several projects and their behavior had been strictly professional—if you didn’t count the fact that her hormones went haywire whenever he was within arm’s reach.
She picked up her pencil and began to tap it on her desk. He had to have known that the report would be in today, but he hadn’t dropped in or called to find out the results. Could he have forgotten the bet?
No. The man she knew hadn’t forgotten. A better explanation was he was just confident he’d won the bet. After all, he was the one who’d insisted that fate had brought them together. And fate or not, maybe it was time that she stopped struggling against something that she wanted so much.
Sophie drew in a deep breath and reached for her phone. First things first. She’d call Kate Sinclair and give her the good news.
I
T WAS
nearly six when Sophie stormed into Jarrod’s office. He was still there, but if he hadn’t been, she would have tracked him down. Her chat with Kate had been very enlightening, and the fact that he was sitting there with a bottle of champagne already on ice had her temper spiking even higher.
Striding to his desk, she slapped her hands flat on the surface and glared at him. “You cheated.”
“Cheated?”
“Don’t play innocent. I just got off the phone with Kate Sinclair.”
“Ah, so the
Austin Herald
won. That’s good news. Would you like some champagne?”
She waved the offer away. “Don’t play dumb. You knew they’d win all along. All Kate did was rave about the advice you’d given her. She thinks you walk on water.”
Jarrod’s brows shot up. “Isn’t that my job—to give advice to the staff at DITH’s various newspapers?”
She pointed a finger at him. “Don’t play innocent with me. You called Kate Sinclair right after we made the bet and suggested that she select a personal chef to provide the prize. Next you came up with the idea of offering three prizes instead of one and spacing them so that the publicity generated by each prize winner would increase entries for that final prize. And she told me that you also made a call to an old buddy of yours at the local TV station and arranged for the chef to demonstrate her recipes on the
News at Noon.
Last but not least, Kate thinks that offering the personal chef her own weekly column in the paper was a stroke of quote, ‘pure genius’, unquote.”
“Her column seems to be increasing circulation. What’s the problem, Sophie?”
She threw up her hands. “No wonder the Austin paper won. You personally saw to it that they would.”
He rose and met her eyes steadily. “Yes, I did. I told you even before we made the bet that I wanted to explore a relationship with you. I don’t just want to sleep with you, Sophie. I want us to discover everything we can have together. What do you want?”
Dammit. She wanted that too. It was all she could do not to climb right over the desk to get to him. But she said nothing.
“When I want something, I go after it. And surely you’ll admit that nothing I did was really cheating.”
She drew in a breath and let it out. “Okay. Maybe not. But what was all that talk about fate bringing us together? We were supposed to leave the Austin paper to chance.”
“There are some things that I prefer not to leave to chance. You’re one of them.”
Dammit. The look in his eyes was melting her bones, and her heart was no longer bouncing. It had just gone into a free fall. She watched him pour champagne into two flutes.
He offered her one. “Drink to our future with me, Sophie?”
She drew in another deep breath, reached for the flute and tapped it against his before she took a sip. Then she walked back to the door and flipped the lock. When she turned to face him, his eyes had darkened and he was once more giving her that look that she could feel right down to her toes. “Why don’t we make that future start right now?”
He swallowed, then moved around the desk to meet her. “You’re on.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-1223-1
TEX APPEAL
Copyright © 2008 by Harlequin Books S.A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:
REAL GOOD MAN
Copyright © 2008 by Kimberly Raye Groff.
UNBROKEN
Copyright © 2008 by Mica Stone.
I CAN STILL FEEL YOU…
Copyright © 2008 by Carolyn Hanlon.
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