The Girl with the Golden Spurs (12 page)

Bryce called her name and she gripped Cole’s hand as if it were a lifeline and dug in her heels. When Cole stopped, she tried to drag him toward the exit.

“You know that guy?” Cole demanded.

“I—I used to,” she admitted, panicking.

“He wants to talk to you.”

“I want to be with you. Just you.”

“You sure, darlin’?”

No. She wasn’t sure of anything. Her world had just turned upside down, and she didn’t have a clue as to where she should go from here.

Definitely nowhere with Cole
, said a voice.

Not that she paid the least bit of attention to it.

Manhattan

Lizzy

A
short while later, Lizzy squinted against the bright glare of the overhead lights in the café. Or maybe she did so because Cole was so handsome in his cowboy uniform. As always he wore jeans and boots. The only thing missing was his Stetson.

His white long-sleeved shirt made him look very bronzed. His hair and eyebrows were as black and thick as ever; his cheekbones as high and slashed. He was cruelly, sensually handsome. Just looking at his carved jaw made her tingle.

“What’s the matter?” Cole demanded. “See anybody you know?”

Shading her eyes so as not to stare at him so directly, Lizzy scanned the café for a familiar face and then shook her head. She pulled her shawl higher. After running into Bryce, she felt a little spooked.

“Have you dated anybody…since Mia?” She covered her mouth with her hands. She couldn’t believe she’d blurted that out.

“No.” He paused. “You come here often? With other guys?”

“Never. Which is good. I’d die if somebody I knew saw me like this.”

He laughed. “You’re shy about coming here and you went to
that
party?”

“Sometime maybe I’ll explain.”

The air smelled of old bacon grease and coffee brewing. She sighed with relief as she glanced around again, glad that the café wasn’t one she usually frequented.

Thank goodness there weren’t many diners to see her in her costume. The plump waitress with the long red hair looked too tired to be interested in anything but getting off work and going home. The woman was leaning over the counter and scribbling something on a tablet. Dishes clattered noisily behind the swinging doors to the kitchen.

“I feel so ridiculous drinking coffee in this costume,” Lizzy said, relaxing a little as she lifted the cup to her lips.

Cole’s dark eyes glinted with sexual mischief. “Then we’ll have to get you out of it—first thing, just as soon as you sober up.”

“Why are you here? I mean, in New York?”

His face darkened, and he drew a deep breath. He looked away as if he were suddenly as uncomfortable as she was. “If I had a reason, you damn sure derailed me.” He eyed her again. “What the hell were you doing at a party like that? Dressed like that?”

“Oh, God.” She still felt funny and warm after the drinks and all their kissing. Not that she was about to confess to him that even after a cup of coffee his dark, rugged face was still zooming in and out of focus.

“You’re not going to tell Daddy about this, are you?”

His frown deepened.

“Did Daddy send you to bring me home or something?”

He didn’t deny it.

“Oh, God!” She covered her face with her hands.

“What if he did?” Cole blurted.

“I—I can’t go home…even though I’ve made such a mess of my life here.”

“Your life isn’t over yet,” Cole said gently. “You’ve still got a lot of time to fix it.”

“So, Daddy sent you?”

Cole’s large, tanned hands knotted. His mouth thinned. A muscle ticked in his jawline. “Lizzy, there’s something…”

She drew a quick breath. “No! I don’t want to hear the reasons why he sent you or even talk about him right now. Maybe I can’t make my life work, but I won’t have Daddy running it. Never again. Can you understand that?”

“Sure.” He looked away again as if he had things on his mind that were bothering him too. “If you’d answered your phone when they called—”

“I want to be independent. To do something, anything on my own. They call all the time.”

“So you took your phone off the hook?”

She nodded. “I had the most terrible day of my life. I just couldn’t talk to them.”

He stared out the window. “So here I am,” he said softly, dread in his low tone.

God, his classically chiseled profile was as handsome as the rest of him. Suddenly she wished they’d stayed in that snug little room at the party where nothing had been real. She’d wanted him so much then. Now she was beginning to feel really scared.

“Please, let’s don’t talk about my parents.”

It was his turn to nod silently.

“Cole, you said on our walk to this café that you won’t touch me until I’m sober.” She set her coffee cup down. “Why do I have to be sober before we can have sex? Most guys want to get a girl drunk.”

“I’m not like most guys, I guess.”

“What if I don’t want to do it when I’m sober?”

“Then we won’t.”

“And you wouldn’t care?”

“Is that really what you think of me?” His gaze drifted to her mouth. “Of course, I’d care. Too much.” His dark eyes grew so hungry, they seemed to scorch her. “I think you know exactly what you do to me.”

She gasped. He didn’t even have to touch her to make her blood heat and her pulse pound. “You’re so different now.”

He frowned. “Look, I know what it’s like to have your mind messed up so you can’t think straight. You do things and you feel things and you don’t know why. That’s why I don’t drink much now.”

“You really are so much nicer with amnesia.”

“Other people have told me that, too.”

“And I hate that about you. I really do.”

“I hate the bastard I must have been,” he said, a bitter edge in his voice.

“Shhh.”

She’d distrusted him being nicer because it had weakened her resistance to him when she’d visited home. “You were so dark and brooding before. It was so much easier to dislike you.”

“But we were friends…”

More than friends. Lovers
. She nodded.

“Lizzy, what did I do to make you hate me?”

“Not tonight.” She was still determined on that night of unforgettable sex. Talking about her father or what Cole had done would ruin everything. Tomorrow when she booted him out, she could explain if he still wanted to hear it all again. “Can’t we just go home and hop into bed?”

“Drink that whole cup. Then we’ll hop.”

She sipped as quickly as she could, but it was so hot, she burned her tongue. Thus, she was forced to take her time
while he watched her. Even as she began to sober up and feel more like herself, her desire for him increased. When she finished the cup, he got up and paid the bill.

They went out into the brisk night air. “Are you going to make me walk the whole way back to my apartment?”

“You’re in charge of getting us home, darlin’. After all, you know the way.”

When she stepped off the curb to hail a taxi, two cabs skidded across the street toward her, one eventually claiming the coveted spot in front of her.

Cole leaned down to open the door to the cab and helped her inside. “I see I’m not the only guy who digs your hooker costume. Hey, don’t forget I paid for the whole night.”

Music wrapped Lizzy like liquid, sensual velvet sounds as she swayed back and forth in the pool of moonlight.

He was right…sobering up had changed the mood…

Oh, God…. What was she doing? Stripping for Cole? In
her own apartment?

She tore her shawl off and threw at him. Cole snatched it out of the air with his brown hand and laughed.

Lizzy felt stiff as she tried to dance to the music on the radio while at the same time she unzipped her red dress and eased it over her shoulders. Even as she tried to make her hips undulate, her legs began to freeze, and her hands started shaking. Then she made the mistake of looking at Cole from beneath her lashes.

He was sprawled on her couch watching her, holding her shawl coiled around a brown fist. In his other hand he held the rose that had been in her bud vase.

What was he thinking? Did he have doubts about what they were about to do, too?

Her fingers went numb, and she thought,
I want him so
much. Too much. But…why is he here?

Strangely, being alone with him in the familiar setting of her apartment made her more nervous than she’d been in the dark, impersonal little room at the party. Her desk with its books and laptop and her telephone that was still off the hook reminded her of the job she had just lost. Her mantel crammed with family photos of her father and mother and Mia made her think of her roots back in Texas. Maybe her daddy had sent Cole. Maybe they got along a little better now. But Caesar would want to kill Cole if he ever found out what was happening between them.

“I can’t,” she whispered in the exact moment her red dress surrendered to the force of gravity, falling from her breasts. Losing her nerve, she tried to grab it, but the silk slid down her hips and oozed over her legs, pooling at her ankles in rumples of red that glowed in the moonlight.

Oh, God
….

Mindlessly, she continued to sway in a provocative, sensual dance. Cole leaned forward, his dark face intent, his brilliant dark eyes burning her and making her feel new, reborn, and excitingly sexy.

She wanted great sex tonight, wanted it to erase all her
failures, wanted it to reassure her that Bryce was wrong and
that she was still sexy
.

“I—I can’t do this,” she whispered brokenly as she stopped dancing. “I’m too dull and boring.” On a moan that betrayed how truly miserable she was, she covered her breasts with her hands.

“Sure you can,” he murmured. “You’re doing great. Oh, darlin’, you’re the last thing from dull.”

She blushed as she realized what she must look like to him with her half-naked breasts bulging above the corset, with her thong panties, garter belt and the black stockings.

“This isn’t the real me,” she murmured forlornly.

“No—it’s a fantasy. You look wonderful. Gorgeous. Wild.”

She touched the red ribbons of her corset with trembling fingers. “I’m afraid I’m not very good at this. Not with you looking…at me like that.”

“It’s sexier if you’re not very good at it.”

“I don’t under…”

“Your innocence appeals to me.”

“I’m supposed to be a hooker not an innocent…dull…”

“Hush, darlin’.”

“Maybe we should forget about me stripping for you and just get into bed.”

“So you can hide from me under the covers?” He laughed, and the sound warmed her. “I paid,” he drawled sexily. “I’m your john, remember. Your first. This is my fantasy. You promised you’d strip. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Burning color washed her face, and his eagerness made her shake. “I—I didn’t know how shy and ridiculous I’d feel.”

She whirled, turning her back to him. Then realizing that her buttocks were almost totally exposed to his avid gaze by her revealing, black lace thong panties, she spun back around again. Only now, his eyes glowed even hotter, and her cheeks were on fire, too. “I—I need more time,” she squeaked.

“Maybe the music needs to be louder,” he said gently, turning up the volume. “Maybe you’ll feel better in the dark.” She saw his powerful arm move, and heard the sound of the chain on the lamp beside the couch. Then the living room melted into velvet darkness lit only by shimmers of moonlight.

“How about some different music?” Deftly he switched to a rock station that had a hard, jungle beat.

She stomped her feet several times before she realized doing so made her breasts jiggle. “I still can’t. I just can’t. I’m sorry. I’m no good at this.”

“So—I can’t say you didn’t warn me. Do you want me to go?” He got up slowly. “Because I will.”

He was so different, so thoughtful. He replaced the rose in the vase and stepped toward the door.

“No, dance with me,” she whispered, reaching for his hand across the darkness, even as her heart began to knock in her throat. “Hold me.”

The minute his fingers wound around hers, she felt okay again, better than okay, alive, pulsingly, achingly alive.

“I can’t believe this is really happening,” she said as he folded her into his hard, strong arms. His hands slid into her hair, stroking the silken mass.

“Neither can I.” His thumbs caressed her temple and then her eyebrows. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?” he demanded huskily, lowering his mouth to her nape. “When I came here, I never imagined something like this.”

His lips and warm breath on her sensitive skin made her shudder long after he ended the kiss. She reached up and began a tentative exploration of his handsome face, tracing his mouth with a fingertip, which he sucked inside his lips.

He shifted his weight, and their bodies settled closer. Soon his holding her began to feel more natural. He was tall, much taller than she’d remembered. He was solid, built of muscle that felt like warm, living steel.

No city boy—Cole. He’d worked hard; he was hard. Hard and stubborn. And right now she didn’t mind that at all.

He bent his dark head and his lips found hers, his tongue sliding instantly inside. Like always, he was a flawless kisser. Which was good. This was what she’d wanted and needed, his lips, his body, the physical simplicity of it. Slowly her shyness receded.

As they held on to one another, swaying back and forth to the music, her body remembered his and responded to him. When the song finished, he did not loosen his grip. Indeed, he went on holding her, staring at her, and as the moment lengthened, she felt shudders of emotion spiraling through her.

His hands found the red ribbons of her corset. Expertly he began to unlace her as she watched his face. When her breasts were free, he stopped and lowered his dark head to kiss each nipple until they were berry-hard. At the first slight contact of his wet mouth, fiery heat spilled through her in waves.

The music began again, but she barely heard it. She was floating in a sensual dream, her blood warmed by his lips on her breasts and the intensity of his mood. He kissed each nipple again and again with a reverence that stunned her. Her hands dipped into the black satin thickness of his hair, and she moaned, arching her body against his.

He was hard and fully aroused as he continued to kiss her. Slowly his mouth moved lower, down to her belly. Then she felt his hands clasp her thong panties and pull them down her thighs a little way. He parted her legs, and he knelt before her. She felt his warm breath first. Then his hands cupped her buttocks, pulling her closer. Last of all he kissed her
there
.

Her fingers dug into his scalp on a gasp as he began to lick her. “Take me to bed,” she pleaded. “Now.”