The Sex Solution (6 page)

“Where’s the dye queen running off to in such a hurry?” Uncle Spur stared at the open doorway and watched Sarah hightail it out to her car.

“She’s a natural redhead.”

“And you’re a size three.”

She glared at the old man. “Are you always so pleasant?”

He frowned. “Damn straight I am, and don’t you forget it.” He turned and hobbled up the stairs. “Get moving. I got things to do.”

“Sic ’em, boy,” Madeline whispered as Uncle Spur disappeared up the stairs. The dog just wagged his tail and came at Madeline for another sloppy kiss. “Just my luck,” she grumbled, twisting her head to the side to dodge the massive tongue. “I get stuck with a lover when what I really need is a fighter.”

“I
REALLY HAVE TO
get up early tomorrow morning,” Austin said as he tugged at the collar of his starched western shirt. “Can’t we just skip the reception and call it quits for tonight?”

“And be rude? Nonsense.” Marshalyn Simmons patted Austin’s arm as they stood at the entrance to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall. “Besides, this place is full of nice, respectable women.”

And a few not so nice and respectable women.

Austin zeroed in on Madeline Hale where she stood in the buffet line. Her voice echoed in his head.

Kiss me.

He’d wanted to do just that, and more. But he’d made a promise, to himself as well as Miss Marshalyn. It was high time he settled down, and with a woman
unlike
Madeline Hale. While she’d qualified as a good girl way back when, she’d obviously changed. He didn’t intend to waste any of the precious time he had left—two weeks to be exact—on a one-night stand.

He knew that, yet with her standing right in his line of vision, looking so sweet and delicious in a dress that made him think of a nice, juicy, sugar-coated orange slice candy, he wasn’t so sure. He’d always had a sweet tooth for orange slices. How many times had he scraped his pennies and nickels together to head down to Skeeter’s and buy himself a bag?

Afterward, he would sit on the schoolhouse playground and indulge until he’d finished the last one. He’d gotten sick a time or two, but the few minutes of heaven while he’d savored the sweet treat had been worth a stomachache.

Just like all his wild nights spent drinking and ca-rousing and burning up the sheets had been worth an awkward morning after, or so he’d thought.

Until he’d served as best man for Dallas’s wedding last year. As Austin had watched his wild and reckless sibling recite his wedding vows, he’d started to think that maybe, just maybe, there was something to this commitment business. Particularly since his youngest brother had looked so
happy.

His focus shifted in time to see Dallas help his very pregnant wife into a chair and give her a kiss before heading off to fetch her some punch. He wore his usual I’ve-got-a-good-woman grin, and Austin couldn’t help but want a grin like that of his own.

Dallas’s wife, Laney, would make a hell of a mother. One who would bake cookies and sing lullabies and do all of the things Sissy Jericho had never done for her three boys.

Then again, Sissy had been a mother by default rather than choice. She’d gotten pregnant at sixteen and, because her parents had been religious zealots, they’d forced her into marriage with the baby’s father. Bick Jericho hadn’t been any more ready or willing to be a parent than Sissy, but he’d had no choice. Either get married and do the right thing, or go to jail since he was eighteen and considered an adult. He’d chosen marriage.

But for a man as wild as the bulls he’d ridden on the rodeo circuit, marriage had turned out to be a prison in itself. He’d been unhappy and his wife had been unhappy, and neither had been able to curb their wild streaks. They’d partied too much, drunk too much, and fought too much.

When Austin’s mother passed away from kidney failure—due to her diabetes and complications with the birth of her last child—his father had continued to party and drink and fight with any and everyone in his path. Right up until he’d dropped dead from a heart attack, thanks to liver problems.

Austin was breaking the cycle. He wasn’t his father, even if he had been following the same path for the biggest part of his life. He was making something of himself, professionally and personally. Which was exactly why he intended to stay on this side of the room. With a full fifty feet of dance floor and tables between them, Maddie Hale wouldn’t be much of a temptation.

With that thought in mind, Austin steered Miss Marshalyn straight to the groom’s cake table.

“Why, there’s Debbie Bernard,” Miss Marshalyn told him. “She’s the kindergarten teacher.”

“We’ve already met. She’s nice.” He reached for a piece of groom’s cake. There was just something about dancing with Debbie in full view of God and everybody, especially Maddie Hale, that didn’t sit too well.

“She’s more than nice. She makes an excellent pot roast. Why don’t you ask her to dance?”

“She looks busy.”

“Not really—oh, there’s Christine Jackson. She’s that LVN over at the Cadillac Nursing Home.”

“I know. I’ve met her, too. She’s real nice.”

“She’s more than nice. She’s just itching to settle down. Mabel Jasper is her next-door neighbor and she says that the girl’s got a hope chest filled with china and she subscribes to
Brides
magazine. That’s a dead giveaway. Why don’t you ask
her
to dance?”

“She looks tired.” He indicated her shoes, which she’d slid off before propping her feet on a nearby chair.

“Nonsense—hey, how about Angela Connally?” She motioned toward a petite redhead loading her plate at a nearby buffet. “She sings like an angel and she volunteers down at the shelter twice a week. She has such a good heart.”

“I know. She’s nice, too.”

“And desperate,” Miss Marshalyn informed him. “She’s been a bridesmaid fourteen times in the past five years. No girl wants to spend her life being a bridesmaid and never a bride. Why, I bet she’s itching to find a nice man of her own. Why don’t you ask
her
to dance?”

“She looks hungry.” He indicated the plateful of little smoky sausages she held in her hands. The woman reached for a barbecue spare rib and Austin let loose a low whistle. “
Real
hungry. Speaking of which,” he turned to the groom’s cake table and reached for a shiny silver fork, “I’ve been waiting all week for this.” He hadn’t had the pleasure of sinking his teeth into one of Miss Marshalyn’s desserts since Dallas and Laney’s wedding last year.

The old woman smiled at his eagerness. “It has been a long time, hasn’t it?”

“Too long.” He shoved in a forkful of cake and did his best not to spew it back out as the taste hit him.

“You always did like my fudge decadence, didn’t you?”

He managed a nod and blinked to keep the tears from running out of his eyes.

“Is it as good as you remember?”

“Good doesn’t even begin to describe this,” he finally murmured when he’d managed to swallow.

She beamed. “I was a little worried. It smelled a little different while it was baking. Sort of tart. I thought maybe the grocer had mislabeled some of my spices.”

Or maybe she’d misread some of them. In the past six months, Miss Marshalyn had been losing her eyesight to cataracts. A condition she refused to acknowledge, much less correct.

Austin had done his best to convince her to have the recommended surgery, but she’d been adamant that nothing was wrong. Having lost her husband of fifty-two years during routine gall-bladder surgery, she refused to have anything to do with doctors and hospitals and the proposed surgery, no matter how minor.

He couldn’t blame her and so he did his best to help out whenever she asked.

“Oh, my Lord if it isn’t Spur Tucker.” Miss Marshalyn’s voice drew Austin.

He turned to see the old man, hat in his hands, his few sparse hairs slicked to the side. “Cheryl Louise’s uncle?”

“And the most obnoxious man in Texas. He’s simply awful. Why, the last time he came for a visit, he actually spit a wad of tobacco on the tip of Lorissa Alcott’s shoe.” She squinted her eyes. “Character aside, he does seem to have aged very well. Looks as vigorous as ever.”

If Austin had doubted her waning sight on occasion, he had proof now. Spur Tucker looked many things—anxious, grouchy and unpleasant—but vigorous wasn’t one of them.

“Well, eat up,” she said, turning back to the table. She motioned to the monstrous chocolate cake covered with a mountain of sugar-dusted raspberries. It stood virtually untouched while a line had formed at the bride’s cake table a few feet away, which held the white confection Betty Eugene Norman had supplied. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

“Excuse me, would you like to dance?” The soft female voice caressed his ears, giving him a prime excuse to abandon the rest of his cake.

“Why, I sure would—” The words stalled when he turned to find himself staring into Maddie’s greener-than-green eyes.

“Why, it’s little Maddie Hale,” Miss Marshalyn exclaimed. “How nice!”

“Madeline,” she corrected. “And it’s nice to see you, too, Miss Marshalyn.” She smiled at Austin. “I think they’re playing our song.”

The same slow, sweet waltz that had poured from the speakers at Cherry Blossom Junction filled the small hall, and a surge of heat went through him.

“Go on.” Miss Marshalyn nudged him. “You shouldn’t keep a lady waiting. Particularly the lady who helped you ace your algebra final. Besides, I see your younger brother is in sore need of some guidance right now.”

Before Austin could protest, she made a beeline for Houston, who stood in the far corner talking to a very tall brunette wearing a very skimpy dress.

“Why, that Missy Donovan gets around more than Bud the mailman,” Miss Marshalyn’s voice carried over her shoulder. “She’s the last sort of woman that boy should be wasting his time with….”

“She gives good advice,” Maddie said, once Miss Marshalyn was out of earshot. “If I were you, I’d take it. Come on and dance.”

He eyed her up and down. “You’re not a lady anymore.”

“Really?” Damned if she didn’t look excited at the prospect.

His gaze narrowed. “A lady doesn’t ask a man to kiss her after just one dance.”

“It wasn’t one dance. It was half a dance, and I didn’t ask you to kiss me. I
told
you to kiss me.”

“What is it with you?”

“What do you mean?”

He shook his head, plopped his cake plate on the table and ushered her off to a far corner of the room. He hauled her behind a large potted palm draped in white tulle and turned on her. “You’re a completely different person.”

Her face brightened. “You really think so?”

“You used to be so…nice.”

“Nice girls finish last.”

“At least they finish.” His jaw clenched. “Do you know how dangerous it is to go around kissing strange men?”

“You’re not strange.” Her eyes danced. “Then again, maybe you are. There aren’t too many normal, red-blooded men who would turn down a kiss with a willing woman.”

“Is that so?”

“Which tells me that maybe you’ve shifted your focus from totally hot women to totally hot—”

“I like women,” he cut in. “I like them just fine.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is, I’ve got priorities, and kissing isn’t one of them. I intend to settle down.”

“With who?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

She stared at him as if he’d grown an extra eye in the middle of his forehead. “It must be something in the water.”

“What do you mean?”

“Uncle Spur’s set on settling down, too, and intent on finding himself a wife in the next two days.”

“For a man to think he can find a wife in two days is crazy.”

“Finally the voice of reason.”

“He needs at least two weeks, which is how long I’ve got until Miss Marshalyn’s going-away party.”

She gave him a look of bewilderment and disbelief and then shook her head resignedly. “So how about a dance in the meantime?”

“I don’t think that would be such a good idea.”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “Afraid you won’t be able to control yourself?”

“If memory serves me,
you
wanted to kiss
me
during that dance. Hell, the dancing was probably just a front to move in for the kill.”

“Actually, the dancing was for real. It was part of Who’s the Baddest Babe?—this game we played last night at the bachelorette party. I had to pick a hot man, dance with him and kiss him in order to get fifty points. I lost because of you.”

And the game’s over now, Madeline told herself. She’d lost to Sarah and paid the price by picking up Uncle Spur. She had nothing more to gain by pursuing Austin Jericho.

Except the kiss that should have been hers over twelve years ago when they’d stood near the concession stand. Before she’d chickened out, denied the love note she’d written to him and watched him walk away with Big Boobs Barbara.

“If you lost, then why did you ask me to dance just now?” His eyes gleamed with challenge and something else. Something dark and delicious and forbidden to good girls the world over.

“Because I don’t lose. I never lose. Forty-eight chemistry competitions, and I won every one. Last night was a gross injustice and—”

His mouth caught the rest of her words as he pressed his lips to hers. Suddenly she was living the kiss she’d wanted so desperately last night.

It started out hard and hot and insistent, his mouth plundering hers, taking her breath away.

His deep, musky scent filled her nostrils. His body heat drew her closer. Her nipples tightened and an ache started between her legs. And she couldn’t help herself. She leaned into him, molding herself to his hard frame despite the crowd of people that stood just on the other side of the potted palm. The laughter and music faded until she only heard the pounding of her heart, and there was just the two of them and the kiss.

One that quickly morphed into something softer and more persuasive when she wrapped her arms around his neck and angled her head to give him better access. His arms slid around her waist, drawing her even closer. His tongue swept her bottom lip and dipped inside, stroking and coaxing and drawing a raw moan from deep in her throat.