My Double Life: Wild and Wicked (16 page)
“I was feeling awfully sure of myself that night,” I said finally. “You’d helped me to face the world and see myself in a new way. I guess I figured I’d return the favor.”
“So now that we know you’re strong and confident while I’m hardheaded and stubborn...” His mouth neared mine, his voice lowered for my ears alone. “What do we do next?”
“Um. I’m not sure.” I watched his lips, tracking their movement, wanting to feel them pressed to mine. “Make love. Fall in love. Something like that.”
My heartbeat sped. Raced. Clamored.
“But not necessarily in that order,” he whispered, his breath warm against my cheek. “I’ve already fallen for you, Courtney.”
I blinked through the sensual haze to meet his eyes and found a clarity and sincerity that made me feel light as air and more hopeful for the future than I’d ever been. I started to tremble everywhere.
“Th-that’s—” I slid a hand over my lips, not because I was embarrassed of my stutter but because he had the power to make me such an emotional, happy mess. “That’s excellent news. Because I’m pretty crazy about you too, Trey Fraser.”
He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed the fingers in that debonair way that made my heart flutter. I loved it. Loved him. But I still had a little bit of the showgirl lurking inside me, so I wrapped both arms around his neck and kissed him for all I was worth.
Right in the middle of the office foyer. Not caring who saw.
He looked a little dazed by the time I was done. I felt like the luckiest woman on earth.
“How long do you think your father is going to keep everyone distracted?” I asked, heart beating fast.
“My dad is a larger than life guy. He does everything to the extreme...” He glanced at his wristwatch. “I’d say we have until lunch, at least.”
It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet.
“How tinted are the windows on your vehicle?” I asked, a long-standing fantasy coming to mind.
He raised an eyebrow. I didn’t feel the slightest bit embarrassed. I felt pretty full of myself. Full of love. And very ready to show it.
“I’ve always regretted that I didn’t go out to your SUV with you that first night when you asked me to meet you behind Backstage,” I confided. “In fact, I’ve been daydreaming about what might have happened between us if I had met you there.”
“Never let it be said I don’t fulfill your fantasies.” Trey was already halfway out the door, one strong arm steering me with him.
I tilted my head into his shoulder, contented, excited and wildly in love all at once. My double life might have come to an end, but the most thrilling part was about to begin...
* * * * *
Joanne Rock
Wild and Wicked
1
“K
YRA
!” J
ESSE
C
HANDLER
shouted to his business partner as he strode into the barn housing the offices of Crooked Branch Horse Farms. He juggled purchases from the tack shop until he reached a sawhorse table where he could set them down. “I’ve got all the leather you wanted. Saddles and bridles, riding gloves and a dominatrix outfit—oh, wait. That last one wasn’t a business purchase.”
He sorted through the new supplies in the converted old building Kyra used strictly for storage and office space. The horses Kyra bred and trained lived in much more modern quarters behind this barn.
Removing price tags and testing the leather of the new stock, Jesse waited for his best friend and colleague to appear. He’d never made her blush in over ten years of trying, but hope sprang eternal. No matter that Kyra Stafford was the one woman in Citrus County he’d never hit on, he still loved to make her laugh.
“Perfect,” came a feminine purr from over his left shoulder—far closer than he’d anticipated. “I think you need an assertive woman to keep you in line, Jesse Chandler.”
For about two seconds, he reacted to the sultry promise he must have imagined behind the words.
Awareness fired through him, heated his insides despite the breeze drifting in the wide-open barn doors. The Gulf of Mexico rested a mere thousand acres away to border the northwest corner of the state-of-the-art Florida horse farm and training facility. Surely the gentle wind off the water should have helped him keep cool in February.
But then Kyra stepped around him to stand by his side and look over the new tack, her long blond hair grazing his arm. Smart, sensible Kyra Stafford who had never flirted with him for so much as five seconds.
What the hell was the matter with him?
Shaking off an absurd sense of attraction he’d never felt for his best friend before, Jesse attributed the
Twilight Zone
moment to too many nights alone. He definitely needed to remedy that situation this weekend.
“Funny, I don’t see any dominatrix garb here.” Kyra glanced up at him with her bright blue eyes. Innocent blue eyes, damn it. And smiled. “Be careful what you wish for, Jesse.”
From any other woman, Jesse would have pegged that remark for blatant enticement. But he was obviously going through major sensual deprivation if he was hearing come-ons in Kyra’s speech.
Hell yeah, he’d be more careful.
Clearing his throat, he decided maybe they were just both getting too old for the game of trying to make Kyra blush. “Guess I left the spiked collar at the store.” He started hanging bridles on the wall, determined to make tracks between him and this ill-advised conversation. “That’s okay. I don’t go for the hard-core type anyway.”
“Seems like you’re not going for any type lately,” Kyra observed, tossing her hair over her shoulder as she leaned a blue-jean-clad hip into the sawhorse table. At twenty-four, she looked sort of like
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
meets
Bonanza
—a petite blonde in dusty cowboy boots with enough determination and drive to move mountains, or, more often, stubborn horses. “Is southern Florida’s most notorious bad boy finally mellowing?”
Allowing a saddle created for one of their new ponies to slide back to the plywood with a thunk, Jesse turned to face the woman who knew him best. The woman whose question mirrored his own recent fear.
“You know I couldn’t mellow if I tried.” Not that he would try. He was too content with bachelorhood, even though his last girlfriend was sticking to him like glue despite his best efforts to move on. He needed to show Greta he wasn’t the forever-after—or even a three-date—kind of guy.
“Why? Because there’d be ten women lined up in Victoria’s Secret lingerie and armed with apple pies if they knew you were thinking about settling down?”
She tried on a pair of fawn-colored riding gloves and stared at her hand encased in suede.
Jesse grinned. “As if that would be such a hardship.”
She cocked an eyebrow at him in one of Kyra’s classic don’t-bullshit-me looks.
He shrugged. “I don’t know what’s up. I’ve been putting in a lot of hours making final preparations around the Crooked Branch before I turn my attention to my custom homes business. Maybe I’ve just been working too hard lately.”
He hated leaving Kyra to run the business all by herself, but that had been her stipulation from the moment they’d went in on the operation together. She’d vowed to buy back his substantial share of the farm once she’d made it a success.
And damned if she wasn’t whooping butt on that promise already. As soon as she clinched one more horse sale, she’d own the controlling share of the business.
The farm had been great part-time work for Jesse in the years he’d played minor league baseball for kicks. But now that he was closing in on thirty, he was mentally ready to hang his own shingle for a custom home-building business and let Kyra go her own way with the Crooked Branch. His older brother had told Jesse last spring that he would never be able to still his wandering feet, but Jesse disagreed.
He might not be able to commit to any one woman, but he could commit to a place, damn it. Not only was he putting down roots in Citrus County, he was cementing his ties to the area by starting his own business here.
Still, he worried a little about leaving Kyra to her own devices at the training facility. Running a horse-boarding-and-breeding business wasn’t exactly a cushy way of life and as the date for him to bow out approached, Jesse couldn’t help thinking about all the tough jobs that Kyra would be left with to handle solo.
The physically demanding aspects of handling stubborn horses. The chauvinistic attitudes of some of the owners.
He hated the thought of anyone ever giving her a hard time.
She eyed him with quiet patience, reminding him why she was so damn good at working with antsy horses. “Are you sure you’re working, Jesse, or are you maybe overcompensating for leaving in two weeks? No offense, but this is more tack than we’ll need in two lifetimes.” She studied him in that open, no-holds-barred manner that had made him trust her from the moment they met. “Are you just using the excuse of work to hide out from some overeager female of the week?”
Jesse shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
Caught.
Why in the hell had he thought he might be able to hide anything from this woman? Kyra’s eyes might be innocent, but they were wise.
Jesse shoved the stack of too many gloves to the back of the sawhorse table. “Honestly, I’m having a little trouble with Greta lately. She looks at me and sees picket fences no matter how much I avoid her.” He’d met the German model in Miami Beach last fall and they’d spent a crazy few days locked in her condo overlooking the water.
Between Greta’s flashy lifestyle and jet-set friends, Jesse had assumed she wanted the same things from their time together as he did—simple, basic things like mind-blowing sex and a few hours to forget life wasn’t as perfect as they pretended.
But ever since then, Greta had called him on and off, even going so far as to show up on his doorstep over the holidays to see if he wanted company.
“She thinks you’re marriage material?” Kyra’s skeptical tone suggested a woman could be committed for harboring those kinds of thoughts.
“Go figure. But she’s damned persistent. And you know how I hate to hurt people.” One of the foremost reasons he avoided relationships like the plague was to ensure he never hurt anybody. He’d learned that lesson early in life when his father had torn Jesse’s whole family apart with infidelities until he walked out on his wife and kids for good.
Too bad Jesse’s tact of keeping things light with Greta had bitten him in the ass this time.
“You need a different kind of woman.” Kyra sidled closer.
Or was that his imagination?
“Damn straight I do.” He folded his arms across his chest, unwilling to take any chances with his overactive libido today. The last thing he needed was any freaky twinge of attraction to Kyra again.
“A woman who wants the same things from a relationship you do.” Her voice took on a husky quality, reminding him of what it was like to trade pillow confidences with floral-scented females in the dark.
Not females like Kyra, of course.
He cleared his throat.
“That’s how I’m going to approach things from now on.” Jesse turned back to the mountain of leather goods on the plywood table and mentally started dialing numbers from his address book. A night with Lolita Banker would satisfy every stray sexual urge he’d had today, and then some.
“Then why don’t you let me help?” Kyra’s hand snaked over to his, gently restraining him from shuffling around the new bridles. “I know exactly what you want.”
Damnation. Her touch sizzled through him even as her words called to mind sensual visions. The arch of a woman’s back, the pink flush of feminine skin, the sweet sighs of fulfillment as...
Jesse’s gaze slid from Kyra to the mound of fresh hay that waited not ten yards away.
Holy freaking hell.
He withdrew his hand from her light touch as if burned. Then again, maybe he had been. At the very least, his brain circuits had obviously fried because there was no way in hell she’d meant anything remotely sexual.
Determined to escape that provocative vision forever, Jesse closed his eyes and clutched the new saddle in front of him like a shield. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him because he wouldn’t be seeing Kyra much once he started his new business.
“Great idea.” He forced the words past dry lips, trying like hell to remember the color of Lolita’s hair, the shape of her mouth, anything. “Let’s grab a beer after work and you can help me figure out how to let Greta down easy. You know somebody to hook her up with?”
He backed toward the barn doors, clutching the saddle in a death grip. Perhaps it was a good thing he’d be leaving the Crooked Branch in two weeks after all. “Besides, Lolita Banker’s waitressing at the bar on Indian Rocks Beach. Maybe I just need to meet someone else to help me—”
Forget all about seducing my best friend?
“Get my head on straight again.”
Turning away from those vivid blue eyes and poured-into-denim body, Jesse shouted over his shoulder. “Happy hour starts at six.”
* * *
H
APPY
HOUR
?
Why didn’t they call it something more apt like frustrated-as-hell hour?
Kyra fumed as she watched Jesse’s motorcycle kick up gravel on his way out of the driveway—as if he couldn’t put enough distance between him and her lame attempt at seduction.
She’d had a thing for Jesse from the first time they’d met. His perpetually too-long hair, dark eyes and prominent cheekbones gave him a dangerous look that hinted of long-forgotten Seminole heritage. He wore one gold stud in his ear, which, according to high school legend, he’d had ever since his tenth-grade girlfriend convinced him they should pierce a body part together. Jesse had kept the stud long after the girl.
Kyra had met him right after the ear-piercing. She’d caught him sneaking out one of her father’s horses at night to indulge in wild rides. Eventually, she’d discovered his midnight trips were more about escape than about raising hell. But that knowledge never altered her vision of Jesse Chandler as a danger-loving thrill seeker.
She’d been all of ten years old at the time and far too starry-eyed with Jesse to spill his secret to her manic-depressive dad. She’d started leaving Buster saddled for Jesse so he wouldn’t break his neck riding bareback.
Every morning, Buster would be groomed and locked in his stall, his tack neatly hung on the wall.
Their friendship had cemented that summer, despite the five-year difference between them. Their paths rarely crossed in the school system, but Kyra heard all the rumors about him and collected Jesse folklore the way some girls collected scrapbooks of their favorite rock stars. She’d outgrown that infatuation with him, but the man still had the power to dazzle her. To make her wonder...
Unwilling to put her heart on the line, she’d ignored the stray longings for her best friend over the years, even going so far as to convince herself they could operate a business together.
Crooked Branch Farms was now one of the most prestigious breeding and training facilities in southern Florida, but all of Kyra’s hard work and new success still hadn’t fulfilled the ache within her that had started one sultry summer night fourteen years ago. In fact, now her workplace was tainted with longing for Jesse, ensuring she could never fully escape from thoughts of him.
Ever the practical thinker, Kyra had devised a two-prong plan to solve the problem. First, she was working her way toward taking over the controlling half of the business. If she could sell one more horse this year, that goal would be attainable and she’d be able to run the Crooked Branch independently.
Part two of her plan was much more fun. She wanted to seduce Jesse and experience the mythical sexual prowess of a man who’d long inhabited her dreams.
She knew he would never settle down. Yet that didn’t make her want him any less. In some ways, it made him a safe—temporary—choice for her wary heart.
If he ever noticed she wasn’t sporting pigtails anymore.
Sighing, Kyra stalked back to her office and flung herself onto the futon across from her bookshelves. As she idly sifted through a stack of paperwork, she admitted to herself today’s attempt to make Jesse see her as a woman had been an unmitigated flop. It’s not like she wanted picket fences, either. She simply wanted a night to act out her longtime fantasy before he left their business for good.
So there wasn’t a chance she’d facilitate his seduction of Lolita Banker at the Indian Rocks Beach bar. For all Kyra cared, he could just twist in the wind while Greta the German Wonder-bod made him feel guilty about not playing house with her.
And in the meantime, Kyra would turn up the heat on her own seductive plans—just as soon as she figured out what they were. Heaven knew suggestive talk wasn’t the key according to her experience with him today.