RopeMeIn (9 page)

“If I considered darkening your door, I could be toting my
daddy’s shotgun.” She knew she was crazy now, because she had no such weapon.
Her father had never even owned one.

Jed made a face, feigning that he was wounded. “Just bring
you and the keycard.”

“I won’t!”

Nonchalant, he hitched himself up inside the driver’s seat,
closed the door and through the open window, chucked her under the chin. “You
need the code.”

“Yeah.” She widened her eyes at him in outrage. “That’s why
you won’t be seeing me.”

He
tsked
, the damn self-centered egotist. “Don’t
worry. It’s easy to remember.”

“Get the hell out of my parking lot.”

“It’s Cara. The code is Cara.”

Momentarily shocked, she snorted. “You
are
crazy.”

“About you, yes ma’am. That’s why the code is C.A.R.A.” He
turned the engine over and revved it in place. “Five o’clock. Adios, baby.”

Chapter Nine

Five o’clock Friday came and went.

At seven Saturday evening, Cara stood in her kitchen, loving
the satin feel of her lick-me-head-to-toe imported lingerie and smiling into
the phone. “Okay, Eva, I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”

“Deal. I’m so glad you’ve come back to Bravado to live. I
haven’t had anyone to talk with or go out with,” replied her friend.

“We’ll make it a regular event. Thirty minutes. I’ll honk
the horn.”

Cara hung up the receiver, triumphant she had finally
persuaded Eva to go with her tonight to the local dancehall. Eva’s beloved
husband had passed away eight months ago and, though she was Cara’s age and
lonely as hell, Eva had not been out as a single female to anything half so
much fun as the Two Step. Cara was grateful to Eva because she sure as hell was
not going alone, especially if somehow the MacRaes learned she was there,
catting around. She would not put it past them to show up and make a scene. Not
after Jed had pointed out how the local men dealt with the male-to-female
ratio.

Certainly not after Aunt Bree had confirmed how the shortage
of females in Bravado had made the men fiercely possessive of those women they
took a shine to.

“If the MacRae men like you after those two and a half days
you spent with them,” her aunt had declared right after Jed left the store that
morning, “the question you need to ask yourself is, did you like them right
back?”

“I did,” Cara had told the lady who had had two loving
husbands, each of whom had kicked the bucket far too young. “What I didn’t care
for was Jed’s declaration that I was his.”

“Well, sweetie pie, for more than ten years, the men here in
Bravado have been in competition for the few women who remain. Any new female
who wanders in gets to be swept off her pretty feet. Ready or not. So if you
are complaining about the odds, you’re the only man-loving woman in the world
to do so. If you are complaining about what these males know about romancing a
female, then you are welcome to try to educate them.”

“Train a man?” Cara had objected. “Impossible.”

“I have had two men in my lifetime, Cara,” the stunning
forty-five-year-old redhead told her. “None of them was a saint when we first
met. I loved every hair on their handsome-as-hell heads, but some things they
must do to keep a woman by their side. You see, I am a firm believer that a man
is a rough-hewn creature, put on this earth for a woman to sand down and polish
to her liking.”

“What if you can’t polish a man,”
or three?
“to your
liking?”

“Some men, like your ex, are not worth the trouble. Your job
is to choose wisely in the beginning, then refine them.”

Choose wisely. I did not do that with Jeff. When I met
him, I knew he was a tomcat. I thought I could change him, make him loyal. But
my bigger misperception concerned his character. What I took for strength
turned out to be his desire to control.

She glanced over the items on her kitchen countertop. All of
them gifts. Each delivered by post or special courier, each day since her
argument with Jed. Each item designed to persuade her to use the MacRaes’
keycard. One dozen blush roses. Two large verbena soaps from Grasse, France.
Three bottles of bubbly prosecco from Verona, Italy. Just a few of her favorite
things.

She stepped back.

I am going to go to the Two Step tonight with Eva and
have a rip-roaring good time. Drink a little beer. Dance a whole lot. Forget
the magnetic attraction that tempted me every hour of the past two and a half
days to return to the Rocking M. Open the gate. Go inside and…

No. I can’t fall so easily into this. I can be impetuous.
Look how easily I fell into Jed’s arms. And Harry’s. And Will’s. I fell for
Jeff too quickly to really know him too, and look what happened there.

I need time.

Feeling smart and empowered, she strode for her bedroom to
inspect her pink satin bra and panties in the cheval mirror. The lush fabric
just barely caught her full breasts, her rosy nipples peeking over the
petal-shaped cups. Her matching panties barely merited the name, so small, so
damn comfortable, the soft crotch already damp with her desire for the MacRaes.

Damn, woman! Put on those jeans and t-shirt. Comb those
curls over your shoulders and get the hell out of here.

You want a man to take off these sweet things and do you
right or what?

Ohhhhh
, she scolded herself.
Incorrigible.

Cara said thanks to her dance partner, wiped the back of her
hand over her brow and headed back to Eva’s and her table in the crowded hall.
It might be a chilly April outside, but inside it was steamy August. The band
was good. The beer cold. And the men?

She glanced around at the pack of good-looking male animals
on the prowl.

Young, fit and on the hunt.

Cara laughed at her own conclusion.
I can appreciate a
finely turned-out man even if I only want three who…

Stop that.

Taking a quick drink from her beer bottle, she admired those
on the dance floor. Eva was still out there kicking up the sawdust with her new
ranch foreman. One of Cara’s other grade-school friends, Helen Wayland,
visiting from Chicago, was finishing a fine Texas waltz with Cara’s carpenter,
Terr Sommers.

Her attention drifted back to the excellent male pickings
adorning this place. The men here in Bravado were definitely big, hot and ready
for action. Muscles honed by work on the ranches or in the hard labor of
building a prosperous community, tonight they were spit-polished, jeans
pressed, hair combed back, broad black gambler’s hats in place, even as they
spun one woman after another out on the floor.

Handsome in their Western duds. Hoping to be irresistible to
some good lady soon. And maybe even permanently.

And the women? Nearly two to one, females’ favor. Dressed to
charm, some wore cowgirl fringe and boots. Others donned what Cara would call
Take-Me-Home-Tonight glad rags. Skirts to the pussy-line. Blouses cut to the
nipple. Cara and Eva had gone for the hometown girl look, nothing fancy, all
practical lightweight Saturday-Night-Out dance gear—tees and jeans. Even her
aunt Bree had shown up with her friend who owned the shop next door, decked out
in denim that she poured over her shapely forty-something figure. Then she had
stood at the bar chatting with a few of the local men. But at the far tables,
Cara noticed a few women who lived over in the next county.
Shopping for our
goods, are you, ladies?

Eva wove her way through the tables to sink into her chair.
“I’m melting.” She wiped her brow with a paper napkin. “Haven’t had this much
fun in ages.”

“So I see.” Cara waggled her brows. “How’s your foreman as a
dancer?”

“Heath? Terrific. Who knew, huh?”

“Are you telling me you didn’t hire him for his agility on
the dance floor?” Cara teased.

“Not me at all. Before Jose got so sick, he was up in Dallas
on business, met him and hired him.”

Cara tipped her beer at Eva in a toast. “To smart men.”

“Amen.” Eva clinked bottlenecks with her. “So who’s your
favorite dancer this evening?”

“Tough to choose. They are each so good.”

“Thanks to their lessons.”

“Lessons?” Cara paused, her beer midway to her lips. “What
lessons?”

“Oh I see.” Eva’s brilliant almond-shaped eyes went round.
“No one has told you yet about their etiquette lessons.”

“Come
on
.” Cara plunked down her beer on the wooden
tabletop. Empty peanut shells skittered away with the force. “The men here go
to school?”

Eva giggled. “Saturday mornings in town.”

“This is beginning to sound like some Broadway play.”

“Whatever. We women benefit, big-time, I tell ya.”

“What are the subjects?”

“The men have choices what to take first. But they get
manners, wine and food, dancing and—”

“Arguments,” came a booming voice over Cara’s shoulder.

The aroma of a male body in verbena surrounded Cara. A
MacRae.

She spun in her chair, looking up into Jed’s compellingly
handsome face. “You’ve taken a class in how to argue with a woman?”

“I did.” Warm seduction glowed in his beautiful jade eyes.

“How’d you do?”

“I failed.” He put his hand out. “Dance with me and I’ll
take the test again?”

He was asking. Exactly as he should. She grinned, gladly
took his hand and let him help her up.

Wondering how well Jed would strut his stuff, Cara grinned
when the band leader asked everyone to gather on the floor. “Young and old, no
need for a partner,” he urged everyone. When the fiddler and the accordion
player stepped to the microphone, Cara chuckled, knowing exactly what dance
this was.

“Aw no,” Jed objected as the band struck up the funny music,
his hand on her arm. “I will not do that.”

“Of course you will.” She beamed at him. “I want you to.”

”I will not pretend I am a chicken.”

“It’s easy peasy,” she cooed to him as she pushed him into
the big circle along with the others and lifted his arms, bending them to chest
height so that he moved to the rough, fast-paced staccato. Everyone around them
began to shake their arms and butts like chickens in a barnyard. Outnumbered,
Jed flapped his arms like a great big fowl and joined in.

“See?” she encouraged him as he moved his body like a stick
figure. “Doesn’t hurt. There you go, that’s right, a little more arm, a bit
more booty there, MacRae.”

They did the old German dance with a hundred or more others,
until only the best bucking, shake-a-tail-feather chickens remained on the
floor.

Finally, when she and Jed got tagged out by one of the band
members, she hooked her arm in his and led him back to the table.

“Not bad.” She admired him with wide eyes that rolled round
and round over him. “Even big roosters like you can cut a rug.”

He hugged her like a bear. “Hell with that.” He was laughing
and grabbing her around the waist to haul her back onto the floor. “I came to
hold you close, baby.”

Lucky for ol’ Jed, at that moment the band began a slow
number. And the warm glow that surrounded Cara as he took her in his arms had
her reminding herself that she would best serve her own interests by remaining
logical, even aloof. Aunt Bree might think a man who lusted after a woman could
change easily when led properly, but Cara knew better.

Bree had enjoyed success in “hewing” her men to her
standards. Cara had no such experience. And she knew suddenly, irrevocably in
this charming moment in Jed’s arms, that she wanted this experience with him
and his brothers to be right. Right for her. For as long as the four of them
enjoyed each other in bed and out. Because if she didn’t get this right and
learn how to be a woman who declared what she wanted with them, she would be
soured on any relationship with any other man. And then she’d never learn.
Never have. Never enjoy the body or the love or any kind of future with another
one.

Jed’s hand was big and solid. The arm he curled around her
waist drew her flush to him with such insistent grace, she had to bite her
lower lip to keep from trembling with delight. The way he took them into the
slow, seductive moves, his long legs against hers, his chest crushing her
breasts and teasing her nipples, made her whimper.

“I missed you too,” he gruffed in her ear, a rough
declaration only she could hear, but one she felt to the roots of her hair and
the nails of her toes.

And he never missed a beat.

She happily surrendered to his rhythm. Jeff had hated to
dance. She grinned.

“I can feel you smiling, baby. So damn if I don’t know we’re
better.” He took them on a turn.

She leaned back to admire his striking eyes, his strong jaw
and his sinfully beautiful lips. “We can get even better.”

“I said some bullheaded things the other day.”

“You did.”

“I want to make up to you for that.”

“I think,” she said as she shook back her hair and gave him
a beaming smile, “you are already. Few men dance so well, Mr. MacRae.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I aim to please you.”

“You do. Who taught you?”

He looked suddenly caught out in a schoolboy prank. “Taught
me? What?”

“How to dance?”

“Ah. Oh, well, our daddy was a good teacher. Mom too. But
we…ah…took a few lessons to brush up.”

“Did you now?” She nodded, playing with him. “Where’d you
take the lessons?”

His lips widened in a hearty grin. “Downtown.”

“This is like pulling taffy! Why won’t you tell me who your
teacher is?”

“Secret.” He said it like it was gospel and led her around
in a big turn.

Across the floor, Cara saw two large dark shapes step
through the smoke of the dancehall. She smiled. “Your posse came with you?”

“Like the Three Musketeers.”

Harry and Will grinned at her, relief and wickedness in
their eyes.

Goody.
She loved being wanted. No bigger head trip in
the world for a woman who loved wild men in bed with her.

She tingled at her self-realization. “Hmm. Maybe I’ll just
have to ask your brothers for the name of your dance teacher.”

Jed chuckled. “You can. But it won’t do you any good.”

“No?” She arched back, her nipples drilling into his chest.
“You think I don’t have ways to make any of you talk?”

“Oh baby, I do want you to try. When do you think you might
grace us with the challenge?”