Something Wild (5 page)

“I thought you were in some big stage show.”

She wondered if he realized that he was rubbing the bottom of her foot, his callused thumb making small circles on her skin. Slow circles. Sensual circles.

Her heart fluttered. So did a million butterflies in her stomach. She took a calming breath, trying to think about his question, trying to structure an answer that didn’t start with “Please don’t stop what you’re doing.”

Finally she said, “I’ve been in three big shows this year.”

“Dancers move from show to show that often?”

“Only when they’re let go.”

His fingers inched their way up under her pant leg and he made those same slow, deep, massaging circles on her calf. She wasn’t about to tell him that it was her ankle that was hurt or that his hands were on the wrong part of her anatomy. He’d have to work his way much, much higher up her leg before she’d make him back off.

“Wanna tell me why you were let go?”

She decided not to wait for the pitter-patter of her heart to slow before she answered, since that could take forever.

“I got fired from the last show because the choreographer’s wife shot him.” Three weeks and too many days of unemployment later, she was still miffed. “I held Josh’s bloody head till the paramedics came. I took flowers to the hospital and still he had the audacity to tell me I was trouble. The jerk didn’t press charges against his wife. Oh, no, they reconciled. But he canned me.”

Mike laughed at the ridiculous incident. She couldn’t blame him, when it seemed too implausible for words.

“What about the other two shows?” Mike grinned. “Did you get fired from those as well?”

“I lost the job before that because I had a slight disagreement with the director over my costume,” she admitted far too freely, baring her soul while Mike stroked the sensitive spot behind her knee.

His brow rose. “What, you didn’t like the color? The style?”

“I changed my hair color to get that job and let me tell you”—she grabbed the end of her pony-tail and stared at it—“going from nearly black to sun-kissed brown because the director said he already had too many raven-haired girls in the cast, was annoying as hell, but I’d do just about anything for a good part.”

“All that and you still got fired?”

“All that. I made one concession after another. I didn’t even mind when the director changed me from a watermelon to a strawberry—after all, the costume was more compact and easier to dance in. But when he decided to make me a half-peeled banana, well, that was just too much.”

The good pastor’s fingers stilled. His brows pulled together as his eyes darted to her breasts and lingered there for a second—a hot, hot, feverish hot second—then drifted back to her eyes. “Half peeled?”

“Topless,” she confessed, even though she knew that Mike had understood completely. “He felt my skin tone was perfect, just the right creamy color for a peeled banana. I told him I hadn’t seen any bananas with breasts and told him I’d prefer continuing on as a strawberry. He said that was fine with him, as long as I was a half-eaten strawberry because he firmly intended to have me go on stage with my breasts exposed.”

Heat crept into her cheeks. Good heavens! What was she doing divulging all this information to a holy man?

“I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t embarrass you. I mean, I’m sure the last thing ministers think about are naked women.”

A grin touched his face. His dimple deepened. “I can’t speak for all ministers, only me, but I’ve been known to think about naked women a time or two.”

“Isn’t that a sin?”

“Not in the Bible I’m familiar with.”

Well, it was a sin in her father’s Bible. Dear old dad thought a good time was Bible study on Friday nights, not high school dances. His idea of after-school activities was serving food to the homeless, not coed volleyball or basketball. Chaplain Mattingly equated the word naked with a woman wearing anything that exposed her knees and elbows and all points in between.

Maybe she’d been naive in her thinking that all ministers were the same. That they had no vices. That their thoughts were 100 percent pure.

Mike Flynn thought about naked women. And he certainly knew how to stimulate a woman’s libido with just a smile, with the simple touch of his hands on her flesh.

Hmmm
. Maybe he wasn’t a minister in the real sense of the word. Maybe he’d gotten a certificate through the mail that gave him the right to marry people, but nothing more. Suddenly she began to wonder if he ministered to some strange cult, where the female parishioners gave their hearts, their minds, and their bodies to a man—their pastor—who claimed he had special ways to save a woman’s soul.

Heaven knows she’d run into numerous men like that in Vegas.

She really didn’t think her soul needed saving, by any man, not at the moment anyway, so she pulled her leg loose from Mike’s strong and callused hands, drew her knee close to her chest, and massaged the ankle herself.

As if it had just dawned on him that his hands had gotten a tad over familiar with her leg, as if his conscience was at war with his lustful nature, he plowed his fingers through his hair and rose from the bed.

Wouldn’t you know it, that thick lock of hair she’d imagined falling over his brow tumbled forward, shiny, black, and . . . and . . . good heavens, Pastor Flynn was the sexiest man she’d ever set eyes on. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from him while he shrugged into his heavy lambs wool coat and pulled his hat low on his brow.

She didn’t know what had come over her. As a rule, men didn’t get her all hot and bothered. She didn’t have room for a man in her life, because all her passion was concentrated on her work. But Mike bothered her.

And that annoyed her because he was all wrong for her. Not only was he a man of God who’d frown at her profession, but he lived far from Vegas, the place where her dreams resided. Pull in your feelings, she told herself. Get a hold on your emotions.

She took a deep breath. There. She was fully in control now.

“Thanks for coming to my rescue.”

“Not a problem.” He tugged on his gloves, and she refused to look at his long, strong, soothing fingers. “You ought to stay off your ankle for a couple of days.”

“I’ve never been one for sitting still, and you already know I don’t follow orders, even when they’re in my best interest.”

He hit her with a crooked smile, then took a step toward her, his legs brushing the comforter on the bed as he reached out a gloved hand. For a moment she thought he was going to cup her cheek, that he was going to say something endearing that would make her rethink her plans to keep her emotions under lock and key. But he didn’t caress her cheek. Instead, his hand dropped down to his side.

“It’s late, and I’ve got a sermon to work on.”

“Can’t that wait till morning?”

“I’ve got two mares and a wild stallion to hunt in the morning.”

“Won’t you be too tired?”

“You don’t sit still; I don’t sleep.”

Her father had always told her that sleepless nights were caused by worried minds. The good pastor looked like a man who shouldn’t have a care in the world, but still she asked, “Something troubling you?”

“Wayward horses. Nothing more.”

It wasn’t the truth, but she had the feeling he didn’t talk about his problems. He controlled them as much as he controlled the rest of his emotions and everything else around him.

“Do you have any idea where you might find Satan?” she asked.

“I can think of a few places, but Satan’s got a bad habit of staying one step ahead of me.”

“What will you do when you find him?”

“Drag him back to the ranch again and tame him.”

She didn’t like the sound of that. “You won’t be able to.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“He’s wild and doesn’t know anything but running free. He’ll probably die if you try to break his spirit.”

“There you go again, thinking you know all about horses.”

“I don’t know much at all about horses, but I do know what it’s like to have someone force their will upon you, under the misguided belief that you’ll be better off.”

“I’m not thinking about what’s good or bad for Satan, I’m thinking about this ranch. That’s my job, Charity, and I do what has to be done, no matter the consequence.”

With that he was gone, the door shutting quietly behind him. He might have thought that closed door put an end to their conversation, probably felt that she’d leave well enough alone. But she had every intention of proving to Pastor Flynn that he couldn’t tame Satan any easier than he could tame her.

He shouldn’t have gone to Charity’s bedroom, Mike told himself as he trudged down the stairs and out of the house, hoping the icy air would knock some sense into him. But he was still hot. He was still bothered.

He shouldn’t have taken off her boot or massaged the soft, warm skin on her foot. He never should have slid his hand under her pants and up her sleek, velvety-skinned leg. He should have let her ride off in the night with Satan and left it at that. He should have stuck with his earlier conviction that getting close to Charity Wilde could be fatal. But no, he’d had to prove to himself that he could hold a woman, touch a woman, inhale the lingering scent of a woman’s wildly exotic perfume and not be affected.

The only thing he’d proved was that he was hornier than hell.

“What’s going on?”

The last person Mike wanted to see right now was Jack Remington, but his boss and lifelong friend was perched on the top rail of the corral, feeding carrots to Buck.

“Not a thing.” Mike swept Buck’s reins up from the ground and swung onto the horse’s back. He needed to get home and pray for his salvation; the last thing he wanted now was a long conversation with Jack. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Sam’s the one who heard you. She’s got one ear tuned to the twins every second of the day, but you and Charity are the ones she heard.”

“Wasn’t much to hear.”

Jack shrugged as he pulled a cigar from his pocket. “Your sex life isn’t my business.”

Mike chuckled cynically. “Fifteen, twenty years ago you would have asked to hear every sordid detail.”

“I just wanted to make sure I was gettin‘ more than you.”

“Yeah, well, you were getting more then and things haven’t changed over the years.”

Jack grinned. “Celibacy’s gotta be hell.”

It was, and ten times worse with Charity around, but Mike wasn’t about to mention that to Jack. Besides, he figured his friend knew him well enough to guess the torment messing with his mind.

“I thought you’d given up smoking,” Mike said as he watched Jack methodically cut the end off the cigar.

“I’ve made it as far as not lighting up.” Jack rolled one of his favorite Montechristos between his thumb and first two fingers. “Now I’m working on keeping the damn things out of my mouth.”

Mike watched Jack lift the cigar to his lips, stare at it for a few seconds, then toss it down to the ground. “Guess I’ll let Sam throw the rest of the box in the fireplace on her birthday. Not the greatest present, but it doesn’t appear I’ll be giving her a pair of Tennessee Walkers.”

“Not unless I can find them.”

“Wanna tell me what happened?”

Mike had hoped this subject wouldn’t come up tonight, but at least he could get one bit of trouble off his mind and only have his craving for Charity to deal with.

He folded his hands over the saddle horn and looked across the still and silent prairie. “Satan got them.”

“I figured as much.”

“I’m going after them first thing tomorrow.”

“You gonna send Benny and Hank out, too?”

Mike shook his head. “This is one problem I’m going to deal with on my own.”

Jack jumped off the rail, and crushed the discarded cigar beneath his boot. He’d never questioned Mike’s decisions on how to run the ranch, and Mike figured he never would. But Mike could see that Jack had something else on his mind, something he wanted to ask, but didn’t quite know how.

Jack shoved his hands in his coat pockets and stared off toward the Crazy Woman Mountains. “You ever think about getting married again?”

That was the last question Mike had expected. “No.”

“Word about you being in Charity’s bedroom could leak out and be all over the territory by noon tomorrow.”

“I’ve got nothing to hide.”

“I know, but sometimes I wish you did.” Jack tilted his head, looking up at Mike with concern in his eyes. “It’s been six years since Jessie died. Don’t you think it’s time you move on?”

Mike felt the anger welling up inside of him. “Ask me about the horses, the cows, the ranch, or the church and I’ll give you an answer. But everything else is none of your business.”

“It wasn’t your business when you were worried about my relationship with Sam, but you butted in anyway.”

“That was different—”

“Like hell.”

“Stay out of it, Jack.”

“You’ve spent the last ten years counseling others through divorce and death and God knows what else, so why the hell won’t you talk to someone about what’s making you so miserable?”