Tex Appeal (2 page)

“Yes.”
Click.
She blinked frantically, trying to see as a dozen red roses were thrust at her. “Wait—”
Click.
“What—”
Click.
“I don’t—”
Click, click, click!
“Who are you?”

“Randy Miles.” A strong warm hand clasped her free one. “I’m the marketing and promotions manager for the
San Antonio Star.
And this is Darryl Boyd—” he pointed to the man wielding the camera “—one of our photographers. And Kimberly Jackson from Alamo City Interiors. And her assistant, Angela Stone. And Jimmy Powell from Powell Renovations. And this—” he indicated the petite blonde next to him “—is Lauren Nash, the editor for our weekly ‘Sex in the Saddle’ column.”

“Hey there, honey.” The woman waved French-manicured fingers while Cheryl’s brain raced to process the smiling faces and figure out what was happening.

The newspaper? Here?
Now?
But that could only mean—

“Your entry blew everybody away. Twenty-eight and still living at home?” Randy went on. “With your parents
and
an older brother? Definitely a first.”

“I loved the part about the portable snake bite kit that you carry in your purse,” Lauren chimed in.

“Used to carry,” Cheryl blurted. “I don’t do that anymore.”

“You’re definitely our most sensually clueless subscriber,” Randy went on, “which means that you, Cheryl Anne Cash, are the winner of our Valentine’s Day Romancing the Room Makeover!”

The words registered. Shock bolted through her and her mouth dropped open and—

Click!

D
AYNE
B
RANSON
liked sex.

Hell, he
loved
it.

As much as the next red-blooded cowboy with a weakness for great legs and an addiction to soft, sweet-smelling skin. And he certainly didn’t have a problem with a woman trying to sex up her life.

Unless, of course, said woman was the one who’d dumped him a few weeks back.

“I
told
you it was Cheryl Anne’s place.”

Dayne tipped back the brim of his straw Resistol and stared at the cars that crowded the curb outside the small two-story traditional that sat on the corner of Main and Fifth in the heart of downtown Skull Creek. It was Cheryl Anne’s new house, all right. His muscles stiffened and his gut twisted.

“I told you that was a five and not a seven,” the man sitting next to him in the Chevy truck told him. “Margene’s fives always look like sevens when she comes back from the beauty shop.”

Dayne’s gaze shifted to the work order taped to his dash. When he’d first glimpsed the address for his next job, he’d hoped like hell that it was wrong. It had to be because no way was
his
Cheryl Anne the one getting the romantic home makeover being sponsored by the
San Antonio Star.

And so he’d convinced himself that Margene had made a mistake. The woman was sixty-four going on seventeen. She had an addiction to leopard-print pants and a weakness for manicures. She was also filling in for her granddaughter—Dayne’s secretary—who was on maternity leave.

Margene had just come back from the local beauty salon, To Dye For, when she’d gotten the call that someone in town had won a makeover. The designer in charge—-a Randy something or other—wanted a local contractor to handle the remodeling crew. Margene had filled out the appropriate work order, but she’d been hampered by two inches of acrylic tipping each finger.

Dayne could hardly read the thing.

Enter Scotty “Hammer Toes” Hodges. Scotty was Dayne’s electrical assistant. He was also Margene’s grandson-in-law and the soon-to-be father of her first great-grandbaby. He and his wife lived with Margene and so he’d had plenty of practice deciphering her scribble. He wore a T-shirt, blue jeans, work boots and an expression that said
Yep, I was right.

“See there?” Scotty pointed to the
San Antonio Star
emblem emblazoned on the side of the white van parked in Cheryl’s driveway. “I told you it was the newspaper and not the bar association. Margene always does that funny little squiggle that makes everything look like a B when she gets rhinestone tips…”

Dayne’s gaze swept the cluster of vehicles, from the newspaper van to a brand-spankin’ new black BMW to another van that read Alamo City Interiors. Dayne shifted the truck into Reverse and angled himself between Herman Anderson’s brown Pinto—Herman was a reporter for the local
Skull Creek Gazette
—and a sweet cherry red Corvette that belonged to Mayor Hallsey.

“I told you the mayor would be here,” Hammer Toes said as they climbed out. “The man never misses a PR opportunity.”

Dayne grabbed his clipboard and the pair of Costa Del Mars hanging from the rearview mirror. Sliding on the sunglasses, he tried to calm the churning in his gut. He had a bad feeling about all of this. A feeling that multiplied when he saw the UPS guy pull up across the street and climb out of his truck with a massive box that had
SEXTOYS.COM
stamped in big red letters across the side.

“Let me help you with that,” Dayne said as he and Rich Boyd—aka the UPS guy—collided near Cheryl Anne’s mailbox. Dayne and Rich had gone to school together and were old friends. “I’ll make sure she gets it.”

Rich took one look at his watch and another at the crowd milling about on Cheryl’s front porch and handed over his handheld PDA. “Sign here,” he told Dayne as he winked. “And have fun, buddy.”

If only.

Cheryl Anne had told him to hit the trail. Get out of Dodge. Take a friggin’ hike. She’d bucked him off way before the eight-second buzzer and so the
fun
she intended to have with this box of goodies did not include him.

Time, a voice whispered. The same voice that had urged him to keep his distance, play it cool and wait. She would eventually come crawling back. They were perfect for each other. He’d known it from the first kiss way back when. He’d felt pretty damned certain she’d known, too.

Obviously not.

“I told you Cheryl Anne was the one throwing the sex party,” Hammer Toes said as he pointed to the box. “Connie Jackson down at the pharmacy said she saw Cheryl Anne passing out the flyers herself. I
told
you—”

“HT?” Dayne cut in.

“Uh, yeah, boss?”

“Shut up.” Dayne adjusted his grip on the box, gathered his control and started up the front walk.

“W
E’VE MADE
arrangements for you at the Skull Creek Inn,” Lauren the “Sex in the Saddle” columnist said as she hustled Cheryl toward the front door. They’d given her all of ten minutes to pack her clothes, a few decorating magazines and her Pleasure Chest, and say goodbye to Taz, all the while briefing her on what was about to happen.

Four rooms. Seven days. Complete transformation.

“My assistant went on ahead to kennel your dog and make living arrangements for you,” Lauren went on. “Before you know it, it will be Friday—Valentine’s Day—and you’ll have a home that oozes sensuality.”

“I don’t see why we can’t both stay here.”

“With the amount of construction that will be going on? Why, it’s a lawsuit waiting to happen. We’ll be ripping out everything. The flooring. A few walls. The kitchen cabinets—”

“But I sort of like those.”

“No, you don’t. Why, they’re all but falling off the hinges. Trust me, you’ll love
everything.
Once we’re done, this place will see more action than a sports bar during the NBA play-offs.”

“But I’m teaching a class tonight.”

“You’ll have to reschedule.” Lauren hustled her closer to the door. “Order room service. Watch movies. Relax.”

“I’m really not the room-service type.” She tried to dig in her heels, but she kept moving forward. “In fact, I wasn’t even aware that the Inn had room service. The last I heard, Winona delivered the occasional slice of cake and coffee. But that’s only when she’s in a good mood, which isn’t very often—
humphf!
” She came up hard against a large cardboard box that had suddenly appeared in the doorway.

Her head snapped up and her gaze collided with a familiar pair of aqua-blue eyes.

Heat sizzled through the air between them and awareness zipped up and down her spine. For a split second, she forgot about the cameras and the newspaper crew and the interior decorators.

Instead, she found herself thinking about how transparent his eyes were and how she would really, really like to see him naked.

Again.

Dayne Branson set the box down near his booted feet and then there was nothing between them except warm, sizzling air. “Hey, there, stranger.” His deep, rumbling acknowledgement sent a trembling down her spine. Her heart pounded faster and excitement bubbled inside of her.

A false sense of excitement, she reminded herself. While her reaction to Dayne was every bit as fierce as what she’d felt that night at the riverbank—the night of her eighteenth birthday—it wouldn’t last. Once he peeled off his clothes and they hopped into bed, it would be the same old, same old. She would be disappointed and he would roll over and fall asleep, and that would be the end of it.

Like always.

Nod politely, turn and head for the back door. Now.

“Hey.” So much for
now.
She smiled. Her eyes, the traitorous things, drank in the sight of him.

He was still as tall, as hunky, as hot as she remembered. With short, whiskey-blond hair, the faintest hint of stubble darkening his jaw and eyes so blue and translucent she could surely drown in them, he had the kind of rugged good looks that made women want to rip off their panties and scream “Ride ’em cowboy!”

And then there were the dimples. He had the most incredible indentations that sliced into his cheeks when he grinned the way he was doing right now.

She had the sudden urge to press the pad of her finger into one tiny crease.

She forced her gaze away from his face, down the smooth column of his throat, the frantic beat of his pulse and the bump of his Adam’s apple, to the neckline of a clean white polo shirt that had Branson Construction embroidered in black letters across the left pocket. A pair of crisp, creased jeans clung to his muscular thighs and cupped his crotch. The hem bunched atop polished brown cowboy boots.

An image slid into her head of a pair of scuffed boots tossed on the river bank, worn, frayed denim piled in a nearby heap, a white Born to Raise Hell T-shirt puddled on the rich green grass…

“…is this?” Lauren’s voice came from behind and yanked Cheryl back to reality, to the all-important fact that Dayne had tossed that T-shirt a long, long time ago, along with the bad-to-the-bone attitude and dangerous aura that had made him so damned appealing.

Cheryl’s head snapped back and she gathered her composure.

“Dayne Branson.” He tipped his hat in Lauren’s direction, but his gaze never left Cheryl’s. “At your service.” His lips moved around the words so seductively that, for a few heart-pounding moments, her mouth went dry.

“Ahh, the local contractor,” Lauren said. “Finally. We’re already seven and a half minutes off schedule. Get her out of here,” Lauren said to one of the assistants milling nearby. “And you—” she motioned to Dayne “—come with me.”

Dayne didn’t budge. “It’s good to see you.” His gaze never left Cheryl Anne’s.

“I—I have to leave,” she blurted, averting her eyes and sidestepping him before she gave in to the urge to press her body against his. “It was good to, um, see you, too.”
Not.
Seeing him was anything but good. Because then her hormones started with their damned wishful thinking and she found herself forgetting—at least initially—that he’d morphed into Mr. Safe and Reliable. “Take care.”

“Don’t forget your penises.” His deep, husky voice brought her whirling back around in time to see him heft the large cardboard box he’d toted inside.

She noticed the
SEXTOYS.COM
logo and heat shot from the tips of her toes to her hair follicles. His eyes glittered with jealousy…and something else. Something dangerously close to passion, and her heart stalled.

Dayne? Passionate?

Yeah, right. The last time she’d seen him with that gleam in his eyes, he’d been standing on the riverbank, kicking off his boots.

“I think that’s penii,” she blurted, eager to do something with her mouth that didn’t involve kissing him and breaking her self-made vow—out with the old and in with the new. She took the box he handed her. “It’s plural.”

“It’s heavy.” His gaze met hers. “I could give you a hand.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. I can handle it on my own.”

His deep voice followed her. “That, sugar, is what I’m afraid of.”

I
T WAS
worse than he’d originally thought.

Dayne watched Cheryl Anne load the enormous box of penises—or penii—into the back of her beat-up Mustang.

A
Mustang,
of all things, instead of the economical, conservative
Kia
she’d always driven around town. She’d traded in the latter, just like she’d ditched her old clothes and cut her hair and exchanged her glasses for contact lenses.

His gaze swept the clean line of her bare legs, from a pair of high-heeled red shoes to the hem of her ultra-short mini-skirt. The denim molded to her ass in the same way the cherry-red tank top clung to her breasts and he felt a stirring in his groin.

When she’d first told him she wanted to call it quits because their relationship was “stale,” he’d figured she was just mad because he’d been putting in a lot of extra hours on a recent construction project. They hadn’t been having dinner as often, or going to the movies, or playing bingo.

Truth be known, he wasn’t really a bingo kind of guy. Never had been, but he’d taken it up because of Cheryl Anne. Because he’d been eager for an activity that didn’t involve kissing and touching and losing himself in her hot, lush body.

He’d been desperate not to screw things up with Cheryl the way his dad had screwed things up with his mom.

Bingo was nice. Safe. Boring. The perfect activity for a guy determined to keep his mind off sex.

He watched her shove the box into the backseat, toss in her suitcase and climb into the front seat. She gunned the engine and the V8 purred. A few years back, the sound would have been enough to give him a woody.

Not anymore. Dayne was older now. Mature. Controlled.

Stale.

Christ, he hadn’t thought for five seconds that she’d been talking about sex.

Aw, hell. Maybe five seconds. But then he’d let go of the crazy-ass notion. Doing the nasty ranked last on the list when it came to long-term relationship success. Real longevity depended on the little things—spending time together and talking and sharing and caring. He’d always thought Cheryl Anne knew that.

Obviously not.

She was now officially sex-crazed and Dayne was ancient history.

Good riddance.

That’s what he told himself as he turned and followed the decorator from room to room, jotting down notes while some of the newspaper people packed up Cheryl’s belongings to transfer to storage during the renovation.

“This wall will have to go. And these cabinets. And all the appliances…”

No sirree. Dayne sure as hell didn’t need a woman with her priorities so screwed up. Sex was not the be all and end all of the universe.

“…I’m thinking we’ll do a waterbed in the bedroom. She’ll be rocking and rolling in no time.”

An image pushed into his head and he saw the two of them “rocking and rolling,” the bed moving beneath them, enhancing the pleasure as she rode him harder and he pushed deeper and…

Priorities, he reminded himself. It was better that they split now than later.