The Fantasy Factor

Houston sat upright in bed. When he’d come back into town, he’d anticipated picking up where he and Sarah had left off—spending his nights burning up the sheets with her. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been of the same mind. Until now.

“You want to have sex,” Houston said, just to make sure he’d heard her correctly and this wasn’t just an extension of the very erotic dream he’d been having.

“Not plain old sex. I want it in a shower, a movie theater, a public rest room and an elevator. It’s unfinished business. Once we finish, things will get back to normal.” He could hear in her voice that she felt the same heat he did, burning her up from the inside out.

“Which means we should get started right away.” His body throbbed at the prospect.

“We’ll start tomorrow.”

Tomorrow?
There was no way Houston would make it through another hour without her, much less an entire night. He wanted her and she wanted him, and they’d both admitted as much.

As far as he was concerned, there was no better time than the present.

Dear Reader,

It’s hot this time of year in Texas, but it’s
blazing
in the pages of my newest novel,
The Fantasy Factor,
thanks to Houston Jericho, the last of the notorious Jericho brothers.

Houston is a pro rodeo bull rider at the top of his game. But even more, he’s a bad boy and proud of it! He isn’t the least bit interested in changing his ways and settling down. He likes fast times and even faster women. When he rolls back into his hometown for the wedding of an old friend, the last thing he expects is to fall hard and fast for a good girl like Sarah Buchanan.

The thing is, Sarah isn’t as good as she pretends to be. There’s a bad girl lurking beneath the conservative clothes and quiet demeanor. One that refuses to forget Houston and the hot, sexy bargain they’d made when they were younger. Houston is more than ready to pick up where they’d left off, but Sarah isn’t so eager. She’s spent twelve years building a wholesome image and she isn’t about to ruin it now.

The problem? She can’t stop thinking about him, fantasizing about him,
wanting
him. She quickly realizes that the only way to maintain her good-girl status is to unleash the wild woman inside of her, temporarily of course, and finish what they‘d started so long ago. She’s looking for really great sex and closure, but what she finds is
really
great sex and a love strong enough to tame even the baddest bad boy!

I hope you enjoy Houston and Sarah’s story! Drop me a line and let me know what you think. You can write to me c/o Harlequin Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada. Or visit me online at www.kimberlyraye.com or at www.gotsexauthors.com.

Happy reading!

Kimberly Raye

S
HE NEEDED A REALLY GOOD
orgasm in a really bad way.

That was the only reason Sarah Buchanan kept stealing glances at the hot, handsome, sexy-as-sin cowboy standing at the bar of Cadillac’s most notorious honky-tonk. Otherwise, she would have kept her gaze to herself and her attention fixed on the five women seated at the table with her.

She smiled and busied herself taking a drink of the Diet Coke she’d ordered. The cool liquid slid down her throat, but it did nothing to ease her pounding heart or the craving in the pit of her stomach. Her gaze slid sideways again, seeking out the western shirt and Wranglers. There.

Her gaze lifted, drinking in the sight of him, from the straw Resistol perched on top of his short-cropped blond head, down over the western shirt that outlined his broad, powerful shoulders, the large rodeo belt buckle that glittered at his trim waist, the tight jeans that cupped his crotch and hugged his powerful thighs, to the tips of his worn brown cowboy boots.

Houston Jericho was hot and hunky and he practically guaranteed a top-notch, first-class, screaming-good orgasm.

She knew that firsthand because she’d been on the receiving end, not once but three times. Three hot, wild, wicked times.

Of course, that had been a long time ago, and Sarah had since traded hot, wild and wicked for lukewarm, tame and boring. She’d given up her bad-girl tendencies—along with her sexy clothes and her favorite red leather cowboy boots—and completely changed her image.

Houston, however, looked as hot and wild and wicked as ever, his sensual lips crooked in a grin, his stance easy and relaxed and so damned sexy.

She got the distinct impression that he’d only gotten better with age.

“…your turn.” The female voice drew her attention and she forced her gaze to the blonde who sat across the table from her. Janice Alcott was a corporate oil executive from Houston, and had, at one time, been the vice president of the Chem Gems, the only academic club at Cadillac High, a school where football and cheerleading had been considered hot and everything else—particularly anything that involved a textbook—not. “Looks like Maddie—” she pointed to the blonde sitting next to her, their once-upon-a-time president who’d traded her frumpy high school image and shy demeanor for a svelte new figure and a tight leather halter top “—isn’t going to nail this one. That means you only need five points to beat her.”

They were on the last round of Who’s the Baddest Babe?—the sexy board game that had been the center of tonight’s bachelorette party honoring Cheryl Louise, the youngest Chem Gem, who was tying the knot first thing tomorrow.

Cheryl had been a member of the club via her older sister, Sharon, who’d been the smartest girl in school and the founder of their group. She’d also been one of Sarah’s closest friends.

Until Sharon had wrapped her car around a telephone pole a few days before graduation. Maddie had been in the driver’s seat, and she’d walked away with only a few scratches, thanks to the steering wheel. She’d been lucky.

As lucky as Sarah herself, who would most certainly have been crammed into the passenger seat with Sharon when the dashboard had caved in—had her grandmother not grounded her yet
again,
and sentenced her to her room for the weekend.

“Child, why can’t you be more like your mother? She was always such a sweet girl. Always thinking of others and making straight A’s and doing me proud. Why, you wouldn’t catch her swiping the school mascot the night before a football game. She always used her head.”

Because Lorraine Foster Buchanan had not only been the smartest girl in her class, she’d also been perfect. She’d always said the right things and worn the right clothes and married the right man and made all the right decisions….

Unlike her only offspring, who’d never managed to measure up. At least in Willemina Foster’s eyes, and so Sarah had stopped trying early on. In fact, she’d gone the opposite direction, determined to set herself apart from her mother. To be different. To be her own person rather than a replacement for the daughter her grandmother had lost.

Instead of being sweet and wholesome, she’d been a daring, do anything rebel in red-hot cowboy boots who’d loved to shake things up and shock the fine, upstanding citizens of her small hometown. She’d been the first out of her clothes to go skinny-dipping down at Cadillac Creek, the first out of the car to toilet-paper the captain of the football team’s house the night before homecoming, the first to ask a guy out for their junior prom, and the first to proposition Houston Jericho, the town’s resident badass and the hottest, hunkiest guy ever to walk the hallowed halls of Cadillac High School.

Her gaze started to slide his way, but a passing waitress killed her line of vision. Thankfully.

She was here with her friends,
for
her friends. This was the first time they’d all been together in twelve years. And possibly the last they would be, since they led separate lives, two of them far, far away from Cadillac. She shouldn’t waste her time scoping out men.

She gave herself a mental shake and forced her attention back to the game.

Maddie, despite her leather halter top and go-get-’em attitude, had just failed the latest assignment that would have made her an extra fifty points and secured the title. All of the other women were too far behind to win, but Sarah was right on her heels, and if she aced the next question, she would walk away the winner.

Not that Sarah intended to win, no matter how much she wanted to. She had an image to maintain. A wholesome, respectable, safe image that she’d spent too many years building to blow now.

“Girl, if you ace this, you’ll be sleeping late tomorrow instead of picking up Uncle Spur,” Eileen, the petite blond supermom told her.

Image aside, Sarah was in no hurry to spend two hours cooped up in a vehicle with Cheryl’s uncle Spur, an ornery eighty-four-year-old man who prided himself on his tobacco spitting abilities and always being right.

She reached out, picked the top card from the deck and read it out loud.

“That’s no fair,” Maddie complained. “I had to dance with someone
and
kiss him. All she has to do is dance.”

“With a sinful minded man,” Brenda pointed out, “which means he’ll have more on his mind than, like, dancing if he’s really in the sinful category. Not to mention, they’re playing a slow song right now.” A slow, sweet Toby Keith song wailed from the speakers.

“It’s still no big deal,” Maddie said. “This is too easy.”

Maybe for any of the other five women at the table. But for Sarah, a former bad girl trying desperately to be good, dancing meant getting close, and slow-dancing meant getting even closer, and that meant trouble.

Her nipples throbbed at the thought, and frustration made her fingers tighten.

Yep, she needed a sinful man, all right. But needing and having were two very different things. She needed a lot of things. A new haircut. An extra large bag of Doritos. A pair of short-shorts and a slinky tank top to keep her cool while she worked at the family garden center she’d taken over from her grandmother several years back.

But she wasn’t having any of those things because Sarah steered clear of anything and everything that spelled B-A-D, from junk food to revealing clothes to her favorite red boots to men. Life was short enough on its own without tempting fate by living dangerously.

She’d realized her mortality and decided to play it safe. At least that’s what she wanted everyone to think, especially her grandma Willie. She owed the woman for saving her life that night, and so she followed a strict diet regime, got plenty of sleep, wore tasteful, conservative clothes and steered clear of sinful minded men.

Men who made a woman’s heart pound and her legs quiver and her panties damp.

Men like Houston Jericho.

Her gaze shifted to him again and her lungs constricted. He was still as handsome as she remembered. More so because his wild, carefree aura now contained an air of maturity that plainly said he knew what to do, when to do it and exactly how to do it.

Definitely bad.

“Fifty points,” Brenda Chance said. Brenda was a hopeless romantic. She’d married her high school sweetheart, Cal, given him a handful of kids and now lived and breathed the local PTA. “If you pull this off,” she told Sarah, “you’ll get, like, fifty points. More than enough to put you in the lead and win the game.”

“I say she should pick another card,” Maddie said. “Dancing is nothing for Sarah. I say she needs something more challenging. Something befitting the baddest bad girl ever to flash her boobs at a bus full of rival football players after a game.”

Janice smiled. “Girlfriend, that was so funny.”

Cheryl Louise grinned. “It was classic.”

Sarah frowned. “It was stupid. It was forty below out. I nearly gave myself frostbite.” She would have, except that she’d been laughing so hard, her heart pumping even harder, thanks to the rush of excitement at acting on a dare, that she’d actually felt warm. Hot.

Almost as hot as she felt right now.

She took a sip of her cold drink and forced a nice, easy, controlled breath. It was all about control. Something she’d manage to perfect thanks to twelve years of deprivation.

“I agree with Maddie,” Janice said. “Sarah needs something more challenging. Girlfriend, she’s already a bad girl, so that gives her an advantage over Maddie.”

“Nonsense,” Brenda said to Janice. “You and Maddie, like, have obviously been away too long. Sarah is the activities chairwoman for the local chamber of commerce. She spends her weekends hosting bake sales and organizing car washes. Why, she’s about as bad as Pastor Standley’s grandmother.”

“She’s still alive?”

“Barely. She’s ninety-seven and she spends twenty-four/seven watching
Wheel of Fortune
reruns and reading
Reader’s Digest.
”

“Sounds totally
un
exciting,” Janice said.

“That’s Sarah,” Brenda replied.

“Unexciting is good.” Sarah took another sip of cola. “Too much excitement leads to stress and heart attacks.”

Janice shook her head. “Whatever happened to the old Sarah we knew and loved and envied?”

But they all knew what had happened. They’d lost one of their closest and dearest friends the night before their high school graduation, and it had changed all of their lives forever.

Maddie, who’d been so set on following in her father’s footsteps at the town’s bake shop, had left to attend college in Dallas and ended up in a high-powered career with a leading cosmetics company. Janice had traded a local junior college for a major university and a career with a big oil company in Houston. Eileen had forfeited college to be a wife and mom and the local PTA president. Likewise, Brenda had given up college entirely to marry her high school sweetheart and have the first of five children, all of whom were scary at best—at least to Sarah, who’d grown up an only child with her grandmother and a house full of plants.

Cheryl Louise had still been in high school. She’d worked afternoons at the local five-and-dime and fantasized about Prince Charming sweeping in and saving her from her humdrum existence.

He’d swept in. Literally. Jack Beckham owned the only floor cleaning company in town and he’d been polishing the tile at the local TG&Y when he’d first spotted Cheryl Louise. He’d smiled and she’d smiled and now, several years later, they were about to say, “I do.”

And Sarah?

She’d traded her big-city dreams, a chance at an architectural degree from the University of Texas and her one opportunity to get the hell out of her stifling hometown to stay right here, attend the local junior college, take over the family business and play the dutiful granddaughter.

“The card said ‘sinful,’ so don’t even think about Marty Snifferdoodle.” Janice pointed to the man sitting at the far end of the bar. He had a can of soda in one hand and a handful of peanuts in the other. He tipped his head back and tossed a peanut into the air, catching it in his mouth.

“He’s coordinated,” Sarah pointed out.

“Coordinated is not sinful.”

“And don’t think about old man Wally, either.” Maddie eyed the ancient-looking man standing at the far end of the bar. His shock of white hair had been slicked to the side. He wore a starched shirt and Wranglers and made kissy faces every time a woman walked within his line of vision.

“He’s sweet.”

“He’s old and frisky.”

“But old, frisky men are sort of cute.”

“Then you won’t mind picking up Uncle Spur tomorrow,” Maddie told Sarah.

Just the mention of Cheryl’s obnoxious uncle made Sarah’s stomach knot, and she pushed to her feet. Spur Tucker wasn’t just obnoxious and loud-mouthed and downright mean. He was a threat to her nice, wholesome image.

If she had to hear him say even once more that her hair was too red or her skin too pale or her hips too wide or her butt too
out there,
she was liable to do what every woman in town had wanted to do since he’d started spending his holidays in Cadillac and running his mouth off—she was liable to wring his scrawny little neck until his eyes popped out.

Popping out an old man’s eyes, even a hateful, ornery, critical old man’s eyes, wasn’t something a nice girl would do.

Which meant Sarah had to dance with Houston Jericho.

Just a dance, mind you. An innocent, you-stay-on-your-side-of-the-invisible-line-and-I’ll-stay-on-mine sway of bodies.

No kissing him or jumping his bones or begging him to take her right here and now and sate her deprived libido.

No matter how hot he looked.

H
E WAS TOO DAMNED HOT
.

Houston tugged at the top button on his shirt and tossed down another swallow of his beer. Neither did much to cool the heat burning him up from the inside out. A heat that had very little to do with the crowded atmosphere of his old haunt and everything to do with the fact that
she
was here.