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Then he stepped back, and while his hips moved rhythmically to the beat of the music, he grasped the sides of his western shirt and ripped open the pearl snaps securing the front. Teddy gasped, and the women in the Frisco Bay went wild—of which Brenda and Laura were the loudest and most unrestrained in their cheering. The men in the establishment looked on with idle amusement.
Despite a fond wish to be anywhere but sitting in the middle of the dance floor with a gorgeous man stripping for her, she found herself totally mesmerized by Austin McBride. Fascinated by his eat-’em-up eyes. Stunned by his breathtaking smile. Enthralled by his incredible body.
It had been a long time since a man had captured her interest so thoroughly.
With a wicked grin, he turned around and slowly shrugged out of his shirt, letting the cotton fabric slide down his arms to reveal a smooth, powerful-looking back that sloped to a trim waist. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on her cowboy that she could tell—even that nice, cute butt of his was all firm muscle as he gave it an enticing wriggle that had the women screaming for more.
Yanking the shirt from the waistband of his faded jeans, he tossed the garment over his shoulder, and it landed right in the middle of her lap. The material was warm against her stocking-clad thighs, and smelled earthy and male. She had little time to register that before he tugged on the sides of his chaps and the Velcro holding them on gave way. Those, too, came sailing her way, the soft leather draping across her legs like a lover’s caress.
Though the low-slung jeans he wore had a well-worn look about them, they were snug enough to mold to his narrow hips and the long, muscular length of his thighs and legs. The soft-looking material was creased and faded in all the right places, and even a little threadbare in the most intriguing spots, she noticed, as he slowly, sensuously, rolled his hips to the tempo of the music.
His long fingers settled on the heavy belt buckle cinching his waist, and Teddy’s stomach bottomed out. But she couldn’t look away. With a lazy flick of his wrist, the leather strap slipped from the buckle, the movement slow and somehow erotic. Leaving the belt on and hanging open, he moved close enough for her to reach out and touch the tight muscles rippling along his belly. The dare in his eyes was unmistakable—he expected her to take off his belt!
Someone in the crowd let out a shrill, wolf whistle, followed up with, “Go for it!”
Austin grinned, obviously used to such enthusiastic displays. “You heard the lady,” he drawled encouragingly. “Go for it.”
And so Teddy did. Grasping the metal buckle, she gave it a tentative tug. Austin gyrated his hips at the same moment, and the belt slid from the loopholes on his jeans and into her hands. The strip of leather was warm and supple against her palm, inciting naughty thoughts that shocked even herself. She groaned at her runaway imagination, grateful that no one could hear her over the noise in the bar. The music pulsated, the beat seemingly as raw and primitive as the man before her.
She expected him to strip off his jeans like most male exotic dancers did, but he made no attempt to remove that last barrier of clothing. Instead, he danced for her wearing nothing but his formfitting jeans and a sinfully wicked smile. But, oh, this provocative teasing was so much more arousing than watching him strip down to a skimpy G-string, which would have spoiled the illusion he’d created. This teasing glimpse gave her enough to stir her imagination and incite future cowboy fantasies.
It was apparent Austin McBride knew exactly how to stimulate a woman’s senses, and he used that knowledge to his advantage. He rocked his honed body to the beat of the music, giving her time to take in his bare chest, dusted with a light sprinkling of dark brown hair. Unable to help herself, she followed that trail down to where it whorled around his navel, then disappeared into the waistband of his jeans. And when he turned, giving her a view of his backside, the muscles across his shoulders bunched, and his tight bottom and sinewy thighs flexed with the easy, rhythmic movement of his body.
He was truly a work of art.
She licked her dry lips, suddenly feeling as though someone in the establishment had kicked up the temperature ten degrees. Her face was warm—hell, her entire body was prickly with fever—and her breathing was deep and labored.
When her gaze lifted back to his face, his eyes were filled with a combination of sultry heat, immense charm and forbidden enticement. It was all a well-orchestrated act. She knew that, so why did she experience such an inexplicable connection between them, one that went beyond immediate sexual attraction to something deeper and mystifying in that man-woman way?
Not soon enough to suit her embarrassment, the music ended and her fantasy was over. She glanced over at Brenda and Laura and narrowed her gaze. Brenda grinned outrageously and blew at the tip of her finger as if it were the smoking end of a gun— too hot was her unmistakable message—and Laura waggled her fingers at Teddy impishly.
No doubt about it, Teddy was going to kill her two best friends.
A USTIN M C B RIDE INWARDLY cringed as the Frisco Bay broke into a roar of raucous cheers, whistles and applause, and tried not to let his growing discomfort show. It was an odd sensation to find himself uncomfortable in what should have been a very familiar, and routine, situation.
However, three months ago, at the age of thirty, while standing center stage wearing nothing more than a tight pair of pants with a roomful of women going crazy with lust, Austin had come to the conclusion that he was getting too old, and certainly less assertive and brazen, to be taking his clothes off in public. As owner and founder of Fantasy for Hire, he’d made the decision to retire his outrageous costumes, and let his younger and more energetic employees handle the exotic, and sometimes outrageous, fantasies women requested.
Tonight had been the exception. Taking off his clothes had been a necessity, not a choice. Don, one of his most requested strippers, had called Austin on his cell phone to tell him that someone had sideswiped his car, and although he was physically okay, he wouldn’t be able to make his seven o’clock appointment at the Frisco Bay. That gave Austin a little over an hour to scramble to find someone to fill in. The two guys he managed to get hold of didn’t have the requested cowboy costume on hand—but Austin did. Deciding it would be simpler to take care of the engagement himself since time was so limited, he’d donned his western attire, all the while swearing this would be the very last time he fulfilled a woman’s fantasy outside of a bedroom.
Tonight’s incident only served to shore up his decision to put Fantasy for Hire on the market for a new owner. In the past six years his shoot-from-the-hip venture had increased beyond his wildest expectations, expanding from two part-time employees to nearly a dozen young men who were willing to fulfill a woman’s twenty-minute fantasy for ample compensation.
Austin had been amazed by the popularity of his business. Fulfilling fantasies, it seemed, was a very profitable commodity. Fantasy for Hire was so inundated with requests that he was turning away more customers than he had fantasies available.
Despite the fact that the business cut into too much of his personal life of late, it was hard to complain about Fantasy’s success. The company had served its purpose in supplementing his income to help pay for the school loans and bills he’d accumulated while embarking on another venture in commercial landscaping nearly four years ago.
His second business and ultimate career choice, McBride Commercial Landscaping, was finally lucrative and self-sufficient. Now, Austin wanted a life. One that didn’t include costumes and games, or bringing fantasies to life for hundreds of faceless women who clung to the illusions he displayed. He’d discovered the hard way that women found it difficult to separate him from the part he played. Once he performed for a customer, he couldn’t be sure if she wanted him for himself, or the private fantasy he’d created for her.
That’s why he’d established his own personal rule a few years ago, after being used for one woman’s particular fantasy. The customers he performed for were off limits, no matter how intriguing the woman. And he found Teddy Spencer plenty fascinating, from the sleek cut of her silky blond hair that brushed her shoulders with a slight under-curl, to her big brown eyes that combined wholesomeness with a heady dose of sensuality, to those shapely killer legs extending from the hem of her short, teal-colored business suit. Her cream-hued blouse was pure silk, and although it was buttoned primly enough, he could see the faintest outline of lace shaping her full breasts. She was a dynamite package of sophistication and casual elegance, a distinct kind of demeanor shaped by old money and ingrained from birth. Those obvious signs should have warned him off, but the awareness that had leaped to life between them while they’d danced was still too fresh in his mind.
Once the noise in the bar lessened, she lifted his shirt toward him with a wavering smile on her lips and the color of roses staining her smooth cheeks. “I, um, guess you’d like your clothes back?”
Her tentative question made him smile. The way she so easily blushed was refreshing—an endearing, old-fashioned quality he didn’t see very often these days. “It is getting a little drafty in here.” He took his shirt from her, and slipped into it. He didn’t bother to snap the front closed—it was a little late to worry about a “no shirt, no service” policy.
Grasping her hand, he helped her to her feet. The touch was simple, an everyday, gentlemanly gesture, but when his fingers slid against her soft palm he heard her breath catch and saw something in her eyes flare. Incredibly, his body flashed a reciprocating heat that spiraled low in his belly.
For the first time in years, Austin thought about mixing business with pleasure, until he saw the ruby and diamond ring staking a claim on her left hand. A woman didn’t wear a sparkly ring on that finger unless she was taken.
It was too bad, but just as well—considering the only thing he had in common with her fantasy cowboy was his love of outdoors. Take off all the western trappings, and he was just a simple, hardworking, blue-collar city man. Hardly a match for her.
“You were a great sport,” he said, distracting himself from the attraction racing between them.
She groaned, the sound rife with chagrin. “As if I had a choice.” She shot her two friends an I’m-going-to-get-you-for-this kind of look.
He grinned. “Happy birthday, Teddy.” Lifting her hand to his mouth, he brushed his lips over the back of her knuckles. A fleeting touch as soft as a butterfly’s wing. The gallant kiss wasn’t a service he normally provided for his customers, but he couldn’t stop the urge to give her one last thing to remember this evening by. “It really was my pleasure.”
He let her go, leaving her speechless, and gathered up the rest of his things. He’d taken two steps off the dance floor when she exclaimed, “Oh, your hat!”
He turned back around, and because she’d closed the distance between them, he tipped back the Stetson on her head with a flick of his finger. “I meant it when I said it was yours to keep. Compliments of Fantasy for Hire, and your girlfriends.” He gave her one last wink. “It’s up to you to explain to your boyfriend where you got it.”
She appeared startled by his last comment, but he didn’t give her time to respond. The gig was up. No more pretenses. Back to real life.
He headed toward the entrance of the Frisco Bay, and he didn’t look back.
He never did.
2
S HE COULDN’T STOP thinking about him.
Teddy leaned back in her office chair and flicked her finger along the corner of the white business card that stated simply, Compliments Of Fantasy for Hire. With a soft sigh, she stroked her thumb over the bold, black raised letters of Austin McBride’s name embossed on the left-hand corner. Beneath that was the business phone number, which was permanently etched in her mind.
She’d found the rectangular card as she’d set the Stetson on her bedroom dresser when she’d gotten home last night after her impromptu birthday bash. It had been tucked into the thin leather band around the crown, and since Laura and Brenda had insisted she wear the hat the entire evening, she hadn’t discovered it until later.
The card certainly wasn’t an invitation to call, not unless she wanted a repeat performance from Austin, which she didn’t. She recognized the business card for the piece of advertisement it was—referrals and word of mouth went a long way in making a business successful—so why had she slipped the card into her purse this morning instead of leaving it at home with her birthday Stetson?
She couldn’t stop thinking about him.
It was a pitiful excuse, but there it was. She reminded herself that she couldn’t afford a distraction like Austin McBride, fantasy extraordinaire, not when she was so close to achieving the goals she’d set for herself. Goals that included a solid, steady career and complete independence from the overbearing family that still hadn’t recovered from the shock that she’d broken off her engagement to the affluent Bartholomew Winston two years ago. Her plans didn’t include a man, especially one who fulfilled women’s fantasies on a regular basis.
She had to stop thinking about him. That’s all there was to it, she decided. Opening the middle drawer of her oak desk, she set the card on top of the other business cards stacked neatly in a small partition in the left-hand corner.
“Out of sight, out of mind,” she muttered, doubting those six words would be able to make her forget her gorgeous, green-eyed cowboy.
“Is that problem with your sight and mind going to affect your performance on the World Wide Travel account?”
Startled by the intrusion, Teddy pinched the tip of her index finger in her desk drawer just as it closed. Wincing, she glanced up and gave the man approaching her desk a barely tolerable look. Louden Avery, her boss and creative director at Sharper Image, considered himself above the courtesy of knocking or announcing his presence.
He strolled into her office as if he owned it, his pale blue eyes missing nothing, not the remnants of a half-eaten lunch that attested to the extra hour she’d worked without compensation, or the files and sketches on her desk that she was currently devoting time to, or even what she wore. The latter was the worst, because he took his time about it. By the time he finished his deliberate perusal, her jaw ached from gritting her teeth.
Keeping in mind that he was her boss, she summoned a pleasant smile she was certain didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Contrary to what you might have heard, my sight and mind are sound.”
“That’s good to know,” he replied with calculated mildness. “I wouldn’t want anything to impair your chances of getting that promotion.”
“The only thing that could hurt my chances is if someone more qualified than myself come along.” After all, they both knew she had the experience, along with a degree that gave her a distinct advantage over Fred Williams, the colleague she was up against.
Louden merely smiled. Rounding her desk, he propped his hip on the corner nearest her, unmindful of the papers resting on the edge. Bracing his left forearm on his thigh, he leaned toward her, though his gaze was busy taking in the project laid out in front of her. “How is the preliminary sketch coming on the World Wide Travel logo?”
“Just fine.” Louden liked to feel superior, and she had no doubt that his position on her desk had been chosen for such a purpose. She forced herself to look up at him, determined to meet his gaze. “It’ll be on your desk first thing in the morning, two days before deadline.”
“My, aren’t you efficient.” Using a slim finger, he turned the sketch she was working on toward him, taking in the rough draft of a globe with connecting W’s, the initials the travel agency had requested. “And so talented, too. It would be a shame to see all this creativity go to waste.”
His mocking tone chafed her nerves, but she didn’t let it show. “Since you weren’t expecting the project on your desk until Friday, is there some other reason you stopped by?”
He stared at her for a long moment, obviously not caring for the way she was trying to dismiss him. “According to my secretary, you haven’t RSVP’d for the Christmas party, which is this Saturday. Certainly you weren’t going to miss the biggest bash of the year?”
She resented the sanctimonious way he chastised her. She hadn’t planned on attending the party, mainly because she didn’t relish the thought of having any outside-of-the-office contact with Louden, but he was making it difficult to refuse.
“I’ve been so busy, I forgot to respond.” The excuse was handy, and served its purpose. “Consider this my confirmation.”
“For one or two?”
Uncomfortable with the direction of their conversation, her mind grappled for another convenient excuse…and came up blank.
His pale gaze slid pointedly to the ring on her finger. “Two,” she said quickly. “There’ll be two of us attending the Christmas party.”
Surprise registered in his eyes, and was quickly replaced by skepticism. “Ah, we finally get to meet the elusive boyfriend.”
What had been an innocent white lie to keep Louden at bay was now becoming a tangled mess. He hadn’t pressed her, accepting the fact that she had a boyfriend in the beginning, but as the months wore on, she suspected he had his doubts. This was the first time he’d made any direct reference to his suspicions.
“What’s his name?” he asked casually.
She stared at Louden, her mind freezing. “Uh, excuse me?” The phrase bought her some time, but not much, she knew. She hadn’t thought to create a name for her fictitious boyfriend.
“Your boyfriend,” he repeated slowly. “He does have a name, doesn’t he?”
“Well, yes, of course he does.” A name, Teddy. Pick a name! At the moment she couldn’t even think of one of her three older brother’s names!
“Then what is it?” he persisted. “My secretary needs it for the place settings. We can’t have just anybody finagling their way into the party.”
Teddy’s chest hurt and her head swam. When she finally realized that she was holding her breath, she let it out in a rush. “Well, maybe I should check with…him. We’d talked about the Christmas party, but quite honestly, he didn’t actually say yes, so we probably should discuss it further.” She offered Louden a placating smile.
Louden’s eyes narrowed slightly, and a smile curled the corner of his mouth.
Very casually, he picked up her hand, the one with the diamond and ruby band, and ran his finger over the embedded jewels. She tried not to visibly shudder at his touch.
“You know, Theodora,” he said, deliberately using her full name as a way of maintaining his superiority. “For a woman who claims she’s committed, you sure do have a hard time remembering the simplest things about your beau. Maybe he’s not as important as you’d like everyone to believe.”
She yanked her hand from his grasp. “That’s ridiculous.”
A pale eyebrow lifted, expressing those doubts.
Desperation coiled within her, and she seized the only name in her mind. “Austin,” she blurted.
He looked taken aback by her outburst, and somewhat confused. “Pardon?”
She summoned as much confidence as she could and injected it into her voice. “My boyfriend, his name is Austin.” The threads of her white lie were taking on a decidedly black cast. Hell, since she’d incriminated Austin this much, she decided to go all the way and worry about the consequences later. “Austin McBride.”
Sliding off the edge of her desk, Louden straightened and glanced down with enough arrogance to make her uneasy. “Well, I suggest you give him a call and find out for certain if he’ll be attending the Christmas party with you. My secretary needs a firm head count by the end of today.”
Teddy watched Louden leave the office, and knew she’d backed herself into a corner. What she needed was her own personal fantasy man, a fake boyfriend who would establish territorial rights so Louden Avery would back off and see her as a professional, someone well qualified for that promotion. Austin McBride, fantasy for hire, was the man to help her accomplish that goal.
Drawing a deep breath, and hoping Austin could be persuaded to be her date for an evening, she reached for the phone and dialed the number she’d memorized from his business card. The line connected and rang, then a recorder clicked on.
“You’ve reached Fantasy for Hire,” Austin’s voice came over the line, just as deep and rich as she remembered. The sexy, masculine tones spread warmly through her, touching places that had been untouched for too long. “Leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.” A long beep followed.
“Hi, Austin,” she said, just as Louden walked back into her office, a file folder in his hand. Their gazes met from across the room, the interest in his eyes enough to tell her he’d heard her greeting. She had no choice but to finish her message to Austin.
She hadn’t counted on having an audience, and had only planned to leave a brief, impersonal message for Austin to return her call. Louden’s unexpected presence changed all that, forcing her to make up a believable monologue as she spoke.
“It’s, uh, Teddy,” she continued, while her mind latched on to an idea. “I’m calling about the Christmas party this Saturday. Have you decided to go? Since you’re not home, I guess we’ll talk about it tonight. We’re still on for drinks, right? I’ll see you at seven at the Frisco Bay.” She dropped her voice to a husky pitch, lowered her lashes coyly for Louden’s benefit and added, “And later on tonight I’ll wear that adorable Stetson you gave me for my birthday, as long as you promise to wear your chaps.”
She hoped that last intimate reference would serve a dual purpose—to give Louden the impression that she and Austin were, indeed, intimately involved, and to leave no doubt in Austin’s mind who, exactly, the caller was. Austin didn’t seem the type to forget a woman’s name, but she wasn’t taking any chances. The Stetson would identify her, if her name failed to spark his memory.
Whether or not he showed up to meet her was a whole other issue.
Her face burning at her brazenness, she hung up the phone, hoping Louden would mistake the heat scoring her cheeks as a lover’s glow.
Setting the file in her in-box on the corner of her desk, he stared at her for a long moment, making her uncomfortable. Even after hearing her one-sided conversation, he still didn’t believe her. She could see the doubt in his expression, could detect his skepticism in the set of his rigid posture.
Wanting to deflect his suspicion, she pasted on a smile. “He wasn’t home, but go ahead and tell Janet to add two more to the guest list.”
“Are you sure about that?” he asked, too quietly for her peace of mind.
She suspected his question went much deeper than her certainty about the party. “I’m sure. Go ahead and put Austin’s name down as my date. He’ll be there. I can be very…determined when it comes to something I want.” She shot one of his double-edged comments right back at him.
“Sometimes, determination isn’t enough,” he retorted meaningfully.
“He’ll be there.” She wished she felt as confident as she sounded. Truth was, she feared Austin would hear the message on his answering machine and write her off as a nutcase.
“Very well, then. I look forward to meeting the elusive Austin McBride.”
She folded her hands on top of her desk and met his gaze levelly. “He’s looking forward to meeting you, too.”
“W HERE HAVE YOU BEEN ? You were supposed to be home an hour ago.”
With a large, flat box tucked under one arm and his other wrapped securely around a green plastic container holding a small, wilting Douglas fir tree, Austin maneuvered his way through the front door of the old Victorian home he and his older brother, Jordan, had inherited when their parents died fourteen years ago. For the past eight years he’d occupied the house by himself, ever since Jordan had moved to Los Angeles to pursue his architectural career. Eight years of coming and going as he pleased, without worrying about accounting for his whereabouts.
Some habits, especially Jordan’s protective instincts toward his little brother, died hard. Jordan had always been the dependable, levelheaded one of them, but then he’d had the responsibility of raising a sixteen-year-old hellion thrust upon him when he, himself, should have been tasting freedom at the tender young age of eighteen. A huge obligation like that tended to make a man out of a child fairly quickly, and Jordan had taken the role of guardianship very seriously. Too seriously, Austin thought, refraining from the urge to remind his brother that he was a big boy and had proven that he could take care of himself.
