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INEXPLICABLY, A DELICIOUS shiver danced up Margot’s back, just like fingers running over bare skin then stopping at her neck, stroking until the fine hairs stood on heated end. And that wasn’t the only part of her body that responded; she went tight nearly everywhere, from her sensitized nipples to the clenching of her belly.
She also felt a sharp ache between her legs, but she chased it away.
She blew out a breath, wishing her stomach wasn’t all scrambled. Then she turned around to find the one and only Clint Barrows leaning off the edge of the bench seat, his arms resting on his thighs, his cowboy hat tipped back on his head.
A slow melt started inside her as she took in his grin. This wasn’t the college kid she remembered. Not exactly. The Clint Barrows who’d lured her to his room that one night had been cute—no doubts there—but now?
Now he had shoulders this wide under his white T-shirt. And his thighs hadn’t been so muscular under faded jeans. And there was some age to him—smile lines around his light blue eyes and hair that seemed to be an even thicker golden mess under his hat.
Like a fine bourbon, he’d aged well.
Damn him for looking so good. Damn her for feeling a little dizzy just from standing near him.
How...after all these years...?
And, after what he’d done?
“You’ve got some gall,” she said.
He laughed. “Because I’m saying hi?”
She just stared at him. Talk about thickheaded.
“Darlin’,” he said, clearly knowing that she was talking about the video. “Don’t go accusing me of anything. First off, I don’t have the time to be digging through old videos and sharing them with the world. Second, I destroyed that tape.”
“Well, then, I guess it magically came to life again and found itself a cozy home on YouTube. You’re in the clear, Stud.”
He laughed once more, smooth and low, and her clit gave a vicious little twist.
Oh, come on—she hadn’t gone without a man that long. Or maybe she had. Now that she thought about it, it’d been months. She’d been locked away, pounding out a draft of her most recent book, which had given her more trouble than most. The wildness and joy just didn’t come as easily as it used to. Maybe that’s why her book sale numbers were going down....
She lifted a finger at him. “If you’re not here to rub that video in, then why did you show up? I didn’t think reunions would be your scene.”
“Just call it a last-minute decision.”
Cryptic, and so Clint Barrows. And with that grin of his, she wanted to solve whatever mystery he was putting out there.
Or did she?
“Come on,” he said. “Why don’t you just sit down and talk about this.”
“Are you kidding? First, I don’t believe your story. Second, I think we’ll get along much better if I’m on one side of the room and you’re on the other.”
He sighed. “Have it your way, then. For now.”
For now?
Shaking her head, she grabbed her Fendi purse and got out the hand-worked leather wallet she’d bought in Florence once upon a time. Earlier, she’d told the girls she would be taking care of the bar tab, even though she wasn’t sure she could afford many flights of generosity like this in the future.
“So about those baskets...” Clint said.
Once a tease, always a tease.
“Don’t even start.”
“Start what? If you recall, there’re things I start that you have a problem ending.”
“See? Rubbing it in. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist.”
“Give me a chance here, Shakespeare.”
Her libido gave another hot jerk. She’d liked how he used to call her English author names the few times they’d actually talked during parties. He’d amused her—and she’d been turned on that a cowboy had known his literature, to tell the truth.
But that was before she’d found out he’d only wanted to set her up for an adolescent joke.
“You think this is all so funny,” she said.
He sobered and, for a second, she thought he was actually being sincere.
“I don’t think it’s a bit funny. But—”
She slapped her cash on the table and left, even while every cell in her body was pulling her toward his booth, vibrating with the curiosity she hadn’t been able to fully appease on that long-ago night.
But if there was one thing Margot would guard until the end, it was pride.
Luckily, that’s when she heard her name being called from the other side of the bar.
A group of fraternity brothers, including Dani’s fiancé, Riley, had just walked in, and she recognized her ex-boyfriend Brad among them.
Or, at least, she thought she did.
He looked like one of the businessmen at the bar—creased khakis and a crisp, long-sleeved shirt. His dark hair was neatly trimmed, unlike a certain cowboy’s that looked as if he turned tail and ran every time a barber came near.
Brad lifted a hand in greeting to her, giving her a friendly smile. He didn’t seem to care about the video. None of them did, maybe because Riley had told them to back off during their golf game.
Margot waved back, then waited for the rush of heat to swamp her horny body, just as it had with Clint.
Waiting...
Waiting...
It only happened again when she heard Clint’s voice behind her.
“You’d best go to Brad,” he said. “Good ol’ dependable Brad....”
She felt Brad watching her from across the room, and she didn’t want to give him the impression that she was taking up where she’d left off in that video with Clint Barrows.
“You can walk away now,” Clint said. “But I’ll be seeing you later.”
“Dare to dream,” she said over her shoulder.
And she left him with that, his laughter skimming across her skin, heating her to blazing for no good reason she could think of.
Except for the million and one tongues of flame licking at her, daring her to turn around and scratch the itch that’d never quite gone away.
* * *
CLINT WATCHED HER leave, enjoying the sway of her hips beneath her tight pants, which were tucked into high boots, giving her the kind of flair you’d normally see with a hoity-toity princess out for a ride on an English saddle.
He’d always been a legs and ass man and, thanks to those clothes, both were on cock-teasing display with Margot Walker.
She got to him in a lot of ways, with her long, layered dark brown hair that was somehow classy and gypsylike at the same time. With pale sea-hued eyes that always seemed to be shining with a sense of humor that also came out in her carefree laugh. Her delicate features—a slightly turned-up nose, high cheekbones, a heart-shaped face—reminded him of one of the wood fairy figurines that his mom used to keep on the top shelf in the family room. Statues that had stayed there even years after she’d died, when Clint was just learning to break in horses.
Dignified, delicate, yet slightly wild. That was Margot Walker to a T.
Something fisted in his gut, reminding him of how much he’d wanted her ten years ago. The smart girl who knew how to put down the books and have fun. The life of every party, who lit up a room just by walking into it.
And that was the exact reason he’d been over the moon when she’d come up to his room with him that night.
The thing of it was, he’d genuinely been aiming to watch a movie with her, since they’d been chatting about The Untouchables down at the party and he’d owned a copy.
Her willingness to be alone with him had stunned him, because Margot had always seemed untouchable herself, the only girl who never gave him the time of day...until she’d let down her guard in his room.
At first, he’d sat a decent distance from her on that Naugahyde couch. But, slowly, they’d gotten closer, as if attraction had pulled them together like magnets. And by the time Kevin Costner and Andy Garcia went to the train station to intercept a witness for their case against Al Capone, his gaze was on Margot, not the screen.
And she had been watching him, too, with a softness in her eyes he’d never seen before.
“God help you if you tell anyone about this,” she said before they’d come together.
He’d never been swept away by a girl before, but this one night, it’d happened. And as they kissed—her breath in his ear as she whispered his name—he’d thought that this was it. Margot Walker was the one woman who could make him think there was no one else, just as his dad had thought the same about his mom when they were both alive.
Then, unbeknownst to him, she’d seen the camera, and before he could ask what had gotten her so upset, she’d slapped him, pulled her shirt together, angry as hell, and bolted out of the room without telling him what was wrong.
As confused as he was, he hadn’t gone after her.
And he hadn’t noticed the camera hidden in the corner.
Soon afterward, he’d gone back down to the party to see if she was still there, but she’d left him in the dust, wondering what he’d done.
It wasn’t until the next morning, when his roommate, Jay Halverson, the fraternity historian, couldn’t hold it in any longer, that he found out what’d happened: Jay had seen Clint downstairs, making inroads with the one girl who’d always eluded him. He’d bet that Clint would pull through and bring her back to his room and that the moment should be recorded for the brotherhood’s posterity.
Clint’s blood had been boiling, but when Jay had cued up the video and shown it to him, they’d come to blows. As collateral damage, the video was decimated, smashed to pieces.
But it didn’t matter, because Jay had already made a copy and had given it to some of his friends to watch.
Of course, Margot had sent Clint an email about it that night but he hadn’t seen the message until after the fight with Jay. The content was curt and crisp, barely hiding the hurt that he knew she must’ve felt. He’d written back that he’d destroyed the tape, leaving out the part where Jay had actually been the one who’d filmed her. But she never answered.
Especially after the video made its way from the TV of one fraternity member to the next.
The copy was never found and, for more reasons than the video, Jay was eventually blackballed. But that didn’t give Clint another chance with Margot. It didn’t make him forget her, either, as he ran the cutting horse ranch he loved just a half hour away from Avila Grande, California, and their alma mater.
As he sat in that booth now, watching her walk to Brad, he thought how sad it was that he’d actually come to understand why Margot had reacted the way she did: she didn’t intend to be just an item on a list, or a person a man would forget when he moved on to the next girl. She’d never been merely one of the crowd, and she’d gone out and proved it to the world with that sophisticated career of hers.
And she hadn’t wanted to be the fool, caught on tape as Clint “conquered” her.
Who would?
Seeing her today, a disturbingly hot woman who grabbed him and twisted him inside out, Clint was fascinated all over again. Not that she’d given him the chance to explain, but he’d come to this reunion for one reason and one reason only.
To set matters straight and make it up to her.
He hadn’t planned on coming, not when there was so much going on with his younger twin brothers and the ranch. But when he’d been told the video had found new life on YouTube, he’d blown a gasket, immediately sending an email to his fraternity brothers saying that if they razzed Margot about it this weekend, they’d answer to him.
So far, it looked like they were respecting his requests. Margot stood at the bar with Brad Harrington, laughing and pushing a hank of that stylish gypsy hair away from her face. She was saying hi to the group that had just walked into the dark-wooded room. From this distance, it was pretty obvious that Brad was being amiable enough, but...
Could it be that he wasn’t really in to her?
Nah. Clint couldn’t imagine a red-blooded male anywhere within the boundaries of the U.S. of A. who wouldn’t be eating up her charms.
As Clint toyed with his shot glass, one man broke away from the crowd and moved toward the booth. Clint nodded in greeting to Riley Donahue, then stood to shake his hand just as the waitress came with the other whiskies he’d ordered.
“Took you long enough to get here,” Clint said.
“We were having too much fun. You should’ve come with us.”
“Golf’s not my game.” Again, he stole a glance at Margot, who’d taken a seat on a bar stool and was leaning toward Brad. From here, he could see her sweater gaping open, revealing a gut-punching hint of black bra. Her breasts were round and full, pressed into smooth globes by the tight lace.
He could feel himself getting hard, and he pulled his gaze away. “How’s the life of a happy bachelor?” he asked Riley instead.
Riley, who’d also pledged with Clint and become a good friend, ran a hand through his short black hair. “Happy? I guess you must not have heard the news.”
He wasn’t talking about getting married, seeing as Riley and Dani had been engaged for about a year. They’d been friends until they’d “awakened,” or some such greeting-card crap, one day and really “seen” each other.
Fairy tales, Clint thought. His parents had had a lot of great years together, but it’d just never happened for him. Then again, it wasn’t as if he’d ever wanted to settle down. He’d grown up as a lone wolf while his brothers had depended on each other, forming their own inner circle and keeping him out, and he’d been the same way with everyone else, especially women.
The true love of his life had always been the ranch—a paradise invaded by twin snakes, aka his own flesh-and-blood siblings. Funny how he’d found much better brothers, like Riley, away at college.
Clint made himself comfortable in the booth. “Oh, I’ve certainly heard the news. I’ve already heard more than I bargained for about the auction.”
Margot telling Dani and Leigh about her basket... The sparkly stars that would be a sure sign that it was hers...
But she meant the damn thing for someone else, so why was he even dwelling on it?
Because there are definitely at least eighty ways you could get around her, he thought. And he could guarantee that she enjoyed every one of them, making up lost time with her.
Saying sorry about that tape in every way he could.
Riley spoke, his voice edged with mild frustration. “The guys were all over me about this auction when we were playing golf. I guess the girls’ email loop got everyone talking before we got here and Dani didn’t know it. Nothing like finding out that everyone is swimming in your personal business. I damn well hope Dani put an end to it this afternoon.”
