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She hadn’t meant to say that much, but it’d come out, anyway.
His voice was low and, again, seemingly genuine. “I’m truly sorry about that, Margot.”
She didn’t like the way he said her name. Or, more to the point, she did like it. Way too much.
She turned to him, chin a notch higher than usual. “So what do you want to tell me? That Jay Halverson was behind all the camera stuff back in college? Because I’ve heard it all from Riley over the years.”
“And you didn’t believe him.”
She only shrugged. She didn’t owe him the truth.
Had she started to enjoy thinking he was the bad guy? Did it give her some kind of excuse to stay away?
His peace-offering grin stroked over her, and her heart lost a beat.
She girded herself. “Next thing you know, you’ll be telling me that Jay posted that video last night.”
“He did.”
Okay, then. Mystery solved. “I guess that settles the score.”
She started to leave.
“Not so fast.” He’d lowered his voice to a sexy timbre, making her wonder why the hell she had her sights set on Brad, who was already in his room.
But she knew the answer. Brad was a known quantity, and maybe she needed someone safe this weekend, even as she imagined him part of some big adventure with her basket. Mild-mannered Brad had never broken her trust or given grist to the gossip mill with a video.
It’d bothered her more that her privacy had been violated, and especially that she’d been filmed with the playboy who’d had every other girl except her, it seemed.
Before she knew it, Clint had reached out, gently taking hold of her sweater, near the bottom. It gaped away from her body, the air like a caress, tickling her belly.
No, make that tickling her everywhere, especially in the last place she wanted Clint Barrows to be.
But she ached there, too, between her legs. Ached so badly.
He must’ve sensed that, because he tugged her closer. As the night breathed under the cashmere, she let go of her suitcase and stumbled toward him, close enough to smell the hay and clover on his clothing and skin.
The pure masculinity of him—the clean scent, the knowledge that there was muscle under his own shirt, so close, just a touch away—spiked desire through her.
“I’m going to make it all up to you,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.”
She swallowed at his bold comment. A melting, lazy pull of sensation stretched in her, creating friction until there were sparks flaring in her stomach.
“You can’t make up for what’s been done,” she said breathlessly.
He laughed, soft and low. “Sure I can. And in eighty ways, too.”
Great—he must’ve overheard what the tag would be on her auction offering.
She grabbed his hand and tried to pull it away from her sweater. “That basket’s not for you.”
She realized her mistake right away, because beneath her palm and fingers, his skin was well worked, manly, strong. The feel of it fired a need through her that she hadn’t realized was there, and it made her go even wetter for him.
“So you’re saving yourself for another man,” he said, twining his fingers through hers.
Oh, God, even such a simple connection sent the adrenaline racing through her, awakening her completely.
“Margot,” he said softly. “You’re being real difficult about this when it should be so easy.”
But it wasn’t. Not even close. Giving in to Clint Barrows was unthinkable at a reunion where everyone was just waiting for him to finally nail the one girl who’d slipped through his fingers.
Still, when he slid his other hand to her hip, massaging it with his thumb, she almost gave in.
She’d had too much to drink, she told herself. And she’d been lonely for the first time in her life because she was facing things she’d never faced before. All of that added up to a vulnerable Margot, and when he moved his hand to her backside, cupping her derriere, she sucked in a harsh breath.
“Just hear me out,” he said.
Yes. It was on the tip of her tongue. It was screaming in her head, pulling her toward him even as she tried to stay away.
But it wasn’t going to happen, because she still had a little something called pride.
“I’ve listened enough,” she said.
She stepped away and grabbed her suitcase handle again, the wheels reverberating over the blacktop just as loudly as an unexpected, almost overwhelming hunger rumbled through her.
* * *
BY THE NEXT morning, Margot hadn’t heard from Brad, and she told herself that it was still early—they had plenty of time before the auction.
And it wasn’t as if she was depending on him for the best good time ever, anyway. She’d had pretty decent fun last night after she’d unpacked her suitcase, then met Leigh and Dani again in the café, where they’d caught up with other sisters who had offered solace about the video. That hadn’t surprised Margot, because everyone but the biggest prudes had backed her up years ago when the first one had gone public.
Naturally, Margot had done her best to avoid the questions about future books and how well her sales were doing, all the while wondering if the concierge had gotten ahold of Brad yet with the “this is what my basket looks like” note and its less-than-subtle invitation to bid on it.
But there’d been some moments last night—a lot of them, actually—when she’d found her mind on someone else.
The cowboy with the cocky grin.
The man who’d used his sexy voice in the parking lot as if he were fully confident she was going to succumb to his supposedly irresistible charm.
Right.
She rolled out of bed, the digital clock on the nightstand blazing 9:00 a.m. in the dim room, darkened by the pulled heavy curtains. And when she glanced at the phone, the message light was dark, too, staring back at her blankly.
No calls.
But dammit all if she was going to bug the concierge by asking him if he’d even delivered the note to Brad.
Jeez, now she was wondering if it’d been such a good idea in the first place....
At least Leigh had told her last night that her note was a perfect prologue to her basket. Very old-school. And, hey, what guy wouldn’t be interested in that kind of message?
Margot cracked the curtains, squinting at the sunlight. She smiled when she saw the wide tomato fields and the pine trees lining the nearby open road.
Unfortunately, her gaze then went to the parking lot, where she saw Clint Barrows’s faded blue Dodge truck lounging next to her little Prius.
Why did it seem as if even his pickup was ready to devour her car?
Rubbing her arms, she wandered to the bathroom, turning on the shower, stripping off her long nightshirt. The second the heated mist whispered over her skin, she tightened with goose bumps, imagining that she heard a voice, soft and low, whispering quiet apologies to her.
Clint Barrows’s apologies.
Just hear me out, he’d said last night in the parking lot, when she’d known he meant so much more.
She stepped into the shower, hoping the water would wash her into a sane place. But as it sluiced over her, she imagined his hand on her hip, just like last night when he’d been bold enough to touch her.
Yet, now, there were no clothes between them, and as she closed her eyes, the uninterrupted flutter of water against her became his fingers, and she felt them ease to her belly, a fleeting butterfly touch.
You’re being real difficult about this when it should be so easy....
She leaned forward, bracing her hands against the tile wall. The water gently ran down her body, slipping over her thighs, in between her legs.
Wantonly, she opened them a little, loving the sensation as it skimmed over her clit.
The water became his fingers again, finding just the right spot, her breath quickening right along with her heartbeat.
You used to be a risk taker, she heard him tell her, as if they were talking again. The butterfly wings on her body traveled inward, beating in her belly, electric and tickling, making her bite her lip.
So why’re you set on safe, boring Brad?
Why not go for this new direction?
She took her hand from the wall, trailed it between her breasts, down her stomach to her pulsing center. Sliding her fingers through her cleft, she massaged herself, thinking of Clint.
At least, with Brad, they’d had a summer together. And when they’d returned to college, after the bloom had faded off their little affair, they had floated away from each other, going different ways.
It’d all been perfectly safe with Brad, just as it could be this weekend. No deception, no videos.
But, as she touched herself, the water caressing her, the mere thought of that unpredictability sent a jolt through her, making her breath catch.
Wet. Excited. And every time she circled her clit with her thumb, imagining that it was Clint touching her, her temperature rose. The heat pushed her up, up, tighter and tighter, until a tiny series of impending explosions quivered in her.
She fought the first one, pressing herself forward against the wall....
Then the second, as it rolled through her, shake by contained shake....
But the third—
She started to give in to it for the first time in months, slipping down the wall as blasts of sensation seized her, making her gasp just before she let go with one long, hard inhale...then...
As the water ran over her—just water now—she groaned, aching.
Still aching.
And hardly knowing just what it was anymore that she really wanted.
4
AFTER THE PREGAME party and the homecoming football match itself, the reunion moved to Main Street, to the back room of Dani’s favorite hangout in Avila Grande.
Desperado’s was one of those country joints that was marked by the smell of hops and fried food every time you walked through its swinging doors and hit the planked floor. On the walls above the bar were deer antlers, a buffalo head and a menu that showcased Rocky Mountain Oysters—a dish that Dani didn’t have the stomach for once Leigh and Margot had told her that the name was actually a euphemism for bull-calf testicles.
Ah, yes, good old Desperado’s, where the Valley’s farm and ranch kids had hung out, where music had always been 100 percent country, the beer cheap and the food rugged and, as it turned out, disgusting.
But the moment Dani had strolled in with Riley tonight, greeted by the thud of hip-hop and the sight of undergrads doing everything but the two-step on the small dance floor, it was obvious things had changed.
“So it’s come to this,” Dani said as she and Riley left the main room and made their way through the slim lantern-lit corridor toward the back, where the auction was scheduled to start in an hour. “Desperado’s is now pure evil.”
“Evil?” Riley rested a hand on the back of her neck, cupping it. “Strong word, Dan.”
“Okay, maybe not evil, then. It’s just...” She motioned toward the dance floor and almost flinched at the loud music, which was making them raise their voices. “I miss how it used to be.”
He guided her to the side of the corridor. No one else was there right now—they were early. And when he leaned back against the wall, putting his hands on her jeaned hips, pulling her to him, her heart jittered. But it was always that way when she looked into Riley’s deep blue eyes.
“I don’t like it, either,” he said. “But things never stay the same. Not anywhere.”
“I guess I’m just getting old and cranky.” She’d also felt that way before the game, while walking around campus. Dressed in her old Cal-U sweatshirt against the fall chill in the air, she’d felt like a grandma next to all the students running around, their lives ahead of them as they dreamed of success. “Everything just seems so...corporate. Cal-U used to be small, homier. Now it’s—”
“Trendier than hell. I noticed.”
He bent forward, kissing her forehead, and they stayed like that for a few seconds, his breath stirring her hair, infiltrating her, just as it had ever since she’d glanced up one day on a sorority/fraternity reunion cruise five years ago that neither Leigh nor Margot had signed up for. That’s when she’d seen Riley giving her that look—one she’d never noticed before. It was the look of a friend who had apparently been thinking some extremely more-than-buddies thoughts without her even knowing it until that moment.
It had changed her world, changed her mind.
But it hadn’t changed either of them.
Or so she’d believed. It hadn’t occurred to her that change was everywhere except in her until last night, when Margot and Leigh had sprung this auction on her.
She held on to Riley, her hands wrapped in the bottom of his long, untucked shirt, cocooned there. After last night, she’d started wondering just how people perceived her—had always perceived her.
Was she someone in need of rescuing? A pitiful dreamy princess who’d been defined all her life by one goal and one goal only?
To be the ultimate bridezilla?
Just...wow. And, the thing was, Dani feared that her friends were right. What had she done with herself all these years besides get a job as lead caterer for someone else’s company? What true ambitions had she possessed?
She’d always looked up to Margot—and who hadn’t? Margot led the pack, getting them into trouble while watching over them at the same time. Dani loved her friend’s independence, her go-get-’em approach to life. And the same went for Leigh, who had overcome a tragic childhood filled with sadness after the accidental drowning of her sister. Leigh had also struggled with her weight when she was younger, but now she was as svelte as Margot and just as successful a businesswoman. And what was Dani?
Down the corridor, she heard a door close, and she caught a peek of Margot, dressed as stunningly as ever in what looked to be an Ann Taylor leather jacket, a pencil skirt and high boots as she made a beeline for the back room. She was carrying an iPad, probably to keep track of the baskets that had already been dropped off, and she didn’t see Dani and Riley as she disappeared.
