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Then Candace started clapping and whooping, welcoming the players.
“Rock and roll!” Candace said over her bare shoulder, winking at Nicki while she left.
And there was no doubt she was going to have the time of her life as she sashayed toward the dance floor. After Candace whispered in the lead guitarist’s ear, he slid a grin to her.
Next thing Nicki knew, the band had ripped into a Def Leppard song and Candace was dancing in the middle of the floor, luring just about every male eye in the county.
Nicki took the opportunity to commune with her beer. Another sip, the coolness slipping down her throat, spreading warmth as she kept scanning the room. For a minute she forgot all about tomorrow’s meeting with the corporate rep and let her mind wander to what Candace had been talking about.
What would it be like to let herself go?
The more the music played, the more Nicki reveled in the corset pushing up her breasts, hugging her waist. The more she could imagine a man’s fingers undoing the lacings…
Fantasy.
It kicked in as she imagined a cowboy coming into a Western bar through the half-doors, the dusty street shadowed behind him, leaving him in tall, rugged silhouette as he stood in the entrance, finding her with his gaze.
A gaze that looked like Shane’s…always.
Her tummy flipped as she imagined the thud of his boots on the planked floor, the way his steps would slow as he approached her….
The song ended and everyone applauded, bringing Nicki back to rights.
She drank more beer, intending to put this fire out.
And that’s when she saw him.
An actual tall man sauntering into the room, a black cowboy hat set low over his brow, showing only a strong chin and full lips. An outlaw, from his long-sleeved shirt and his dark vest and jeans, to the silver-tipped black leather of his boots. Lean and mean. Just below his cocky grin, a kerchief bunched, as if he was ready to go out and rob a train, just like Jesse James.
Heat trailed from Nicki’s chest and downward, through her belly, spreading even lower than that as she felt a pitter-pat between her legs.
How would he react if she wandered away from the safety of the bar to get herself into his line of sight?
As the band took up an old standard—“Slow Ride”—the outlaw ambled toward a group of town girls dressed as Playboy bunnies and buxom cheerleaders. They welcomed him with smiles and giggles while he hooked his thumbs into his belt loops, as if they’d already met him.
Was he visiting someone in Pine Junction? Or was he a new ranch hand on one of the spreads and Nicki hadn’t seen him in town yet?
The corset pressed against her breasts, reminding her that they were more on display than she’d ever allowed before. But you know what? Her breasts did look pretty good, if she said so herself.
She watched the outlaw flash a hot-as-all-get-out smile to his harem of women. One of them stood on her tiptoes and stole his hat from his head, leaving his dirty-blond hair ruffled. His playful smile sent the contingent of fools into more laughter, and it did something foolish to Nicki, too.
A sharp ache settled in her sex, pounding.
He kept smiling, and something familiar knocked at her chest.
A reassuring smile she’d seen years and years ago, just before a boy had helped her to her feet, her body still smarting from the breath-jarring fall she’d taken from the fence.
The hero underneath the bad-boy reputation.
Shane Carter—and he was all man now.
As if he felt her watching him, he caught her gaze, sending that piercing heat between her legs to a twist of agony. When he tipped his hat to her, Nicki wondered if he recognized the cowgirl next door, or if all he saw was…
A saloon girl.
A sex goddess who was making him grin as he swept an appreciative glance over her.
When she turned back around to the bar, she almost dropped her beer. Her hands were shaking because of the adrenaline rush, the tremors in her belly.
She’d been, what, fifteen when he’d left? Then his father had passed on from that heart attack around the time her own parents had died, and Shane’s older brother, Tommy, had run the Slanted C. Supposedly, ever since then, Shane had been somewhere in the vicinity of Dallas, working on some cutting horse ranch.
But he was back now.
And, from the looks of it, he was painting the town red, just as she would’ve expected the rebellious son of the Slanted C to do.
Maybe connecting gazes with him had thrown Nicki for a loop, because her heart was beating like the drums in the wild country song that the band was now playing. Bang, bang, bang. She tried not to think about the breadth of his shoulders under that dark shirt, his waist tapering into lean hips, the long legs ending in those bad boy boots.
Then again, maybe his appeal was just in the costume. Maybe she was just thinking too much about those fantasies Candace had been talking about.
Nicki’s body pitter-patted again, demanding that she turn around to look at him one more time.
But when she heard a deep voice right behind her, she startled, surprise jabbing her all over.
“Look who’s all dressed up.”
A low, dark drawl.
When Nicki glanced over her shoulder, he was there, so close that she could see the stubble emerging on his cheeks and jawline and smell the lime of the shaving cream he must’ve used.
He was near enough that Nicki could also see the slight cleft in his chin, the dark blue of eyes that boasted lashes that had no right to be on a man.
Her stomach lifted and then somersaulted. A foreign feeling, like it’d never happened to her before. Or as if it’d never happened with this kind of force.
“You recognized me?” she asked loudly, over the music. Somehow, she sounded just like a saloon girl, a little too saucy, a lot interested.
“Sure I recognized you,” he said over the song.
Then, to her shock, he reached out, touched a curl that had sprung from her upswept hairdo. Near his fingers, the skin on her neck tingled, sending a shower of awareness over her chest, through her belly, ending in an even more intense drill of lust below the belt.
He added, “No one’s got hair like this.”
He let go of her root beer–colored curl, even though it seemed as if he didn’t really want to.
Or was she imagining that?
“So…” she said over the band’s music.
He had to take off his hat, then lean in to hear, and the intimacy kept her body thudding and bumping. Damn, he smelled good, like he’d just gotten out of the shower. Her lips throbbed from being so close to his cheek.
“You’re back on the ranch?” she added.
He nodded, turning his face toward her so he could answer. When he spoke, he warmed her ear, making her realize that his mouth was only a kiss away.
“Tommy recently left with his family for greener pastures with his wife’s family in east Texas,” he said. “And my mom’s off visiting my aunt in Oklahoma for a while.”
“You’ve taken over?”
“I suppose I have.”
He sounded amused by the turn of events, but something in his tone also hinted of a darker reason for his return to Pine Junction.
But before she could ask about that, he’d already gone back to being that outlaw, one thumb hooked through a belt loop, his gaze lowered as he moved to speak in her ear again.
“Rumor has it that you’re looking to do business with an out-of-towner.”
Something took a nosedive in her chest. This didn’t sound like flirting any more.
“A neighbor’s business is always my business,” he said, “especially if it concerns the introduction of dudes.”
Definitely not flirting.
So much for fantasy. Shane Carter had come across the room to merely talk business to his next-door neighbor.
And you know what? It made Nicki bristle, because she knew that, in his eyes, she still had to be the little-sister type to him, the girl in pigtails he’d protected from his father’s anger once upon a time.
That wasn’t her anymore, especially tonight of all nights.
“Do you think city people are going to pollute Pine Junction?” she asked. “Is that what you’re afraid of, Carter?”
“I have my concerns, seeing as your land borders my family’s. Do you have any idea how selling out to a dude operation is going to change the tenor of the town?”
Selling out. That stung, mostly because she had thought good and hard about it. But, the truth was, plenty of Pine Junction’s citizens were just as hard up for money as she was. In fact, she was in competition with some of the other ranches for the investment firm’s favor, and their representative would be making visits to some of their spreads, too.
“Is that why you came back?” she asked, leveling her tone. “To make sure a dude resort won’t cheapen Pine Junction with spas and four-star restaurants?”
“That’s one among many reasons.”
His jaw had gone tight. Her heartbeat punched up, and hyperactive butterflies flew through her belly.
Then he ran another long gaze down Nicki, as if taking a different view of her.
Her skin flamed as his slow gaze turned into something much more, roaming right back up her body, leaving a trail of tingling, addictive shivers in his wake.
Nicki’s sex clenched, priming itself for something it hadn’t had in a long time.
The tingles blazed upward, sending prickles of heat through her—like flames eating their way out from under her skin. Beneath her bodice, her nipples went sensitive, peaking, and she wanted to be touched as thoroughly as she’d been looked at.
Then Shane raised an eyebrow, as if she’d totally misinterpreted his glance, and her reverie shattered into a thousand heartbreaking pieces.
This wasn’t a fantasy at all, and that’s what she’d always been afraid of with Shane.
2
AS NICKI WADE WALKED away from Shane, he almost stopped her.
Almost.
When Shane had first seen her across the room, he hadn’t actually recognized her. His body had only reacted to a punch of lust straight to the gut at the sight of a slender, toned woman in a sexy dress, her curls swept up into a bohemian mass, one corkscrew escaping to tickle a long, seductive neck.
He hadn’t been able to glance away, his groin thudding with every kick of his pulse.
Then…
Then he’d seen little Nicki Wade under the surface.
Nicki, who used to wear that crazy hair of hers in pigtails…until one day.
Shane remembered something now—a time just before he’d left Pine Junction. A day when he’d done a double take at her.
She’d been with her friends at the annual spring rodeo, and it’d been the first time he’d seen her with her hair down. A glimpse of who she’d be one day set off a burst of attraction in him that he’d quickly tamped down. After all, she was Nicki Wade and she was fifteen, way too young for a guy on the edge of graduation—a guy who spent too much time being watched by the sheriff because of drag racing and hell raising.
A guy too fast for a sweet girl like her.
He’d forgotten all about that until now. But it didn’t matter so much. Shane would be damned if he didn’t tell her what he thought about getting too cozy with that skunk of a business that had contacted him just this morning about his own family ranch, the Slanted C.
Shane had laughed off the representative, a man named Russell Alexander. What made Alexander think that the Carters would be interested in converting their spread into a dude resort? The businessman hadn’t come right out and said it, but Shane had the feeling the guy knew that the Slanted C was in just as much trouble as the Square W+W.
And here Shane had thought he’d been doing so well in hiding that fact. No one in town realized just how far Tommy and his idiotic get-rich-quick investments had put the ranch in jeopardy. To make matters worse, the recession had taken every penny Shane had in savings, and his family was already in loans up to their necks—not that he’d ever let anyone know. If there was one thing Shane had always been, it was proud, and he knew he could be more of a man than his dad or Tommy; he would be the one to get the Slanted C turned around. But he would also do it for his mom’s sake, since the ranch had come from her side of the family and he was bound and determined to make sure she had the home she’d grown up in and loved for the rest of her life.
And he wasn’t about to go dude to accomplish any of that.
He could almost hear his father browbeating him because, somehow, he would’ve found a way to blame Shane for this entire mess: Didn’t I teach you any business sense, you moron? Don’t you have one lick of smarts in that head of yours?
Tommy’s part in it wouldn’t have mattered: Shane was the one whom his dad expected to help out on the ranch, like any good son. And Barry Carter would’ve probably even ignored how Shane’s older brother had left Pine Junction with his tail between his legs, retreating to his wife’s family for some support.
Maybe Shane was just meant to take the brunt of everything, as he’d done whenever Dad let his anger get the better of him with Mom. Taking the brunt back then had been instinctive, a protective urge that he’d hidden well from most everyone except his family.
It hadn’t been anyone’s business but the Carters’, anyway, yet taking the brunt had forged him into a man early.
Very early.
His gaze was still on Nicki as she wove through a crowd of cowboys, away from him.
Yeah, he was sorry, so then why couldn’t he just come out and say that he’d projected his disappointment in himself onto her? Why couldn’t he admit that he hated that he’d actually been entertaining the thought of accepting Russell Alexander’s interest in the Slanted C, even though it made him feel beaten?
Because Shane couldn’t admit that he was down before the fight had even begun, couldn’t allow everyone to already see him for the failure his father had always accused him of being.
The band had paused in their song list, and the lead singer apologized, saying they had a broken guitar string. He chattered to the crowd about all the costumes he saw in the room while they waited for a replacement guitar.
