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Still, was this a good choice? She’d worked up logical criteria.
A: Choose a place that drew singles. She knew what happened in singles bars. Well, she’d heard what happened, anyway—that they were where people went for uninhibited fun, drinking, dancing … and other things.
B: Do what she was going to do before summer changed to autumn.
C: Actually, it had not occurred to her there might be a part C. But there was.
Do Not Prevaricate.
And she was prevaricating.
She put away her compact. Opened the door. Stepped from the car. Shut the door. Locked it. Opened her purse. Put her keys inside. Closed the purse. Hung the thin strap over the shoulder of her equally thin-strapped emerald-green silk dress, bought from the same consignment shop as the purse, the Neiman Marcus tag still inside.
Assuming you could call something that stopped at midthigh a dress.
She knew it was.
Girls on campus wore dresses this length.
You’re not a girl on campus, Jennie. And even when you were, back in New Hampshire, you never wore anything that looked like this.
And maybe if she had, she wouldn’t be doing this tonight. She wouldn’t have to be looking for answers to questions that needed answers, questions she was running out of time to ask …
“Stop,” she whispered.
It was time to get moving.
She took a breath, then started walking toward the entrance to the bar, stumbling a little in the sky-high heels she’d also bought at the consignment shop.
She was properly turned out, from head to toe, to lure the kind of man she wanted into her bed. Somebody tall. Broad-shouldered. A long, lean, buff body. Dark hair, dark eyes, a gorgeous face because if you were going to lose your virginity to a stranger, if this was going to be your One and Only sexual experience, Jennie thought as she put her hand on the door to the bar and pushed it open, if this was going to be It, you wanted the man to be …
Was that music?
It was loud. Very loud. What was it? She had no idea. Telling Tchaikovsky from Mozart was one thing. Telling rock from rock was another.
She caught her bottom lip between her teeth.
Maybe she was making a mistake.
Yes, the place was far from the university. She wouldn’t see anyone she knew, but what about the rest? Was it a singles
bar? Or was it—what did people call them? A tavern? A neighborhood place where people came to drink?
Such a dark street. Such an unprepossessing building. That neon sign, even the asphalt because now that she’d seen it, close-up, she could see that it was cracked …
That’s enough!
She’d talked herself out of a dozen other possibilities. She was not talking herself out of this one.
Chin up, back straight—okay, one last hand smoothing her hair, one last tug at her dress and she really should have chosen one that covered her thighs …
Jennie reached for the door, yanked it open …
And stepped into a sensory explosion.
The music pulsed off the walls, vibrated through the floor.
The smell was awful. Yeasty, kind of like rising bread dough but not as pleasant, and under it, the smell of things frying in grease.
And the noise! People shouting over the music. What sounded like hundreds of them. Not really; there weren’t hundreds of people at the long bar, at the handful of tables, but there were lots of them … And they were mostly male.
Some were wearing leather.
Maybe she’d made a mistake. Wandered into a gay …
No. These guys weren’t gay. They were—they were unattractive. Lots of facial hair. Lots of tattoos. Lots of big bellies overhanging stained jeans.
There were a few women, but that didn’t help. The women were—big. Big hair. Big boobs. Big everything.
People were looking at her.
Indeed they are, Genevieve. That’s what people do, when a woman all dressed up walks into a place like this.
Oh, God. Even her alter-ego thought she’d made a mistake!
Her heart leaped into her throat. She wanted to turn around and go right out the door.
But it was too late.
A man was walking toward her.
Not walking. Sauntering, was more accurate, his long stride slow and easy, more than a match for his lazy smile.
Her breath caught.
His eyes were dark. His hair was the color of rich, dark coffee. It was thick, and longer than a man’s hair should be, longer, anyway, than the way men in her world wore it, and she had the swift, almost overwhelming desire to bury her hands in it.
Plus, he was tall.
Tall and long and lean and muscled.
You could almost sense the hard delineation of muscle in his wide shoulders and arms and chest, and—and she was almost certain he had a—what did you call it? A six-pack, that was it. A six-pack right there, in his middle.
A middle that led down to—down to his lower middle.
To more muscle, a different kind of muscle, hidden behind faded denim …
Her cheeks burned.
Her gaze flew up again, over, what, all six foot two, six foot three of him. Flew up over worn boots, jeans that fit his long legs and narrow hips like a second skin, a T-shirt that clung to his torso.
Their eyes met.
Tall as she was, especially in the stilettos, she had to look up for that to happen.
He smiled.
Her mouth went dry. He was, in a word, gorgeous.
“Baby,” he said in a husky voice. “What took you so long?”
Huh?
Nobody knew she’d been coming here tonight. She hadn’t even known it herself, until she’d pulled into the parking lot.
“Excuse me?”
His smile became a grin. Could grins be sexy and hot? Oh yes. Yes, they could.
“Only if you ask real nice,” he said, and then, without any warning, she was in his arms and his mouth was on hers.
CHAPTER THREE
TRAVIS LIKED WOMEN.
In bed, of course. Sex was one of life’s great pleasures. But he liked them in other ways, too.
Their scent. Their softness. Those Mona Lisa smiles that could keep a man guessing for hours, even days.
And all the things that were part of sex …
He could never have enough of those.
He knew, from years of locker-room talk, that some men saw kissing as nothing but a distraction from the main event.
Not him.
Kissing was something that deserved plenty of time. He loved exploring a woman’s taste, the silken texture of her lips, the feel of them as they parted to the demand of his.
Women liked it, too.
Enough of them had mingled their sighs with his, melted in his arms, parted their lips to the silken thrust of his tongue to convince him—why not be honest?—that he was a man skilled at the act.
Tonight, none of that mattered.
The blonde was attractive—the ruse wouldn’t work if she weren’t—but there was nothing personal involved.
Kissing her was a means to an end, a way to get him out of a confrontation in a Dallas dive to a boardroom in Frankfurt without looking as if he’d gone ten rounds in a bar exactly like this one.
The key to success? He’d known he’d have to move fast, take her by surprise, kiss her hard enough to silence any protest.
With luck, she’d go along with the game.
Far more exotic things happened in bars everywhere than a man stealing a kiss.
Besides, a woman who looked like this, who walked into a place like this, wasn’t naive.
For all he knew, she was out slumming.
A kiss from a stranger might be just the turn-on she wanted.
And if she protested, he’d play to his audience, pretend it was all about her being ticked off at him for some imagined lover’s slight.
Either way, he wasn’t going to give her, or them, a lot of time to think about it.
He’d kiss her, then hustle her outside where he could explain it had all been a game and either thank her for her cooperation or apologize for what he’d done … or maybe, just maybe, she’d laugh and what the hell, the night was still young.
Bottom line?
Kissing her was all he had to work with, so he flashed his best smile, the one that never failed to thaw a woman’s defenses, reached out, put his arms around her, gathered her in …
Her eyes widened. She slapped both hands against his chest.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Travis showed her.
He captured her lips with his.
For nothing longer than a second, he thought he was home free. Sure, she stiffened against him, said “Mmmff” or something close to it, but he could work with that.
The problem?
She went crazy in his arms.
It would have done his ego good to think she’d gone crazy with pleasure.
But she hadn’t.
She went crazy the way he’d once seen his sister Em do when she’d bent down to pick up what she’d thought was a compact and found herself, instead, with a handful of tarantula.
The blonde in his arms jerked against him. Pounded his shoulders with her fists. Said that “Mmmff” thing again and again and again …
Somebody laughed.
Somebody said, “What the hell’s he doin’?”
Somebody else said, “Damned if ah know.”
