Cowboy Seeks Bride (24 page)

She did indeed find a black lacy teddy, but she put it back on the rack when she saw a flowing white gown trimmed in green velvet on a clearance rack. It was no doubt leftovers from Christmas, but she loved the feel of the cool cotton and all the little pin tucks on the yoke.

“That’s pretty damn sexy, ma’am,” he whispered.

She tiptoed and kissed him on the cheek. “I hope you think so when it’s hanging on me and not on the hanger. And now to the food. We’ll need snack stuff. Microwave popcorn. Beer. Cookies.”

“We’re only going to be here two days, darlin’, not a month.”

“Yep, and I plan to work up a helluva appetite in those two days.”

The lady behind the counter at the hotel didn’t snarl when Haley and Dewar pushed the door open, but they could see it took a lot of willpower for her not to do so.

“We’d like a room for two nights,” Dewar said.

“Sorry. We’re booked up except for one whirlpool king,” she said.

“We’ll take it. And could you tell me who makes the best pizza in town?”

“I’ll need ID and a credit card,” she said.

Dewar pulled out his wallet and laid both on the counter. “Pizza?”

“There’s a folder in the room with all the restaurants in town, but this is my favorite. It’s a little more expensive but it’s really good.” She handed him a brochure from under the counter with a menu and prices.

“Thank you.”

She pushed a paper in front of him and handed him a pen. “Breakfast is from six to ten in the morning right through those doors. Here’s your room key. Anything else?”

“That’ll do it,” Dewar said.

“Good,” Haley said. “Let’s go get our luggage.”

A wicked grin played at the corners of Dewar’s mouth. “You mean our saddlebags?”

“No, I mean our Walmart plastic bags.”

The woman pursed her lips in a tight little line.

As luck would have it, the six o’clock news came on the television in the lobby and the anchorwoman said, “And today, six cowboys and one cowgirl finished up a grueling monthlong reenactment of the Chisholm Trail cattle run as a prelude to a reality show that will air next spring. We’d hoped to interview them, but they came in earlier than expected and when we got here all we had to talk to was one longhorn bull and ninety-nine head of cattle. However, Dewar O’Donnell, the trail boss for the operation, told the manager of the feedlot that it had been a wonderful experience…”

“Aren’t you glad we got in early?” Haley said.

The woman behind the counter whipped the paper around and looked at Dewar’s signature and picked up the phone.

Dewar threw an arm around Haley’s shoulder and ushered her out to the parking lot. “I didn’t know they were putting it on the news.”

She was as fidgety as a sugared-up six-year-old after a day at Grandma’s house by the time Dewar popped open the trunk of the car. They both looked like laden-down pack mules when they went back inside the motel’s lobby.

“Do you need help with that?” the woman asked cheerfully.

“No, ma’am, we’ve got it,” Dewar answered.

Haley could hardly stand still as he pulled the room card from his pocket. She’d waited for this for a whole month and, like Christmas morning, it had finally arrived. But suddenly she was terrified that she hadn’t gotten the right cookies and the look on her face must have shown the fear.

“Is it not what you wanted? We can go somewhere else,” Dewar said quickly.

“No, it’s great. It’s perfect. Even if it didn’t have a whirlpool tub, it would be perfect.” She crossed the room and unloaded several bags on the desk and sunk down into a chair.

“No bouncing on the bed?” Dewar asked.

“I’m too dirty to flop out on a bedspread, and the look on my face wasn’t because this room isn’t good enough, Dewar. I was thinking about Christmas.”

He sat down on the sofa and propped his feet on the coffee table. “That’s a helluva long way from the end of April whether you go backwards or forwards.”

“I used to get so excited at Christmas. I couldn’t wait for it to arrive. I loved the presents and the tree and the pretty decorations and the dinner afterwards. Then the next day we flew down to Louisiana and I got to play with my cousins for a couple of days and visit with Granny Jones.”

“I thought your momma was a McKay?”

“She was. Granny is her grandmother. Her mother died when she was young and her grandmother raised her. But on Christmas I used to worry and worry about what kind of cookies to leave Santa Claus. That thought went through my mind when you opened the door. I wondered if I had chosen the right cookies at Walmart for us to snack on.”

Dewar left the sofa and kneeled beside the chair. Without touching her, he leaned forward and brushed a sweet kiss across her lips. “Darlin’, these next two days are going to be even better than Christmas, and Santa Claus is going to love whatever cookies you have.”

Her heart skipped a beat just like it did when she had opened the first present under the tree or when she’d stepped off the airplane to find her granny waiting beside the big outlandish twenty-year-old Caddy. Who said Christmas had to be in December?

He stood up and kicked off his boots. “I’m going for a shower. You can have the whirlpool and they’d better have a lot of hot water in this place.”

She jerked her boots off and tossed her socks on the pile of dirty clothing he was making beside the sofa. When he was completely undressed he padded naked to the bathroom. His nice firm butt was white, along with his legs, his back, and arms down to where his shirtsleeves ended. The rest, including his neck, was tanned to a rich brown.

She peeled her jeans and underpants down at the same time, then came out of her shirt and bra. She shut her eyes when she passed the mirror on the closet doors, but when she got into the bathroom she chanced a glance toward the mirror above the vanity and groaned. Her forehead had a line across it where the straw hat had sat day in and day out. Below the line was as brown as Dewar’s neck. Above it was lily white. The same with her arms. The area below the shirtsleeves matched her eyes, nose, and chin. Above that she was pale.

“Shit!” she mumbled. “I can wear long sleeves, but even makeup won’t cover this forehead.”

Dewar’s singing in the shower took her mind off the reflection in the mirror. It was an old Willie Nelson song, “You Were Always on My Mind.” She didn’t hear the words as much as she heard the deep timbre of Dewar’s voice.

She leaned down and adjusted the water in the tub and poured in a double dose of bubble bath, laid out a razor for her legs, which were a fright, along with shampoo and conditioner, and set the lotion on the vanity. Then she unbraided her hair and sunk down into the warm water.

She leaned back in the water, bubbles and all, and got her hair wet then lathered it up. Leaving the shampoo in her hair to do its job, she hummed along with the next song Dewar sang and shaved her legs.

“Luxury,” she said.

“What was that?” Dewar stepped out of the shower onto the bath mat. Dark hair plastered against his neck and hung in his eyes. He towel dried it and then combed it back with his fingers.

“Your hair has gotten long in a month,” she said.

“I like you better as a redhead.”

She looked at him with a question on her face.

“You’re a platinum blonde right now.”

She reached up to a head full of suds and smiled. “I’m glad you like the red hair.”

“Always have. Must be the Irish in me. Want me to rinse that out for you?” He wrapped the towel around his waist and picked up a glass. He knelt beside the tub and held the glass under the water, filling it time after time and pouring the warm water through her hair as his fingers worked the suds out.

“My God, that is sexy,” she said.

He kissed her on the neck right under her ear. “Yes, it is.”

She turned her face up to find his eyes half-shut and dreamy. His mouth found hers and the hunger in his kiss came close to boiling the bathwater.

“You ready to get out of here?” he whispered.

“Oh, yeah!”

He stood up and reached into the water, scooped her out, and set her on the vanity. He picked up a thick white towel and dried her hair.

“Dewar, this is heaven,” she said.

He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “Your skin is as soft as silk and I can’t ever seem to get enough of you.”

She gasped when he kissed her hard, picked her up, and carried her to the bed. He reached down with one hand and threw the covers back and laid her on the cotton sheets, then crawled in beside her, covering both of them with the top sheet and fluffy duvet. His lips found hers in another searing kiss and she snuggled as close to him as she could get.

Maybe if she melted her body into his he would never leave her, maybe the next two days would be the new
Groundhog
Day
, and she could relive them day after day until she died.

Her body had gone from hot to blazing with his kisses. Now that his hands were everywhere, the noise that came from her throat was almost as feral as that mountain lion had been the first night he kissed her. She tried to hold it back, but it was impossible. She wanted him worse than she ever had.

The vibrations shaking her insides into hot overflowing lava had already knocked any sanity or dignity out of her. She wanted him inside her. Right that minute. She didn’t want two hours of foreplay. She wanted to feel the heat of him on her and in her and she didn’t want to wait.

Her hips arched against him, against a hard erection, and he moaned. “God, Haley, slow down or…”

“I don’t want slow. I want fast, furious, and wild. Please, Dewar.” She pressed harder against him. “I’ve thought about this for two days.”

He drove into her but it only made things hotter. She’d never known such wild abandon heat existed. Not even a Texas wildfire could eat up as much pastureland as his thrust after thrust created in the pit of her belly.

Her wrists were above her head, held there firmly, and his mouth was on hers, demanding, tasting, and driving her to climax and then building another bonfire from nothing but ashes.

She squealed the second time the fire erased every thought from her mind except pleasure with Dewar. She heard him say something that sounded like her name and he let go of her hands, sunk his face into her neck, and groaned.

He ran a hand down her ribs and she instinctively arched against him again.

“More?” he asked.

“Not right now. My God, I have no bones. I’m just a puddle of satisfaction. I can’t even think.”

He started to roll to one side and she wrapped her legs around him to keep him where he was.

“No. Don’t go. Five more minutes. I like the way you feel on top of me.”

“You do have bones.” He kissed her tenderly, nibbling at her lip.

“But they are weak, so don’t fight me. Feel that warmth?”

“Need the air-conditioning adjusted?”

“No, it’s that magical stuff called afterglow. Don’t you just love it?”

“I thought the bed was on fire,” he teased.

She reached around and slapped his bare butt.

“Are we going kinky?”

She giggled. “Not me. I can barely keep up with you in conventional sex. It don’t get no better than this, darlin’.”

“You got that right, honey.”

His voice drifted off and his body relaxed. She felt him leave her as he rolled to one side and shut his eyes. It wasn’t a disappointment because it wasn’t a final good-bye. More like a wait-a-little-while and I’ll be back moment. She cuddled up next to him and slept.

A hard knock on the door awoke her and she reached for Dewar only to get a handful of nothing but sheets and pillow. She sat up, tucked the sheet under her arms, and looked around. Something wasn’t right. She didn’t remember drapes over the windows in the trailer.

The smell of pizza filled the room. She must be dreaming. Coosie could cook in the trailer kitchen with the propane, but he wouldn’t be making pizza for breakfast… and where did the bed come from?

The cobwebs cleared from her head when Dewar appeared wearing clean jeans and carrying a box of pizza in one hand and a six-pack of beer in the other.

“Sleeping Beauty has awakened,” he said.

“How long did we sleep? What time is it?”

“I woke up an hour ago and did the laundry. I checked in on you a couple of times, but you weren’t moving a muscle. I ordered pizza and offered the delivery boy extra money if he’d bring beer with it.”

“Best sex I ever had. Better than sleeping pills.” She smiled. “Give me five minutes.”

She dropped the sheet and made a beeline to the bathroom. There was toilet paper on the roller and an extra roll behind that, so she wasn’t sparing when she grabbed the cute little end folded into a point.

She took a fast shower, dried quickly, and donned the fresh lacy underwear and nightgown she’d hung on the back of the door before she got into the tub hours before. She looked in the mirror and whined like a two-year-old who’d lost her favorite blanket when she saw the half-white forehead. She drew down a feathering of bangs and sawed them off with the razor she’d shaved her legs with and looked again. They weren’t even but at least she didn’t look like a mutant skunk. She brushed out the rest of her naturally wavy hair and let it fall to her shoulders.

When she opened the door Dewar’s eyes widened and he sucked in enough air to whistle softly. “My God, you are beautiful.”

“It’s just a cotton gown,” she said.

“It’s sexy as hell and you look like an angel.”

“Thank you,” she said. “But this angel is starving.”

He twisted the lids off two bottles of beer and opened the pizza. “I didn’t know what you liked so I got a meat lovers.”

“My favorite.” She sat down beside him on the sofa, pulled her feet up under her, and let the ruffled tail of the gown float down to the floor.

“Wow!”

She looked up.

“You really do look like an angel, Haley.”

“Do you know what an angel is, darlin’?” Her eyes were more green than blue in the dim light of the lamp.

He shook his head.

She sipped the beer and said, “It’s a woman who’s had the hell screwed out of her. In that respect, I might be an angel.”

He laughed out loud and handed her a beer. “You drinking that, looking like you do, seems wrong. You should be drinking pure water straight from heaven.”

“Well, don’t be getting that picture fixed too firm in your mind because after we eat and let it settle a bit, I intend to hang this gown on that chair over there along with my halo and put on my horns again,” she teased.

Dewar laughed again and picked up a piece of pizza. He held it toward her mouth and she opened wide. He held it firmly until she’d bitten off a chunk at the pointed end and then he took the next bite.

“Food for the gods, so we might both be angels,” she said after she’d swallowed.