Only Skin Deep

“I Never Thought I'd See The Day When I'd Be Entertaining Travis Banks In My Bedroom,” Lauren Said.

“Why not?”

“Need I remind you that when you were a senior in high school, you couldn't be bothered to give a little nobody freshman like me the time of day?”

Travis looked as if he were taxing his memory. “I don't recall you ever asking me for it.”

“I didn't have the nerve,” Lauren admitted.

“Actually, I do vaguely recall you just about melting into the floor the few times I tried to make eye contact with you.”

“I'm afraid you still have the same effect on me,” she confessed.

“You have a different effect on me now.”

Travis's voice was laden with palpable implications. Lauren could not have dreamed a more delicious scene than the one that was unfolding right now.

Now was not the time for caution.

Dear Reader,

This May, Silhouette Desire's sensational lineup starts with Nalini Singh's
Awaken the Senses
. This DYNASTIES: THE ASHTONS title is a tale of sexual awakening starring one seductive Frenchman. (Can you say ooh-la-la?) Also for your enjoyment this month is the launch of Maureen Child's trilogy. The THREE-WAY WAGER series focuses on the Reilly brothers, triplets who bet each other they can stay celibate for ninety days. But wait until brother number one is reunited with
The Tempting Mrs. Reilly.

Susan Crosby's BEHIND CLOSED DOORS series continues with
Heart of the Raven,
a gothic-toned story of a man whose self-imposed seclusion has cut him off from love…until a sultry woman, and a beautiful baby, open up his heart. Brenda Jackson is back this month with a new Westmoreland story, in
Jared's Counterfeit Fiancée,
the tale of a fake engagement that leads to real passion. Don't miss Cathleen Galitz's
Only Skin Deep,
a delightful transformation story in which a shy girl finally falls into bed with the man she's always dreamed about. And rounding out the month is
Bedroom Secrets
by Michelle Celmer, featuring a hero to die for.

Thanks for choosing Silhouette Desire, where we strive to bring you the best in smart, sensual romances. And in the months to come look for a new installment of our TEXAS CATTLEMAN'S CLUB continuity and a brand-new TANNERS OF TEXAS title from the incomparable Peggy Moreland.

Happy reading!

Melissa Jeglinski

Senior Editor

Silhouette Books

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

L
auren Hewett felt an eerie connection to the imaginary person playing the piano in the corner of the room. Like him, she too was invisible. Actually, the ghost pianist had the advantage over her. He could at least make himself heard, if not seen—something Lauren hadn't been able to manage since shortly after her thirty-fifth birthday. She wasn't sure exactly what caused this phenomenon, only that one day she woke up and found herself of an age when no one bothered to ask her opinion on matters of importance anymore, or treat her as anything other than an oddity.

As the background music ground to a halt, she gave the antique player piano another crank and reached inside herself for a smile. Smiling vacuously was, after all,
one of a maid of honor's many duties—especially when she was the daughter of the bride. Still, Lauren couldn't help but heave a little sigh of regret when a figure clad in ivory lace made her way up the gleaming spiral staircase in the foyer. The bride was the focal point of a room tastefully bedecked with the very floral combination Lauren always envisioned for her own wedding: pink roses, miniature white carnations and baby's breath.

“Always the bridesmaid, never the bride,” she muttered under her breath.

Fighting back a wave of melancholy, Lauren focused her attention on a montage of framed pictures hanging on the wall behind her. In her favorite, a little girl with wide green eyes and dark pigtails sat upon her father's lap, blissfully unaware that he would pass out of this world before his only daughter would receive her high school diploma. The woman standing behind the two of them with a hand lovingly draped on her husband's shoulder was a younger version of the smiling bride who was at the moment addressing her guests from halfway up the stairs.

Lauren touched a finger to her own lips before placing it to her father's as if to prevent him from saying anything to ruin the moment.

“Don't worry, Daddy. You'd like him. He makes Mom happy.”

Across the crowded room, she caught a glimpse of Travis Banks, looking just as bored as she felt. At six-three he stood a good head taller than anyone else in the room. In a tailored black Western suit, he looked even
better than she remembered—a feat she hardly thought possible. Lauren was surprised to see him in attendance. It was widely believed that the county's most eligible bachelor avoided all weddings for fear of contracting a highly contagious disease that he was fond of comparing to the plague:
nuptialitis.

“Hurry up, everybody,” a voice called out. “Barbara's about to toss the bouquet.”

Younger, prettier and far more visible bachelorettes pressed to the front of the crowd for a chance to catch the flowers that by tradition signaled the end of their single status. Too old and jaded for such nonsense, Lauren faded even more deliberately into the wallpaper and continued to covertly study the man she'd had a crush on since high school. She had been a lowly freshman when, as the senior quarterback for the Wranglers, Travis carried her heart—along with every other girl's in good old Pinedale High over the goal line.

Not that he'd been able to see her back then either….

Lauren decided that time had only improved Travis's boyish good looks. There was no sign of gray in his sandy blond hair, and the weight he'd put on looked to be mostly muscle. Although Lauren had little interest in catching a bouquet, she secretly fantasized about catching
him.
Unfortunately, she doubted she'd be lucky enough to claim a single dance with him all evening.

Certainly not when I look like a cupcake whose frosting runneth over in this hideous pastel gown,
she thought to herself.
How can it be possible that my own mother can be married twice when I've yet to so much
as be engaged? And all these years I thought I was the one doing Mom a favor by being there for her. Turns out that I'm the one who's been holding her back….

Determinedly Lauren steered her thoughts away from self-pity to more practical matters. Like where she was going to live now that Cupid's heat-seeking missile had found the target painted on the roof of her house. Not that her mother was kicking her out or anything so melodramatic. It went without saying that she was always welcome here. But while it was one thing to rationalize living at home when she had the excuse of taking care of an aging mother, it was quite another sharing a home with a pair of honeymooners. That they were in their sixties was inconsequential to the fact that Lauren's mother was getting more action than she was…

“Catch, honey!”

Lauren spun around at the sound of her mother's voice. She barely had time to shield her face from a projectile hurtling across the room at her. Barbara Aberdeen should have played high school football herself for all the precision and accuracy of her throw. The crowd cheered—and laughed—as a red-faced Lauren displayed her ill-gotten prize: one bridal bouquet compliments of a well-meaning, if not openly desperate, mother.

Later at the punch bowl, Lauren overheard a disappointed and tipsy Sylvia Porter describe the event as “A pity pass if I ever saw one.”

Lauren wouldn't have thought such a petty remark would have the power to sting at her age. But it did.
Maybe even more today than years ago when she and her girlfriends had labored under the misconception that popularity really mattered and dating the right guy was a one-way ticket to happily ever after. The raw wistfulness in Sylvia's voice kept Lauren from confronting the nasty little witch who was so obviously distraught at the thought of ending up as ancient and alone as the day's maid of honor.

Lauren took a deep breath and did her best to let it go. She certainly hadn't made a conscious decision to live her life as the object of anyone's pity. In fact, it wasn't all that long ago she had imagined a life for herself that included a husband and children and the simple joys that so many of her own friends took for granted. As much as they assured her that she was the smart one, unfettered by an endless procession of soccer games and the astronomical price of fixing their children's crooked teeth and having to clean up after chronically lazy husbands, Lauren suspected they were simply being kind. Somewhere between college and tenure in the local public school system, she had turned into the Old Maid in the card game that she so enjoyed playing as a child. If there was any way to reshuffle the deck now without somehow discarding herself in the process, she had yet to find it.

In retrospect, Lauren supposed she'd been too picky back in the days when she'd occasionally accepted a date. The few college guys she'd gone with had been too aggressive for her introverted nature. And after a couple of years of horrible blind dates arranged by well-
meaning friends immediately following college, she'd gradually slipped into a routine of work and home and civic duties that distracted her from the fact that everyone else her age was either married—or remarried. Periodically Lauren updated her surroundings with new curtains and bedding so that the passing of years became as familiar to the room in which she'd been sleeping since childhood as the seasons routinely changing outside her window.

Had it not been for her mother's recent revelation that she had fallen in love again and was actually considering Henry Aberdeen's proposal of marriage, Lauren supposed she never would have been forced out of her comfy little rut. Above all, she wanted her mother to be happy. So she had put aside her own personal struggle about betraying her father's memory and encouraged Barbara to follow her heart. After all, if someone as wonderful as her mom was lucky enough to find true love twice in one lifetime, who was her spinster daughter to stand in the way?

That wasn't to say that Lauren wasn't struggling internally with this latest turn of events in her life. If catching the bouquet at your mother's wedding didn't qualify as a defining moment in one's life, she didn't know what did.

Since she doubted there were any books written on reverse empty nests, Lauren poured herself another glass of champagne-laced punch and reconsidered her all too boring life. She wanted to be completely moved out of her mother's house by the time the newlyweds
returned from their Caribbean cruise honeymoon. Then she was going to actively start looking for Mr. Right.

Or even Mr. Close Enough.

The fact that decent rentals in the area were about as easy to find as eligible bachelors under the age of sixty-five was just one obstacle for Lauren to overcome. Another more formidable hurdle was her own innate tentativeness when it came to matters of the heart. She didn't need a therapist to tell her that her fear of intimacy was rooted in the unexpected heart attack that killed her father when she most needed him. What she really needed was the nerve to overcome her insecurity—and a chance to revive her expired dreams.

As luck would have it, opportunity presented itself in the form of Fenton Marsh who worked up the courage behind a pair of pop bottle lenses to sidle up next to her and ask her to dance. Lauren ignored her first inclination to dismiss him. He was, after all, no Travis Banks. But then again, a girl had to start somewhere, and being standoffish hadn't gotten her anywhere but miserable so far as she could tell.

“I'd be delighted,” Lauren heard herself say a little too brightly. She feared that all she was missing was the Southern drawl to make her feel as pathetic as poor Blanche DuBois from
A Streetcar Named Desire.

Blessedly, her third glass of punch was doing what it was supposed to do: deaden her inhibitions. Heck, if her mother could overlook the groom's balding pate and obsequious pandering for her affection, the least Lauren could do was close her eyes to Fenton's obvi
ous shortcomings and focus on his strengths—something he was more than happy to point out the instant they reached the dance floor.

“I'm guessing you already know that since we went to school together, I've become quite wealthy,” he said, crunching on her instep.

Lauren winced. She supposed the fact that his father had left him the only grocery store in town might have something to do with that, but instead she simply murmured how wonderful that must be for him.

Apparently giddy with the impression he was making, Fenton twirled her around like a multicolored chiffon top. Lauren hadn't been expecting the move and consequently caught a heel in the hem of her floor-length gown. Flinging an arm out to steady herself, she connected with a mountain of a man who was doing his best to get his big fingers through the handle of a crystal punch glass. Liquid rained down upon them both.

As Fenton hurried off to get a wet rag, Travis Banks studied the red stain spreading down the front of his expensive white shirt. Looking like a victim of a drive-by shooting, he mumbled, “I'm sorry.”

Lauren was perturbed. After all, apologizing for something that wasn't her fault was
her
specialty.

“What for? Being in the wrong place at the wrong time?” she asked, drawing her gaze away from his muscled chest up to his bemused, twinkling gray eyes.

That they reminded her of fog lifting from the top of the Tetons didn't help matters any. That they belonged to the most sought after—and elusive—bach
elor in the county didn't do a thing to put her at ease, either.

“For getting in Fred and Ginger's way when they were in the middle of one of their crowd-stopping moves I suppose.”

The fact that his country drawl was thick enough to draw flies only served to underscore his charm. Although the music had stopped, Lauren remained frozen in place by a flash of Travis's white teeth. Only when Fred Astair, aka Fenton, returned with a handful of dripping wet paper towels did Lauren realize her own hands were planted squarely on a rock-hard set of pectoral muscles. She drew back as if she were touching a wall of flame instead of all too human flesh.

How tempting it was to peek beneath that tailor-made jacket to see if there wasn't something fake hidden beneath its folds.

Like a heart.

Even sheltered English teachers such as Lauren were privy to the local gossip about how Casanova had nothing on the infamous Travis Banks. How repeated attempts failed to convince him that not all women were like the ex-wife who reputedly had “ruined” him for married life forever. And how he was attempting to pay back the rest of the female race by using up lovers like so many tissues in a box. Not that such bad behavior on his part weakened his standing as the most “ooh-able” match in these sleepy parts. Even married women openly sighed over him.

Often in front of their husbands.

Fenton's return to the scene of the crime had been
swift, however, his fumbling attempts to dab at the punch on Lauren's dress only made matters worse. Blushing to think that she looked like a nursing mother leaking through the bodice of her dress, Lauren blinked back tears. Not a woman given to hysterics, she felt herself precariously close to a public meltdown guaranteed to ruin her mother's special day.

“Anything I can do to help, Lauren?”

Realizing that Travis remembered her name was flattering in itself. Years ago, she'd assumed this golden Adonis had been too busy leading the league in touch-downs and flirting with cheerleaders to notice yet another adoring underclassman in the stands. Since high school, she wasn't sure they even qualified as passing acquaintances. Dismissing the warning bells sounding inside her head, Lauren managed a wobbly smile.

“You could be kind enough to dance with me until I dry off and get myself pulled back together.”

It was a presumptuous request, but all of a sudden the very prim and proper Ms. Hewett didn't give a fig about propriety and what others might think. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking to pretend the reason her friends had never tried fixing her up with Travis was because of his well-known aversion to marriage. Perhaps knowing his reputation as a heartbreaker, they wanted to protect her. It was more likely that they thought that he was out of her league. Nevertheless, having just committed herself to meeting as many potential suitors as possible, she saw nothing wrong with starting with the best-looking one first.