My Double Life: Wild and Wicked (26 page)

Greta had the feeling Clint Bowman fell neatly into both those categories.

“I’m in.” Maybe all she needed was to see Jesse again and remind herself how perfectly he fit her vision of high-class suburban lifestyle. Besides, Jesse possessed an innate chivalry toward women that assured her he would never turn into the verbally abusive sort her father had been. “But how will we know where to have dinner?”

“Why don’t we meet at the ranch right about seven, too? We can always follow them to whatever restaurant they hit. Shouldn’t be too much of a coincidence in a town this size.” His gaze dropped south again. “Did I catch you sleeping?”

And just like that, Greta was certain Clint knew she was naked underneath the yellow knit cover-up.

Her skin tingled from her ankles to her elbows, but it downright burned in all the best places in between. “Hardly.”

“Sunbathing?”

“No, I—”

“Not that a woman ever needs an excuse to run around the house naked as far as I’m concerned.” He flashed her a sexy, unrepentant grin as he replaced his hat on his head and backed toward his shiny blue pickup truck. “See you at seven?”

She had a good mind to say no. In fact, the sooner she put some distance between her and the cowboy badass who made her blood simmer, the better off she’d be.

But then how would she ever make Jesse notice her or rescue her from boorish guys like Clint Bowman?

“I’ll be there.” She draped herself in a little extra hauteur for good measure—and to help maintain some definite boundaries with Clint. “I just hope you can control yourself because my outfit tonight will make nakedness seem positively tame.”

“I’ll be the epitome of restraint.” He levered open his truck door. “But if lover boy doesn’t take notice by the time our last course rolls around, all bets are off.”

“Meaning you’re only going to be able to restrain yourself for so long?” Surely she was a sick woman that his wolfish look sent a little thrill through her when she was planning to seduce...her gaze gobbled up the curve of Clint’s oh-so-fine ass.

Wait. Jesse. She was planning to seduce Jesse.

“Meaning that if you’re still sitting with me at eight o’clock, I’m considering you fair game for dessert.”

He angled himself inside the truck cab and shifted into Reverse before she could think of a retort.

Damn the man.

But Greta had no intention of allowing Clint Bowman and his sexy-as-sin body tempt her away from her Great American Dream. The trick would be to intercept her quarry
before
seven o’clock tonight.

She hadn’t managed to survive on her own since she was fourteen without accumulating a fair amount of goal-setting skills.

And right now, she had one goal in mind to complete her mental vision of where she wanted to be in life, one man who would be the perfect counterpart to her suburban lifestyle complete with a rose garden and filled with voices raised only in laughter.

The most charming man she’d ever met.

Jesse Chandler.

* * *

A
BLACK
CLOUD
seemed determined to follow Jesse around ever since he’d uttered the damning word
commitment
to Kyra.

That same day his jigsaw broke, spinning a piece of nearly completed crown molding into the blade sideways before it conked out completely. He’d ruined a detailed piece that would take hours to reconstruct.

Then his customer’s financing had fallen through for the first custom home he was supposed to have started on Monday, leaving him scrambling all afternoon to shuffle his spring schedule and fill the void.

Now as he sped up the rural county route toward the Crooked Branch on his Harley, it started to rain.

And then pour.

By the time he reached the ranch his khakis molded to his thighs like a wetsuit. Even worse, the rain hadn’t let up a bit so he wouldn’t be able to take them to dinner on the motorcycle.

If they wanted to go out for his first date as part of a couple in his entire lifetime, he’d have to ride shotgun in Kyra’s pickup.

The joys of commitment.

Jesse sensed the black cloud stalking him as he parked his bike in the barn and swiped the worst of the raindrops off the seat. No, wait.

That wasn’t just a dark mood stalking him.

Footsteps sounded behind him. Too close.

A black cloud in stilettos and not much else stood behind him. Greta Ingram appeared every inch the world-renowned cover model as she struck a pose in a tissue-thin scarf she’d knotted at her navel as if it was a dress.

Objectively speaking, Jesse knew she must look gorgeous, but all he could think in his current frame of mind was that she had to be damn near freezing.

He couldn’t afford the complication of her tonight. He barely knew what role he was supposed to be playing in Kyra’s life anyway. And he’d already spent enough time trying to send Greta a message she refused to hear. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

Her trademark full lips turned even more pouty. “Tell me about it. A barn is hardly my idea of mood-setting ambiance. What do you say we go back to my place for a few hours and I’ll show you some more of my yoga moves? I’ve been working on limbering up my neck muscles and you’ll never believe what I can reach with my tongue.”

She hovered closer, almost as if she was going to start teasing him with yoga tricks right here in the equipment storage barn.

“Greta, I can’t see you anymore. Ever.” He hated having to spell it out in such stark terms for her but her following him around had gotten way out of control. At one time her over-the-top antics might have swayed him, but he didn’t feel even remotely interested tonight.

Oddly, he could still only think of one woman naked today. Even after a night in Kyra’s arms Jesse could only think about her. Despite the hellish day he’d been having and the fact that he’d gone and devoted himself to some kind of relationship with her, he had thought about being with her nonstop.

Still, Greta looked at him like he’d lost his marbles. She put her fists on her hips and stood toe-to-toe with him. “Excuse me?”

“I’m seeing Kyra now,” he told her, amazed to discover the words didn’t feel as awkward as he’d feared they might. In fact, the declaration felt damn good. “And I know for a fact she’s not going to appreciate you following me around. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go meet her for dinner.”

Jesse saw the steam start to hiss from her ears, but he couldn’t find it in his heart to care anymore. He was still too caught up in the revelation that it hadn’t really hurt to talk about Kyra as his girlfriend.

What if he could pull through on this commitment thing after all?

He nudged around Greta, making his way toward the door. The rain had slowed, but it hadn’t stopped. Clint’s truck was pulling into the driveway, an odd occurrence for seven o’clock in the evening.

Or so he hoped.

The horse whisperer hadn’t seriously thought he could make time with Kyra behind Jesse’s back, had he? Before Jesse could think through what to do about Kyra’s admirer, Greta hustled around him to plant herself in his tracks all over again.

“What are you doing?” He held his hands up but he didn’t intend to surrender to this woman.

He was a committed man, damn it.

The rain pounded down on them. Jesse didn’t care much since he was already soaked. But Greta’s scarf turned X-rated within seconds. Not that he noticed.

She shouted at him through the rumble of thunder, her eyes lit by a fire within. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m putting up a fight!”

He hadn’t fully processed the comment when she grabbed him by the arms, plastered her wet body to his and fused their mouths in a no-holds-barred kiss.

11

K
YRA
SWIPED
A
brush through her hair and peered out the window just as the thunder started. The driveway was empty but she could have sworn she’d heard Jesse’s Harley rumble past a few minutes ago.

Would he be late for their first date?

Judging by how pained he’d looked as he issued the invitation earlier today, Kyra half wondered if he’d show up at all. But then, he had always kept his word to her, even while he was standing up his so-called girlfriends left and right. Would their new committed status relegate her to his “B” list of personal priorities?

She resented his attitude even while she wished he felt differently about her. He had no right to make her feel as if she’d somehow twisted his arm into a relationship. Sure she hadn’t shaken her age-old crush on him as easily as she’d once hoped, but she knew better than to ever hope for him to be a one-woman man.

Didn’t she?

Simmering with restless energy and more than a little frustration, Kyra marched out into the foyer and prepared to face her personal demon.

Aka her best friend-turned-lover.

She knew damn well she’d heard his motorcycle a few minutes ago. Was he dragging his feet in the barn because he couldn’t face his new ball and chain?

Throwing open the front door, Kyra didn’t move so much as an inch into the blistering rain before she saw him.

Or rather
them
—Greta and Jesse in a lip-lock as fierce as the storm pelting their shoulders with raindrops.

Of all the two-timing lowdown tricks...

What more proof did she need that he’d never be a one-woman man? He hadn’t even bothered to be sly about his indiscretion, opting instead to practically devour Greta whole while standing no more than two feet from Kyra’s front porch. And it didn’t really soothe Kyra a bit that the woman stuck to him was an internationally recognized sex symbol clad in an outfit that left her as good as naked.

“It’s a new commitment record for you,” Kyra shouted through the rainstorm, doing her level best to keep her voice calm. Practical. “I think you lasted almost six hours this time.”

So maybe sarcasm wasn’t exactly practical.

She was entitled to be a little peeved, curse his two-timing hide.

Jesse pried himself loose from Greta’s arms, but not without a struggle. The Wonder-bod nearly lost her outfit in the process—an outfit comprised of one artfully tied purple scarf.

But instead of appealing to Kyra by laying on the charm or spinning ridiculous tales to cover his hide, Jesse glared at Greta. “You’d damn well better come clean about this.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Kyra noticed Clint climb down out of his truck cab and stalk toward them. Impervious to the water, Clint’s Stetson shielded him from the driving downpour.

Greta shot Jesse the evil eye. “You’re
not
the man I met last fall. And I don’t have a thing to come clean about.” As Clint neared, she sniffed and straightened. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have plans for dinner.”

Jesse looked ready to argue the point, but Clint stepped in like a hero right out of an old Western. Offering Greta his arm as if she wore hoopskirts and a bustle instead of a silk scarf masquerading as a dress, Clint was every inch the gentleman.

And it was obvious from a lone protective hand around Greta’s waist that Jesse didn’t have a chance in hell of grilling her about the kiss that had just taken place.

Leaving him very much on his own to explain himself.

Not that Kyra needed whatever explanation he concocted for her benefit.

Determined to cut him off before he could suggest some lame reasoning for what just happened, Kyra folded her arms across her chest and stared him down. “I’d just like to point out that I thought we had enough of a solid friendship where we didn’t need to play games like this.”

Spinning on her heel, she ducked back onto her porch and inside the house.

“Oh, no you don’t.” Jesse followed her, dripping rainwater from khakis that clearly outlined his thighs. Outlined
him.
“Cowboy Clint might have spirited witchy Greta away so she didn’t have to deal with this, but you don’t have any choice but to talk to me.”

“I most definitely have a choice,” she argued, seeking refuge from those wet male thighs in the kitchen. She was not succumbing to anything charming, sexy or otherwise appealing about Jesse Chandler tonight.

The man was a first-rate cad. A cad with fire-engine-red lipstick smeared across his damned face.

He stomped his way into the kitchen, his wet socks squishing along the tiles. “On the contrary, we have a date tonight so I’ve already reserved this time with you. You can at least hear me out.”

“Well, guess what, Romeo? Necking with another woman on my front doorstep pretty much nullifies our date.” Kyra pulled a prepackaged dinner out of the freezer and attacked the shrink-wrap with a vengeance.

“That wasn’t necking. That was the attack of the wicked wedding-bell woman. She was making some sort of last-ditch play for me with the kiss and the crazy outfit—”

“What outfit?” Shredding the last piece of plastic from an ancient TV-dinner box, Kyra yanked open the microwave. “And since when is a woman who values marriage some kind of villain anyway? You make her sound like a comic-book foe when maybe she’s just calling you to the carpet on your fast lifestyle.”

Jesse intercepted her meal before she could chuck it into the microwave. “How can you defend her after she practically suffocated me? In front of you, no less? She’s been following me around for months, Kyra. And you know I’ve told her the deal more than once.”

Kyra hesitated. Considering. She was being unreasonable and she knew it. But damn it, seeing Jesse kissing another woman had hurt her more than she could admit.

“I don’t think you can call it suffocation when you were standing there with your arms at your sides making no attempt to push her away.”

“She surprised me!”

Kyra tugged the Chicken Kiev with both hands, tossed it in the microwave and stabbed the keys to start heating her meal.

She needed to insert some space between them and move on. Even if the kiss wasn’t his fault, she was quickly realizing how much it was going to hurt when she had to let him go. Something she’d never really considered before. “Fine. I believe you. But please excuse me if I don’t feel like having dinner with you or being any part of a bogus committed relationship.”

“You
are
having dinner with me.” Jesse stopped the microwave, and inserted himself between Kyra and her chicken. “It’s not going to be out of a box from the freezer. And the commitment I made to you is hardly bogus.”

Kyra forced herself to quit grinding her teeth. But how could he say that to her when he’d already tangled himself up with another woman? Jesse’s whole life had been one entanglement after another. He probably didn’t know how to live any other way.

“It was a commitment based on sex.” Surely that wasn’t the premise for most healthy relationships.

“First of all, let’s not knock sex.” He stared at her with steady brown eyes that had a way of making her heart beat faster even though she was definitely still angry at him. “And second, there was more to it than sex and we both know it.”

Admitting there was more than sex at stake here would be like admitting...too much. And damn it, she wasn’t foolish enough to fall for Jesse.

“There couldn’t have been more than sex involved, Jesse, because you went out of here more hangdog than I’ve ever seen you aside from when your team lost the pennant race that second season you played baseball.” She opened a drawer near the sink, fished out a towel and threw it at him. “Obviously you hated the whole idea of a relationship from the get-go. I don’t know why you ever brought it up.”

He mopped off his face with the towel and then scrubbed his too-long hair to dry it out. Kyra’s gaze tracked his muscles in action as he stretched his arms above his head, twisted his shoulders.

“You’ve got it all wrong.” Jesse folded the towel over the back of a barstool that sat at her kitchen counter. “I would have been overjoyed if this had been all about sex. It’s precisely because there’s more at stake here that I’m scared as hell to mess it up. Sorry if I acted like an ass about the whole thing, but I don’t have a clue what I’m doing when it comes to dating.”

His honesty deflated her anger. She’d never thought of him as a sort of dating-virgin. Maybe they were on more even ground, after all.

She had wanted Jesse so badly, but this morning she’d realized that sleeping with him had made things more complicated than she’d ever dreamed. Her irrational behavior over the whole Greta incident only proved she couldn’t keep an emotional distance from the man.

She definitely needed to drag this conversation back on firmer terrain before she fell as head-over-heels for him as every other woman he’d ever met.

Kyra leveled a finger at his chest. “Well for starters, you can’t kiss women outside the main relationship. That’s a standard taboo.”

“No kissing other women. Duly noted.” Jesse edged closer, his every muscle defined and highlighted by his wet clothes. “As long as you present plenty of kissing opportunities for me, I don’t think I’ll find that a problem.”

* * *

J
ESSE
WATCHED
THE
swirl of emotions parade across Kyra’s face—the unguarded sensual response to his words, the confusion and finally the lip-pursing resistance that told him he was getting nowhere with that approach tonight.

Damn.

He hated that he caused so much uncertainty for her. She deserved a hell of a lot better than what he could ever offer her. Yet for the first time in his life he found himself genuinely wishing he was capable of giving a woman more.

Much more.

But he didn’t trust himself not to hurt her. And that was no way to start a relationship.

Kyra slid out of her seat to move back toward the microwave and her very practical dinner. “Sorry, Jesse. I think we both know better than to offer each other any further sensual opportunities. Maybe you were right all along when you said we’d only screw up our friendship.”

Panic chugged through him. It would hurt enough just knowing he’d never see Kyra naked again. He couldn’t stand the thought of not being able to hang out at the ranch and sneak out one of her horses or try to make her blush. “You don’t think we’ve really messed that up, too, do you?”

“I think we’re pretty damn close.” She pressed the buttons that would start the oven all over again. “Honestly, I’m having a hard time figuring out how to relate to you in the wake of last night. Guess I sort of underestimated how sex could screw with things—pardon the pun—but chalk it up to a first-timer miscalculation. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you that day at Gasparilla when you said this wouldn’t work.”

She blinked too fast. A definite indication she was upset and refusing to let it show.

But ruining their friendship?

His brain refused to hear this message. He’d jumped from one woman to another without even blinking his whole life and Kyra had remained his one constant. The Crooked Branch had been his home base when he’d been on the road with his baseball team—the one place where no one expected him to be charming or successful or to pretend he had the world by the tail.

Here, with Kyra, he’d always been able to just
be.

“But you believe me that I never intended anything to happen with Greta, at least.” How could that pushy woman’s one impulsive act cost him his best friend?

Of course, as soon as he thought as much, he knew. If he lost Kyra’s friendship, it wouldn’t be Greta’s fault. It would be his own damn doing because he’d approached the commitment thing all wrong.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with her. Or the kiss.” She tucked a blond strand of hair behind one ear, her quiet, unassuming air so totally at odds with every other woman he’d ever dated. He’d probably never noticed she was beautiful because she never flaunted herself in front of him.

At least not until that eye-opening day at Gasparilla.

“It doesn’t?” He found it hard to believe she wasn’t pissed about the kiss. Greta had put a squeeze-hold on him like an anaconda. If he’d ever seen Kyra in another man’s grasp like that, he would have lost his damn mind.

“No. It has more to do with you acting like you’ve sentenced yourself to a prison term by going out with me. I’ll admit I’ve always had a little bit of a thing for you, Jesse.”

He nearly hit the floor with the shock of that particular news. She’d had a
thing
for him?

The automatic warmth he’d felt in reaction to the statement quickly turned to panic as he realized the fallout from this could be worse than he’d expected.

Shit.

He never wanted to hurt her.

Perhaps sensing his shock, Kyra rushed to reassure him. “But I’m over it now. You don’t need to sacrifice yourself to me just because we’re friends.” She shrugged her shoulder in a gesture that seemed too precise to be totally careless.

Or was that wishful thinking on his part?

“I don’t think I ever tried to sound like I was making a sacrifice.”

“But you didn’t exactly behave like a man overjoyed to ask me out.”

Maybe she had a point there. “But that wasn’t because of
you.
”

“That was just because you’re a commitment-phobe.” As the microwave timer began to beep, Kyra tugged an Aztec-printed potholder from a drawer near the sink. “I realize that. That doesn’t make your resistance any more flattering.”

Jesse made a mental note never to ask a woman out before he had fully resolved any internal conflict on the subject. Obviously he sucked at masking his emotions. “What can I do to make you give me a second chance?”

She bit her lip. Furrowed her brow. Obviously wrestled with the whole notion of second chances. It scared him to realize just how important that second chance had become for him.

“I don’t think I can. I’m over you, remember?”

How could she be over him when he hadn’t even applied himself to the task of winning her in the first place? “Come on, Kyra. Have you ever considered getting involved with someone just because? Just for the fun of it? Just because you felt like it? Couldn’t I ever potentially warrant a date like that again?”