“Don’t make a sound,” the outlaw whispered, reaching under her dress. “Not a word…”

In the haze of a dream—the aftermath of the fantasy she’d had before drifting off to sleep, one that seemed incredibly real—Nicki felt the outlaw’s hands on her rear end, cupping her.

Don’t make a sound. And she didn’t as her face rubbed against her bedcovers, her hands pressed against the mattress. Her breasts were flattened beneath her, making them feel swollen, raw against the quilting.

In that foggy dream, she felt the bed dip as the bandit climbed onto it, heard the box springs creak. His legs brushed the outside of hers as he straddled her.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” he said in a deep Western drawl, a whisper above the stillness of the night. He slipped his hands—big, work-roughened hands—from her butt to her hips, then…

“You knew this is the only place I can hide out. You waited for me,” he said, stroking her softness until she was ready to scream.

Yes. And he was definitely worth the wait…

About the Author

CRYSTAL GREEN lives near Las Vegas, where she writes for the Mills & Boon Cherish and Blaze lines. She loves to read, overanalyze movies and TV programs, practice yoga and travel when she can. You can read more about her at www.crystal-green.com, where she has a blog and contests. Also, you can follow her on Twitter at @CrystalGreenMe.

Roped In

Crystal Green

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Lisa Kessler and Melissa Cutler for the title suggestion, as well as all the wonderful authors in

RWA-SD who came up with title ideas! You guys are the best organization a gal could hope for.

1

SHE WAS A REAL VISION tonight, wearing a purple corset, a boa and a ruffled satin skirt that lifted in the front to show off fishnet-stocking legs and ankle-high boots.

A saloon girl who was made to draw every gaze in the room.

And every time Nicki Wade caught a glimpse of her Halloween-party self in one of the mirrors of the Pine Junction Grand Hotel ballroom, she kept thinking, Who knew?

“Told you,” said her cousin Candace as they waited for the band to start up again. “Can I cook, or can I cook?”

Nicki cut her gaze from the mirror, smiling at Candace. Dress up. It reminded her of all those days when her cousin would stay on the ranch during the summer, giving her single, divorced mom a break. Like sisters, the same age with the same youthful energies, they’d spent rainy days in the attic, wearing old clothes, acting like princesses and belles, even though Nicki had been far from either.

“I can’t complain about a makeover,” she said.

Candace tugged on one of Nicki’s curls. “I did have some good raw material to work with. You were made for more than jeans and boots, Nic.”

Not for the first time, Nicki touched the silk of her costume. Shiny as a rainy-day fantasy. Decadent as one of the heroines in the novels that had always drawn her to the corner of the second-hand bookshop in town—the ones shelved under the label Lusty Historical, where the women wore corsets and garters as a matter of everyday necessity.

Candace linked arms with her. She was dressed as a sexy cowgirl, all in white, from the hat that covered her long red hair to the bikini top and chaps that revealed a body honed by her time jogging on the beach near the apartment she’d recently needed to vacate. As always, though, Pine Junction hadn’t been too far for her. It was about an hour from the San Diego shoreline, but a world away in attitude, tucked into the trees of the eastern part of the county, which was dotted with ranches.

“So,” Candace said, “now that I’ve gotten you out of the Square W+W ranch office, it’s time to have some fun. Do you see anything here that you like?”

Slipping her arm out of Candace’s, Nicki leaned back against a tall, linen-draped table littered with empty bottles and surveyed the room, but just as usual, the men didn’t much catch her fancy.

There had always been only one guy who’d ever done that, and he’d left town a long time ago. He’d be a man now, not a boy, and not the seventeen-year-old who’d left after an infamous tear-down fight with his dad.

Candace laughed. “I know who you’re looking for.”

No use hiding it from her only cousin. Candace had grown up knowing all about Nicki, thanks to the letters they wrote when they weren’t together and the secrets they’d shared when they were.

“You don’t have to say it,” Nicki said, fighting the heat on her skin. “Shane Carter’s back, and I can’t keep my eyes from the doorway.”

“And he’s been here for two days already. All you had to do was go next door, bring him some welcome-home cookies—”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Sure it is.”

Nicki shook her head. Candace knew how Nicki had spun a million fantasies about Shane. He’d been a couple years older, one of those boys at school whom everyone kept their eye on. Whatever he tried—baseball, football—he was good at, although he never showed much interest in pursuing any of them. No, standoffish Shane was far better at getting into mischief on and off the ranch.

But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a heart beneath his bad-boy exterior. She’d seen it once, way back when she’d been about nine and had been playing around with Candace, using the fence that separated their properties as a balance beam.

Just as they’d seen Mr. Carter and Shane riding up in the distance, that rail had split beneath Nicki, and she’d tumbled to the ground.

She’d heard Mr. Carter yelling at her about ruining his property, just before Shane had jumped off his horse, making sure she was all right, then covering her as his father had approached.

Both she and Candace had seen it—a standoff between a wiry, protective eleven-year-old kid and his livid father, who was said to have a terrible temper. And she’d never forgotten how a red-faced Mr. Carter had ridden off after giving Shane a look that said punishment would be in store for him back at the house.

Without commenting on it, Shane made double sure that Nicki was okay, then rode off, too, the sunlight burnishing him as he took her heart with him.

That was really when he’d become the prince in every fairy tale for Nicki. Then, after she’d graduated to more adult books, she’d pictured him as every hero, even as he’d become Pine Junction’s Romeo in reality, going from playing pranks in town to rankling just about every father in the area with his love-’em-and-leave-’em ways.

Funny thing was that Nicki had never stopped putting him on a romantic pedestal. She’d measured every man against him and they’d all come up short to the fantasy.

She stopped looking around the room at the other guys. “I don’t know why Shane’s home or how long he’ll be there, so why bother him?”

“Because—”

“Candy, Shane can’t be back in town for any good reason.” His dad had died a few years ago and his older brother, Tommy, had deserted the Slanted C Ranch out of the blue. Shane hadn’t even visited over the years.

“Don’t you wonder,” Candace said, “what he might be like now? Isn’t that driving you crazy?”

Nicki’s belly flipped from a mixture of anticipation and fear of disappointment.

“I’ve wondered,” she finally said. “But that still doesn’t mean I’m going over there with cookie plate in hand.”

“But this is finally your chance.”

Nicki just smiled. She’d had plenty of dreams about what she’d do with Shane if she had any kind of chance.

“See?” Candace said, nudging her. “All you need is a push forward. Come on, admit it—if you had an opportunity with Shane, you’d…”

Nicki’s smile grew even bigger as she took a drink of beer, and Candace laughed again.

“Told you,” she said.

There wasn’t much use in talking about Shane, so Nicki rested her icy bottle against her neck, wallowing in the glass’s coolness. The ballroom’s ceiling fans were trying like the dickens to chase away the Indian summer, but they were hardly doing a good job of it.

Looking at all the other sexy costumes around the room, she thought that if Shane were to amble in here, he wouldn’t get past the door, where there was a shapely fairy lingering with a very un-Disney-ish princess whose Fantasylands were having a hard time staying in their bodices.

She officially changed the subject. “And here I thought the Halloween season is supposed to be scary. Isn’t it about ghouls and goblins rather than little French maid costumes?”

Candace sighed, obviously wanting to get back to the Shane conversation. “Halloween time is always a good time to show off what God gave a girl.” She held her champagne as if she was at some kind of rooftop shindig in downtown San Diego instead of tiny Pine Junction. “It’s a time when we can put the va in our voom and get away with it.”

Near the dance floor, Nicki couldn’t help but notice that a few hands from neighboring ranches were hanging out, eyeing Candace. And, if she didn’t know better, she’d say that they were taking her in, too, as if they’d just now noticed that she existed beyond the confines of the Square W+W Ranch.

And why not? She’d just about been a self-imposed prisoner there, working away in the office, burying herself in the account books and hardly ever going out until Candace had settled into the house on the ranch a week ago.

“See?” Candace said, noticing the cowpokes, too. “You’ve already been staked out, and those guys just walked into the room.”

Nicki’s skin flushed. Thing was, now that she’d been thinking of Shane, she’d lost all interest. Maybe it was a sign of laziness that she buried herself in the safety of her fantasies. Maybe she just didn’t have the energy, what with all the work waiting for her back in real life.

Still, she gave the guys a subtle yet thorough scan. She didn’t know these particular cowpokes—maybe they were new hires at one of the ranches in the area—but then again, she hadn’t socialized so much recently. Come to think of it, even before her parents had been killed in an auto accident out on the infamous Drop Curve on the highway a few years ago and left her with a failing ranch, she hadn’t been all that sociable. Her family had always lived hand-to-mouth, and to combat that, she’d grown up focused, devoting herself to the support of their always-wavering American Paint horse breeding operation. At the end of the day, she’d recline on the porch and read rummage-sale books until someone called her in for dinner.

Maybe she’d never given life a chance outside of her comfort zone, but, realistically, Nicki was pretty sure that one makeover wasn’t going to change everything in a single night. She wouldn’t suddenly not be a bookworm who’d had about one significant relationship in her life. And that man, Arthur, had dropped her without all that much fanfare after she’d really gotten in deep with her work at the ranch.

Even now, as she thought of the W+W, she got a little unsociable again.

What was she doing? She didn’t have time for silly games with men like these, anyway, not when tomorrow was a big day for the ranch.

The big day.

Candace said, “Would you just relax?”

“Can’t. Tomorrow keeps eating away at me.”

“You’re going to do fine. We’ll do fine. That ranch is a second home to me, and I’m not about to see it go under.” She drank her champagne. “It’ll be bad enough seeing it go dude.”

“I know.”

They’d heard through the grapevine that a corporate investment firm had been nosing around some property in these parts, asking about possibilities for a dude resort. Nicki had spent some sleepless nights working things out in her head. She’d already sold off most of the horse stock after her parents’ deaths, and she’d been doing everything possible to keep from laying off any of the employees, who were just like family.

Going dude seemed like the only option, as long as the investors agreed to keep the staff on. And at least it would maintain the ranch, which went back generations in her family.

So she’d contacted the Lyon Group and invited one of their representatives to the Square W+W so he could see how perfect it would be for the company’s purposes.

Candace was watching a mobile of flying ghoulies that dangled from the ceiling. “I shouldn’t get on your case about nerves. What you’re doing is important. There’re other families who’ve been working on the ranch for years, too, and they could lose a home just as much as you could, if you don’t turn everything around.”

“Thanks for understanding,” Nicki said.

“You know I’d do anything for you.” Candace slowly put down her nearly empty champagne flute. “And I’d do anything for your mom and dad, too.”

Candace’s voice was thick, and Nicki rested a hand over hers.

She didn’t say anything more, not until Candace put on a happier face, which Nicki knew was meant for her sake.

“To life,” Candace said, raising what was left of her champagne. “To things getting better from this point on.”

They toasted, as if it didn’t matter that life had spiraled downward for all of them recently. Candace herself had been going through hard times, laid off as a personal assistant at an electronics firm, where she’d been involved with a corporate internship program and riding her ambition toward a bright future…until the newest employees had fallen under the ax. Now, with her pocketbook nearly empty from the same hard times that were affecting everyone, she was staying with Nicki for a few months so she could save up enough money to go back out on her own again.

Out of the corner of her eye, Nicki saw one of the ranch hands glancing her way again.

As if looking for something positive to latch on to after the heavy moment, Candace said, “Ah. The saloon girl costume. It does it for a guy every single time.”

“How would you know?”

“Halloween isn’t the only time a girl can dress up.”

Candace just kept smiling, and Nicki got the feeling they weren’t talking about the upcoming holiday itself anymore.

“Candy…?”

Seeming mighty innocent, Candace ran a finger around the rim of her champagne glass, then smirked.

Nicki recognized the gesture from times gone by, such as the day Candace had instigated a “stakeout” in the old barn, where they knew Johnny Graystone and Jane Willens met every day to smooch. They’d giggled all through the make-out session until Johnny had discovered them and chased them out.

“I’m just telling you,” Candace said. “If you want, you could get a lot of mileage out of this costume. And don’t tell me it hasn’t crossed your mind, Miss Romance. There are guys out there who’d like a little taste of this in real life…or at least as real as fantasies can get.”

“Are you talking about…?”

“Taking the saloon girl out of the party and to the bedroom? You know I am.”

Nicki wasn’t as shocked by that as she thought she would be. Twenty-seven years and she’d been with one man in all that time. Arthur had been an old friend from out of town who’d come through on a road trip. The relationship had only lasted about a half year before they’d called it quits. It’d been a long-distance thing, with her in Pine Junction and him in Phoenix, but when he’d accidentally sent her an amorous email that had clearly been meant for someone else—the inclusion of the name “Karla” had been a pretty good tip-off about that—the relationship had been doomed.

Candace lowered her voice even more. “Come on, Nic, I know you’ve had a teeny bit of experience in…things.”

“Not that sort of experience.” She may have read a lot of romances, but she was smart enough to know that her life wasn’t one of them—even if she wished it was. “You know I’ve never been all that adventurous.”

“Again…if you just had the chance.” Candace tilted her head, the feathers in her hair blowing under the ceiling fan. “Especially with—”

“Don’t say it again, Candy—”

“Shane.” Candace grinned.

Nicki gave up, knowing that when Candace was on a roll, she was on a roll. “Sure. If I found myself in a dark room with Shane Carter and I had the chance, I’d do what any red-blooded girl would do. Satisfied?”

Her jittering pulse must’ve been obvious to anyone within sight.

“Adventurous,” Candace said, patting Nicki’s shoulder just before the band took the stage. “I like that.”

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.

Shane knew it was now or never with Nicki. Damn it, she was his neighbor, and he couldn’t let things stand as they were, so he caught up to her at the side of the band’s stage.

“Nicki…”

It was obvious that she’d been stewing on their conversation, and she launched into another question right away.

“Just why are you back in Pine Junction, Carter?”

Her light green eyes were filled with anger, and somehow, he was responding to that passion, a thrust of need bolting straight to his cock.

But this was Nicki Wade. What did his cock have to do with it?

A girl like her wouldn’t like it temporary and wild, and that was just how he always wanted it—without strings or commitment. You couldn’t get freedom in a relationship, and he’d never been the type for one of those, anyway. Not after what he’d seen his mom go through with his dad.

Nicki kept at him. “You can’t come back into town and start passing judgment on those of us who’ve gone through the ups and downs of living here.”

“You’re right.”

He didn’t tell her why he’d left, though. There was no reason for him to explain the reasons he’d run off, because that last day with his father had been the point of no return. He’d finally hit the man back while defending his mom, and she’d had no choice but to ask Shane to leave.

“He’s much easier to live with when you’re not here,” she’d said, brokenhearted at the choice she’d been forced to make.

And Shane had gone, just as broken, himself.

“I apologize, Nicki.” He paused, then added, “And I’m sorry about your parents, too—the car accident. They were good people.”

He’d admired her family and how they were so loving that they even embraced their employees as their own. Shane had never had that. Not even close.

She looked just like he did most mornings in the mirror: at the end of her rope, having gone through every possible idea to keep the family legacy running strong.

As she took in his apology, she nodded stiffly.

It was beyond him to go away with her in such a state. “I just keep seeing the little girl on the W+W riding around on her first pony near our property lines. And I don’t want her to get hurt by a huge corporation like the one that’s coming into our midst tomorrow.”

Even under her tanned skin, she seemed to blanch. Somehow he’d offended her again.

“You think I can’t handle some businessman? You still believe I’m some little girl who…?”

“Hey, I didn’t mean to say—”

Her voice took on some steel. “You really don’t know much about me at all, do you?”

With that, she turned around, leaving him near the stage.

He watched her walk away. Hips. Skin. Heat on a hot autumn night.

And Shane kept watching her until he had to shake himself out of it. He shouldn’t be thinking about Nicki Wade.

He shouldn’t be thinking about anything other than every woman in the room who might like to spend some time with an outlaw tonight in a hideaway, where he could forget just about everything else for a few precious hours.

HOW COULD SHANE CARTER just amble back into town and rile her up like this?

God, all Nicki wanted to do was show him he was wrong…and to make him see her.

Every bit of the woman she had become while he’d been away.

She watched how the girls in the room—brides, dark seductresses, even a slave Princess Leia—gravitated toward Shane now. It was just as it’d always been with him—he moved toward the edges of the dance floor but stayed off of it altogether, as if outlaws never danced.

Whatever the case, she didn’t want to stand around until he inevitably changed his mind and scooped a girl into his arms, making his choice for the night. Even picturing him with another woman turned her stomach.

Why, though? What was he to her?

Nicki made her way across the room, to where her ride, Manny, was raiding the buffet table, stacking biscuits, cornbread and cookies into a network of large paper napkins.

“Hey, Manny.”

Her thirtysomething ranch foreman turned around, offering a gap-toothed smile. It complemented his “costume,” which consisted of him sticking some straw into his beat-up Stetson and calling himself a “scarecrow.”

Nicki glanced at his overloaded napkins. “I’m ready to go home whenever you are.”

“Any time,” he said, grabbing another stack of corn bread and piling it on the rest. “Just came here for the grub, anyway.”

“Thanks, Manny.” She would leave a message on Candace’s cell phone to tell her she’d left. Candace had planned to stop drinking after one champagne and drive their pickup home, anyway, so it wasn’t as if Nicki was stranding her.

She could tell that Manny was trying not to check out her costume, but he sure had a bit of a brotherly frown on his face. Any employee on the ranch would probably be doing the same if they saw her, and Nicki just wanted to get out of sight before too many got the opportunity.

Manny fetched a couple of beers from an ice-filled aluminum tub for good measure and stuck them under his armpits before they left the ballroom, going out of the Grand Hotel’s Old West lobby, with its scarred cherry wood furnishings and oil portraits of the town’s founding fathers.

After finding his blue pickup, which featured cloudy areas where the paint had faded, they hopped in. Nicki left that message with Candace on her voice mail, telling her that she would be waiting up with the company of a good book in her room if there was anything exciting to talk about.

Soon enough, she and Manny were at her two-level colonial ranch house that had seen much better days, its white facade in need of paint just as much as Manny’s truck.

Nicki hugged him good-night then got out. The porch protested under her footsteps as he drove away toward the employee cabins.

She went to her second-floor room, realizing that she was tired—too tired to even read or wait up for Candace. Not bothering to turn on the lights before taking off her ankle-high saloon girl boots, she fell forward onto the bed.

Resting her forehead on her arms, she started to chide herself for leaving the party. What she should’ve done was stayed, showing Shane Carter that a mild confrontation with him wouldn’t ruin her night, even if it had.

Damn it—she and those books. She and those dreams. What was it about Shane that had the power to resurrect them tonight? Books were supposed to let her escape, not bring everything into crummy focus.

Her mind couldn’t stop meandering back to Shane in that outlaw outfit, though. To make matters worse, her anger at him boiled her blood even now, heating her up in a way she didn’t want.

Even so, she ached, deep in her belly. She felt the needled pressure of desire between her legs, just from picturing him as that long, tall shadow in the saloon doors, pausing there as he saw his saloon girl waiting by the bar.

Wrong. So wrong to think about him like this.

But the wrongness made her want to do it all the more, and she remembered how he’d looked at her across the room, the first time he’d seen her tonight. How she’d sworn that he’d been stripping off her dress with his gaze, piece by piece.

And then he’d looked again after they’d been talking; slowly, with a languid visual caress that had felt as good as anything physical.

Scorched by the thought, Nicki rolled to her back and raised her arms over her head, holding to the memory of those long glances, feeling them stroke her.

Shane had wanted her, if only for a moment. And in that fleeting time, she hadn’t been that cowgirl next door. She’d been someone entirely different—more powerful, holding the reins.

Nicki stared toward the ceiling; she could see the white expanse of it in the darkness. She should’ve tested Shane, should’ve found out if he would’ve responded to an overture from her. But in her mind…

Well, in her mind she could make sure that he did want her, couldn’t she? In her mind, she could have it any way she wanted it.

Outside, the wind flirted with the shutters and hushed through the half-opened window. She closed her eyes, picturing the outlaw in her head, and her body hummed. As she breathed, her dress whisked against the covers, a soft, sensual sound.

Shane…

No one would know if she touched herself right now, pretending it was him. She was here, alone.

No one would ever know.

She ran one hand down her neck, over a breast, which felt round and ripe under her palm. Sexy under the satin. Tracing the outline of it, she thought of him.

I’m sorry for what I said back at the party, he would tell her if he was here now.

But she would quiet him right up, arching under his hand, just as she was doing now. She would urge him to undo her corset.

Nicki pulled on one of the lacings, trying not to think about the reality, the chances she would be taking by opening herself up and letting an actual man do this.

As she opened the corset, fantasy enveloped her, the air breathing over her exposed skin.

What would he say if he saw her like this?

What would he do?

She pictured Shane’s face with the bandanna covering the lower half of it.

The outlaw. The bad boy who had a chance for redemption…

Feeling free, she slid her hand lower, pushing up her dress and pressing against her sex, pretending it was his hand. She rocked her hips slightly, pressing harder, circling her fingers over her clit.

He was the one stroking her, his face hidden by that bandanna as well as the night that swallowed her room.

Give me everything, he would say in an almost unrecognizable voice.

Nicki pressed harder, faster. Her panties were getting damp now, wetter and wetter as the outlaw made the sexual steam rise inside her, pulsing. Throbbing.

She groaned. “What do you want?”

Her money? Her life?

In her fantasy, he pushed a finger into her, and she bucked. Higher and higher, darker and darker as her fantasy swirled, sucking her in.

I just want you, he would say and, this time, it was Shane’s voice.

Higher, harder…

Nicki came with an inner bang, like a gunshot that echoed and echoed through her, her breathing choppy as she opened her eyes back to the present.

The quiet of the house.

The disturbed covers on her bed.

The moon-shaded corners of her room.

It was a while before she rolled to her stomach again and fell asleep, but when she did, she went back to dreaming of the outlaw and what he would do to her next.

BACK AT THE PARTY, Candace had been shaking her booty on the dance floor, yippy-yo-kay-yaying with every cowboy who was game.

But she hadn’t been so into her fun that she’d completely forgotten about Nicki—especially when her cousin had left the ballroom with Manny the foreman.

Now, as Candace stood in the hallway of the hotel, her cell phone to her ear, she listened to the voice mail.

“Don’t kill me,” Nicki said, “but I’m exhausted, Candy. I had a great time while I was there, but I’m going home. I’ll be waiting up for you in my room with one of those ‘adventurous books’ so you can tell me about your big night. That is, if you even come home. Anyway, we’ll do this again soon—I promise. It’s just that…”

Nicki hadn’t needed to mention the big day tomorrow, because Candace had already guessed that it would be the supposed reason Nicki had left.

But Candace had another theory.

She tucked the phone into a holster that hung from one hip and sauntered to the door of the party, where the band was winding up a Garth Brooks song. As they dove into the last notes and then announced another break, Candace found Shane Carter, standing at a table, the focal point of three giggling women.

The Don Juan of Pine Junction.

Easy guys didn’t interest her, and that’s how most of the men here seemed. Way too easy. So when Candace narrowed her gaze at Shane, it wasn’t because she was zooming in on him for herself.

Earlier, Nicki had been engaged in quite the discussion with him, and it looked as if it hadn’t been a good, flirty chat, either. Nicki had deserted the talk with a crushed look on her face, and it had torn at Candace just as strongly.

All women knew what it was like to be crushed by a crush, and Nicki was more sensitive than most. Beneath all the straight-talk and confidence in her work, Nicki was still finding herself, and it hadn’t been easy while being sheltered by that ranch all these years. Candace had always taken great pleasure in getting Nicki out and about, even as a kid, and she’d seen Nicki blossom when she wasn’t acting like a girl who’d taken on so much responsibility with the ranch much too early.

It broke Candace’s heart to think that Nicki might never get the joy that was to be taken out of life. Even Candace, who’d had her share of hard times lately, knew that there was still fun to be had, even during the worst of it.

Besides, hadn’t Nicki said that she’d be in to using that saloon girl costume?

Candace went to the quiet lobby, asked a desk clerk for a pen and paper, then scribbled.

If you’re up to it, how about coming over at about 10:00 tonight? I’m in my room, on my bed, waiting to see if you’ll be here. Waiting for an outlaw to break out of his cell and be with me, his woman, the saloon girl with the fishnet stockings and garters.

Had she overdone it? It sounded like something from Nicki’s books—novels that Candace had also become addicted to over the years.

Okay, maybe it was over the top, but if a known playboy like Shane was to be lured to Nicki, an invitation would have to have some spice. Sure, Nicki would be in bed reading, as she’d said on her phone message, but if Shane showed up, she could always tell him to get out. Or she could tell him to stay. And, from the way Candace had seen Shane devouring Nicki with his gaze earlier, she had no doubts that he would agree to whatever Nicki decided.

She ended the note by adding the address of the Wade house, mentioning that his saloon girl would be in the first bedroom on the second floor.

Nicki’s room.

One last niggle made Candace hesitate, but she told herself that all Nicki needed was opportunity. Hadn’t she admitted earlier that if the chance came along, she’d hop on it?

Yes, she had. Besides, Nicki needed this—confidence and, more important, some darned fun.

Candace went back to the ballroom, waiting until Shane ambled over to the bar for a drink, then marched right up to him before any other women could waylay him.

“Hi, Shane,” she said, friendly as any old fairy godmother. Or madam.

When he turned around, he didn’t greet her with any kind of playboy’s “how do you do,” as she expected he might. No, at the sight of her, he might’ve even been a little…wary.

“Candace,” he said, offering his hand for a shake. “Nicki’s cousin, right? Haven’t seen you for a good while.”

“I’m on an extended visit.” The circumstances of the visit—getting fired, having trouble getting rehired anywhere—stayed buried in her, deep and low, where embarrassment covered them.

He leaned back against the bar, and she couldn’t help but notice that he was checking out the room.

“Looking for Nicki?” she asked.

“Nope.”

“Well, that’s good, because she left already. I think you ruffled her feathers.”

He frowned. “I didn’t mean to. We had a few words about that corporate guy coming out to her ranch tomorrow, and…Hell, the conversation just didn’t end the way I hoped it would.”

So Candace had been right about them having some sort of tiff.

As he lifted his beer to take a drink, she went for it, tucking the note she’d written into a pocket in his vest.

“If you want to make amends with Nicki, this is how to do it.” She got a little bolder, praying that the end would justify the means. “Nicki’s a pretty shy person. You know that, right?”

“She wasn’t shy while she was putting me in my place.”

“That’s true. When Nicki’s wound up, Nicki’s wound up.” Candace took a breath. Here it went. “Before she left, she was still on fire, and I suggested she put that to good use. That’s when she wrote this.”

He glanced at the paper peeking out of his vest. “Wrote what, exactly?”

He said it as if he were definitely interested. This was totally going to work.

“You’ve got to read it to see,” Candace said, lifting an eyebrow, knowing that she’d done what she could to hook Shane Carter’s attention and make Nicki’s night.

And maybe even her decade.

Candace sauntered away, hoping Shane would read that note soon, then show up at Nicki’s bedroom tonight, giving her the best apology ever.

3

SHANE RETRIEVED the note from his pocket shortly after Candace had gone back to the dance floor, and after he read it, he couldn’t believe it.

Meet Nicki at the Wade house?

Nicki?

After their argument, he wasn’t sure what to think.

Then he remembered how she’d looked at him at first, just as any woman looked at a man. And that costume she was wearing…

Nicki really had grown up.

Had her anger with him only been a prelude to more? He’d known women like that in the past—ones who liked to argue as foreplay.

Maybe Nicki was the same. He had a note right here in his hand to suggest it.

He glanced at his old watch. Twenty minutes till ten, the meeting hour.

Hell, if a woman wanted him to come over, he wasn’t about to say no. First of all, there’d been an undeniable attraction between them from the start, setting off sparks as they’d talked to each other, angry or not. Besides that, he was used to cleansing his mind with sex, and Lord knew he needed to forget about everything that’d been waiting here for him in Pine Junction on the Slanted C.

In the end, an invitation was an invitation, right? Even if it was from the girl next door.

It just went to show that nothing ever stayed the same, so who was he to deny her?

Blanking his mind to any mental arguments, he left the hotel and walked to Main Street, where he’d parked his Dodge truck. The gas lamps lent a timeless atmosphere to the night, along with the Old West facades of Pine Junction—some of which had been used as Hollywood sets, back in the day. Planked sidewalks, saloons and rising hills that led to an abandoned silver mine gave him reason to get in the mood for this outlaw-meets-saloon-girl date.

All the while, he kept thinking of Nicki in that costume, Nicki heating him from boot to hat with just a long look when she first saw him…

Nicki’s surprising invitation.

As he drove to the W+W, the faint moonlight painted the white fences along the dirt road that led to the ranch. When he got there, he parked near a copse of pine trees, far out of the open.

Before leaving the truck, he checked his cell phone. A few minutes to ten. She had to be waiting.

All he kept seeing was Nicki Wade’s light green eyes and how they’d heated him up with the fire in them.

But then his conscience came rushing back. Nicki’s dad, who’d been downright friendly and courteous to Shane when a whole lot of people in Pine Junction hadn’t been, might not have appreciated this. There’d been too many older, well-played daughters around the area for Shane to have been the father favorite. Nicki had been so young that there was no doubt her dad had felt secure in the knowledge that he wouldn’t be dealing with Shane in that way for a good, long while, if ever.

But Nicki was able to make her own decisions now, and she had asked him over.

Another look at the time told Shane that it was ten o’clock on the nose.

He got out of the truck, took care with closing the door, then walked the rest of the way to the house, where the entrance had been left unlocked.

Opening it, he crossed the threshold, into a hallway just off a well-used parlor where the Wades used to greet their guests. He’d been in the room, with its tarnished crystal lamps and old velvet sofas, only a few times, during neighborly parties when he’d been a kid, eager to leave and run around outside where his parents and big brother couldn’t keep an eye on him. Nicki had been much the same—fidgety while the adults had sat around and talked, her ill-fitting dresses always askew before the first hour was up, even though she hadn’t been doing much. Just sitting on a couch had seemed to be enough to put her in a state of dishabille.

She’d been cute, he recalled, but she’d been a sweet kind of cute. The kind that went against the nature of the bachelor he’d eventually become—one who’d seen how miserable his mother had been during marriage and decided that it wasn’t for him.

Second floor, she had written.

He quietly mounted the stairs, freezing every time a creak sounded under his feet. His pulse thumped, competing with the grandfather clock in the parlor. Both sounds seemed to flood the house.

When he’d finished with the steps, he moved toward the only room that had its door closed, then rested his hand on the old-fashioned crystal knob, turning it.

Inside, the darkness was cut only by a sliver of moonlight from the gaping curtains. It was enough to show him the lower half of the bed, where his saloon girl rested. She lay facedown, her dress gathered near her hips in a bunch of satin, her long legs still encased in the fishnet pattern of her stockings.

He heard breathing, even and soft.

Nicki—she hadn’t been kidding with that note.

Waiting for my outlaw to break out of his cell and be with me, his woman, the saloon girl with the fishnet stockings and garters…

But had she already fallen asleep?

Well, yeah. That’d make sense with the scenario in the note. The outlaw coming back to his hideaway and finding the saloon girl in his bed, waiting for him.

Someone who’d allow him a little escapade, just for a night, he reminded himself.

He pulled up the bandanna over the lower half of his face and moved to the bed. He heard her sigh, then shift restlessly in a rustle of that maddeningly alluring dress.

Yup, he was a bad, bad man on the run from the law, and he was going to show this woman just how dangerous meeting with him could be.

He went to the foot of the mattress, rested his hands on her stocking-covered ankles. Warm under the silk. Delicate.

Easing his hands higher, he coasted his thumbs over her calves.

She sighed again, wiggling her hips.

Lust, pure and simple, bolted through Shane, making his cock hard, and he moved his hands higher, over the backs of her knees, over her thighs, where her stockings ended and garters began.

He heard her breathing hitch, and he knew the game was really on now.

And if this was how Nicki wanted it, he was ready to play it.

“Don’t make a sound,” the outlaw whispered, reaching under her dress. “Not a word…”

IN THE HAZE OF A DREAM—the aftermath of the fantasy she’d had before drifting off to sleep, one that seemed incredibly real—Nicki felt the outlaw’s hands on her rear end, cupping her.

Don’t make a sound. And she didn’t as her face rubbed against the bedcovers, her hands pressed against the mattress. Her breasts were flattened beneath her, making them feel swollen, raw against the quilting.

In that foggy dream, she felt the bed dip as the bandit climbed onto it, heard the box springs creak. His legs brushed the outside of hers as he straddled her.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” he said in a deep Western drawl, a whisper above the stillness of the night.

She moaned in answer.

He slipped his hands—big, work-roughened hands—from her butt to her hips, then…

Oh, then underneath, to her belly.

Her muscles there jumped, and the tiny flinches made her gasp. Desire nipped at her skin, and she felt plumped, aching, slippery. Ready already.

He spoke again, rough and ready, too. “You knew this is the only place I can hide out. You waited for me.”

A hunted man, she thought. A fugitive from the law.

Dangerous.

And he sounded just like Shane.

That revved her up even more in her dream-state, and she lifted her hips, knowing he was tender and gentle underneath his dangerous exterior. Her fantasy man took that as a sign to go on, coaxing his hands into her undies.

She muffled her moan.

He laughed, low and lethal, easing a finger between her slick folds, urging her legs apart. Down, up, circling her clit, taking up where they’d left off before. Her hips moved with his strokes, especially when he used his other hand to pull her back to him, nestling her rear end against him.

Her fantasy man was hard. She could feel the ridge of him even through his pants and the cotton of her undies.

Panting, she felt her breath, moist and hot, against the covers. She was still in a fever dream, a million miles away from the Nicki she’d always known.

Grinding back against him, she made him moan, too, his hands grasping her hips as he encouraged her to go on, harder. Slower.

The feel of him…Even in a dream, the primal need hit her hard. Damn it, she wanted him inside her without anything between them.

He coasted his finger up and into her, just like earlier, when she’d touched herself and exploded by just thinking about him. But this time it was better, more intense.

He swept his finger around while using his palm to press against her clit. She couldn’t do anything but make little helpless sounds, couldn’t even find her voice so she could tell him that this wasn’t enough. She wanted it all.

She rocked against him, every cell in her body palpitating, stomping in an all-consuming rhythm that beat on her damp skin, in her ears, in her temples. There was a pressure in her that she’d never felt before—a rising joy that she rode up and up.

“There,” he said on a near growl. He churned his erection against her, echoing the sinuous movement with his hand on her sex…in her sex. “You like it bad, don’t you?”

Yes, she did.

She was getting so high that she didn’t think she could go any further, her body tight, ready to fly open. And, when he snuck his other hand to her clit again, working it until she couldn’t stand another second, she broke.

Bursting apart, pieces of her all around, in the air, tumbling, trying to find a place to fit together again during this freefall.

Showering like rain.

A storm.

A banging, breath-stealing push of shudders as she fell back to the bed, crying out against the mattress as he covered her mouth with his hand.

As Nicki sucked in breath upon breath against his skin, she opened her eyes part way, still in the dream.

But…

She blinked.

Calluses on his hand. The taste of skin—musky, male.

The hint of her juices on him, too.

The voice of the outlaw again. “You don’t know what kind of danger you’ve put yourself in, waiting here for me.”

The voice…this voice.

Shane’s.

She blinked. Held her breath as reality rushed her.

Real. This was actually happening.

Her heart blipped like a series of beeps counting down to a gasp that wouldn’t come. It was so dark that she couldn’t see much else but the cut of moonlight slashing across the foot of her bed.

His whispers seemed to weave themselves into the surreal, carnal shadows.

“Not a word,” he said, tracing her mouth with a finger, clearly intending to continue what he’d started.

Lust fireworked through her. Had he wanted her so much at the party that he’d come here, just like the bad boy he’d always been?

Had that look he’d first given her from across the room said everything?

Heart exploding, she turned around to him, and even in the near darkness, she found him with a bandanna over the lower half of his face. With her free hand, she tugged it down. Her pulse kicked in her ears, her blood going through her so fast that it felt like lightning.

“Shane?” she whispered, although she couldn’t see much of his face.

He froze for some reason.

She didn’t move, either. She wasn’t sure why—maybe because this had started out as a dream. She’d been half-asleep, but at some point, she’d been awake.

So, so awake.

Dreaming had only been an excuse for her to throw herself into her biggest desire, and it was just now enveloping her with that reality.

Even so, her pulse chugged along, propelled by the possibility that he had wanted this as much as she had.

But when he spoke, he blasted her world apart.

“Who else would it be but me?” he asked.

For a second, she followed the echo of his question, the reverberations chipping away at her.

Nicki grabbed her blankets to cover herself and snapped on a bedside light.

And there he sat, the outlaw Shane, shock registering on his face, too, as he saw that this wasn’t the welcome he’d been expecting.

IT TOOK SHANE A FEW seconds to come to terms with what was happening.

Why did she seem so flabbergasted?

But there she was, huddled under the bedcovers, her hair a tumble of falling curls and one lone feather that had stayed in during all the excitement. The few others were spread over the bed, like the aftermath of some crash.

The flush of her cheeks made the green of her eyes stand out in surprised fervor.

But why was she reacting like this if she’d invited him over?

Shane got up off the bed, thankful that his untucked shirt covered all evidence of his arousal. Not that she wouldn’t know his state, but…

Ah, crap.

“The note…” He lowered his voice. “You wrote me a note.”

“What?”

Now he was really confused. He dug into his jeans pocket where he’d stored the paper, then offered it to her.

She read it, her brow furrowed. She looked adorable, even if she was likely to murder him any moment.

His body was still pounding from everything that’d just gone on in that bed.

Nicki Wade. She’d been dressed as a saloon girl, as if it was a comfortable thing for her, but then again, outside of costumes, he’d never thought that Nicki would be so…

He couldn’t come up with a word that described what she’d conjured up in him. All he knew was that he’d wanted her more than anything now. She was perfect—her scent, like fresh summer grass; her smooth skin; the way she’d fit in his hands; the gasps and moans that had reached right into him, twisting and turning until he was so wound up that it hurt to stand here staring at her.

It felt as if she’d always been here, waiting.

“What the hell is this?” she finally said in her own edged whisper as she held that note.

Either Nicki was playing the innocent or she was truly flummoxed. He was going to go with the latter.

“Candace,” he said, thinking that he should’ve known better. “She must’ve been setting us up. She wrote that note and put it in my pocket.”

Nicki was already out of the bed, the covers wrapped around her, even though she still had most of her clothing on. She picked up a TV remote from her nightstand.

“Nic—” he started to say.

She threw it at him and he dodged. At the same time, he scooped his hat off the floor.

“Can we be civilized about this?” he asked.

“Civilized?” Even their harsh whispers seemed to rock the house. “This is beyond civil.”

She searched her nightstand for something else to throw, and he darted over to her before she could destroy her entire room.

He’d clasped one of her wrists in his hand, and he could swear that his skin against hers set them both to sizzling.

His cock gave an agonizing thud, so he let go of her and she backed away, as if rocked hard, too.

“I understand why you’re upset.”

“Just what do you think I am, for you to come over here and…?”

He offered a grin—one that usually got him out of scrapes—and shrugged.

Cheeks flushing even more, she tightened the covers around her, but that only served to push up her breasts. Every move she made echoed in his groin, which was still pounding, killing him.

Nicki made a “come on” gesture with her fingers, so he prepared to explain it all.

“When a woman invites a man in,” he said, “it’s hard for him to say no. I took the note at face value.”

“But I didn’t invite you here.”

“By God, Nicki, I’m sorry.”

Her chest kept heaving, her skin going redder.

Then it hit him. Nicki hadn’t exactly kicked him out of bed right away, even though she hadn’t been expecting a man to sneak up on her in costume. In fact, it’d been quite a spell before she’d come out of the whole scenario.

“Nicki,” he said softly, “even if you didn’t write that note, did you want me to come here?”

She made as if she were going to grab the pillow from the bed and throw it at him, but then she stopped and plopped down on the mattress.

He’d hit a target, and it was as if the bull’s-eye was ringing in him, too.

“Listen,” he said, “if you’d told me at any time to get out, I would’ve.”

“I was half-asleep when it all started.”

That made him feel even worse, and she must’ve seen it in the way he wiped a hand over his face.

“Nicki…”

“No.” She sighed. “Jeez, I actually believe you when you say that being here was a mistake.”

The way she said “mistake”…

Tentatively, he came nearer to the bed. “When I found you sleeping, I thought it was a part of the act suggested in that note.”

When she looked up at him with those big green eyes, his heart almost broke. There was something he couldn’t figure out, almost as if he was hurting her by explaining everything.

Nicki gestured toward the door again, as if trying to avoid the same questions he was struggling with. “The door’s waiting for you.”

Dismissed, just as so many others had done to him, the rascal of the county.

Her gesture got him straight through the heart. He almost held his hand up to it, because it was as if she hadn’t needed to put that hole in him before seeing through him.

Silence wedged between them as he kept right on aching. And it wasn’t just in his nethers, either. He was dying to touch her hair. Dying to see what she would do if he just reached out to her, stroking a finger over her cheek, her collarbone.

Damned hormones. Damned blood still pounding through him, driving him to distraction and agony.

“Will you tell me one thing?” he asked, unable to help himself.

“Depends on the question.”

“How much of a dream was it?”

She pulled those covers around her even tighter.

“Nicki?” he asked softly.

During her hesitation, he found his answer: at some point, even if she’d been sleeping when he’d come in, she’d known what was going on—that it’d been real.

And she’d let it continue.

She stood from the bed. “You really should go.”

An inexplicable urge captured him—a draw that he’d never encountered before. Was it because she was the one woman who didn’t seem to want him?

All his life, he’d chased and chased, even while running from Pine Junction. Chasing had been the one thing that had occupied him, entertained him.

But this wasn’t a mere game. Nicki had been a good girl, and he always drew the line at those, because good girls were trouble.

So why was he still here?

“That outlaw thing did something for you,” he said.

From the way she whipped her gaze over to him, he knew that his aim had been true.

“You don’t need to worry about it,” she said, “because it’s never going to happen again.”

“You sure about that?” Shane asked. “Because I’d venture to say that you were pretty enthusiastic this time.”

Nicki stared at him, her gaze wide.

“What other fantasies do you have, Nicki?” he asked, just daring her to tell him.

NICKI HELD HER BREATH.

Other fantasies.

She thought of her favorites—vampires in moody foreign castles, storm-tossed shipwreck islands and faraway desert tents. All fake, all so appealing, anyway.

She wouldn’t dare confess any of it, though.

But looking at Shane now, with his chiseled features, deep blue eyes and imposing frame garbed in black, she longed for…more. She yearned to be taken to another world, to have his hands and mouth all over her, as if she were the only person who drove him to the intensity she’d experienced in him tonight.

“That’s none of your business,” she said.

Nicki didn’t have the heart to utter the rest: Were you here for just the sex or because you thought you’d be having sex with me…?

As he stood there, he looked just as needful as she felt, his gaze a little hazy as he kept watching her.

Her pulse jerked, and she loosened her grip on the covers.

It was as if she was in that outlaw dream/fantasy again—a place where she’d had no responsibility, where she wasn’t the Nicki who had so much going on in reality.

But she’d been nothing more than a mistake tonight, and even if he wanted to talk about fantasies now, she wouldn’t give in.

Nicki pointed toward her door.

He paused, and she wondered what was going through his mind, especially since he seemed…

Was “rejected” the right word?

He—Shane Carter—the one all the women had gathered round tonight at the party?

Before she could absorb that, he fixed his hat back on his head, nodding to her. When he grinned, it was as if he was trying to show that it didn’t matter, but it struck her as wrong.

“Again,” he said, “sorry about the trouble.” He paused. “And, if it makes any difference, I’m glad it happened. Real glad.”

Glad?

With that piece of news, she watched him go through her door, then shut it behind him. Her pulse fluttered like a dying thing as she sat on her bed, her brain finally catching up to everything that’d just happened.

Shane Carter, asking her about her fantasies, seeming as if he would make more than a few of them come true for her.

Shane Carter, glad that he’d been fooled into being here, in this bed…

Downstairs, she thought she heard the door close.

As her skin kept tingling, Nicki lay down on the mattress. And, even though she knew he’d gone, she kept listening for any footfalls outside her door, wishing she would hear the outlaw coming to his hideaway just one more time before the sun rose.

4

What other fantasies do you have…?

After a round of chores the next morning, Nicki sat on the back porch swing near the kitchen exit, fixing the seam on a Halloween princess costume for one of the ranch kids.

She couldn’t forget what Shane had said to her.

What he’d done to her.

She blew out a breath as a zing of remembrance flew through her, playing electric havoc in her belly, then tingling lower. Just the thought of him made her shift a little on the swing, sending it to creaking.

It was an addiction, running last night over and over again in her mind, reconstructing what it’d been like to feel his mouth near her neck, his hot breath in her ear.

Not a word…

The porch screen door slammed open and three kids spilled out, giggling and waving at Nicki as they ran past, rousing a couple of Australian shepherd ranch dogs who’d been poking around an old oak tree.

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