Читать книгу: «Some Like It Sizzling»

1

HE WAS HALF NAKED and handcuffed to her bed. Lucy stared at the sleeping cowboy, unable to move or to even utter a cry of protest.

Everything else about her Friday had so far been normal. She’d put in a twelve-hour shift at Sunny Horizons Travel Agency dealing with frantic last-minute vacation planners and all the other customers her coworkers didn’t want to handle. She’d had lunch with Claire—the one bright spot in her day—and she’d stopped at the bank machine and the gas station on her way home. Now it was time to relax and watch TV, maybe balance her checkbook and do some laundry.

But…there was this stranger wearing a Stetson and silver handcuffs. Where had he come from and what was he doing on her bed?

For one horrifying moment Lucy wondered if she’d somehow stumbled into an intimate scene about to unfold in someone else’s apartment. Muscle-bound men didn’t fall asleep on her bed, and she didn’t own a pair of handcuffs.

But it was her bed, and her room, and her apartment, she assured herself as she looked around at the familiar setting. That didn’t change the fact of the slumbering, handcuffed cowboy.

Long muscular arms stretched over his head and a white Stetson tipped forward covered his face. Impossibly wide shoulders tapered to a smooth torso that begged to be touched by a woman’s hands. Faded jeans hugged narrow hips and enveloped bulging thighs. The picture was made complete by a pair of white snakeskin boots, accented by what looked like silver spurs.

In the agonizing moments it took her to recover from the shock, a voice in Lucy’s head screamed, Call 911! Yet she stood in the doorway, paralyzed, unable to look away. Somehow, by some bizarre stroke of luck, here was her fantasy come to life—a real, live, hunk of a cowboy in her bedroom at her mercy. Her tired body was suddenly awake and on alert, her libido kicking into overdrive and sending tingles to places that had been dormant for months.

Her heartbeat thudding in her ears, she willed herself to run, but she couldn’t move.

If she hadn’t felt so numb, she might find some humor in the bizarre scene, but she’d spent the last two hours at work dealing with the very angry Mr. Dorfler, whose vacation on the Family Fun Ship had been marred by a belligerent cruise ship employee in a Loopy the Cat costume. Now all she really wanted was to slide into her fuzzy pajamas and to watch TV reruns of I Love Lucy.

Something, some important fact she seemed to have forgotten, was nagging at her. And then she remembered…Claire had said she’d leave Lucy’s birthday gift in her apartment.

It will be waiting for you on your bed….

Suddenly it all made terrible sense…and she was going to kill Claire Elliot.

Easing out of the room for fear of waking the cowboy before she knew for sure that he was indeed her gift and not some masochistic intruder, Lucy rushed to the phone in the kitchen and hit the auto-dial button for Claire’s number. The phone rang, and her friend picked up after two rings.

“Are you insane?”

“Hi, Luc. I presume you’ve found your birthday gift.” Claire’s self-satisfied smile was apparent even over the phone.

“If you’re speaking of the Western-style gigolo or whatever he is, I found him.”

Her friend’s raspy laughter came across the phone line loud and clear. “He’s not a gigolo, but I’m sure he’d be willing to accommodate a pretty girl like yourself during his off hours—”

“Claire!”

“He’s your escort to the ranch. Didn’t he explain that?”

“He hasn’t quite had a chance yet, since he’s currently sawing wood in my bedroom.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s asleep! Now, what’s this ranch you’re talking about?”

“Oh, dear. I didn’t realize you’d be working so late. I had him arrive there at five o’clock,” Claire said, ignoring Lucy’s question. “The poor guy’s been handcuffed to your bed for over three hours—and what did you think of the handcuffs, by the way? Those were my idea.”

“What ranch?” By the time she got the words out, a horrible thought had occurred to her. The Fantasy Ranch. The infamous adults-only resort several hours out into the desert where party people like Claire loved to vacation. Rumors of the wild parties and sexual escapades that took place at the resort circulated constantly around Phoenix. Just last month there’d been a story in the gossip pages about a party at the ranch that had ended with a fight between a popular movie actor and the paparazzo who’d caught him on camera literally with his pants down.

They’d gotten a fax at the travel agency several weeks ago saying that the ranch’s end-of-summer celebration was fast approaching. It would be just like Claire to book her a surprise vacation at such an outrageous place.

Claire sighed over the phone. “I wish I could go with you. That was the plan, but these weekend meetings came up at the last minute—”

“We can go on a trip together anytime. When you get back we can plan that trip to Hawaii we’ve been talking about. In the meantime, I’m just going to spend the weekend watching reruns—”

“No, you’re not. As your boss, I order you to take the trip as planned. Just go with Buck instead of me. You wouldn’t believe what I had to go through to get him for you.”

Lucy felt her insides go all jiggly as she considered the possibility of going off to a resort—an adults-only resort at that—with a complete stranger. “But I—”

“No arguments. You’ve said yourself that you don’t want to spend the rest of your life with no one but your cats to keep you warm at night. This is your chance to learn how to loosen up and have fun. In fact, I dare you to be a little naughty for once in your life. And you’d better not show up at work for at least another week.”

Lucy blinked in shock as the line went dead. She hit redial several times, but the line was busy. Claire had hung up on her and left her to deal with a stud named Buck. She should have never, ever told that awful woman about her secret cowboy fantasy.

After taking a deep, calming breath she crept down the hall to the bedroom again and peered around the edge of the doorway. He was still asleep—dead asleep by the sound of his slow, steady breathing.

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. What was she to say? “Hey there, cowboy, come here often?” Or maybe, “Excuse me, could you please get your boots off my bed?” There just wasn’t an appropriate opener for this situation.

She allowed herself to take in the whole of him lying there with his well-tanned torso exposed, hard muscles forming a ripple effect on his abdomen, the muscles of his chest and arms bulging slightly as they strained from the handcuffs. His arms were up behind his head, his wrists clasped to the headboard with the cuffs that were looped around a wooden spindle, and the sexy thatches of dark hair under his arms were exposed. Lucy had never realized body hair could be so…arousing.

But mostly she just marveled that such a gorgeous man—gorgeous even with his face mostly hidden by the hat—was lying on her bed. When was the last time that had happened? Well, never. She did a quick mental inventory of all her past boyfriends, all four of them, and realized that none had been this attractive. More often than not, they’d been nice guys, but never drop-dead gorgeous. It just wasn’t a quality she looked for in a man.

Not that Lucy had minded dating average-looking men. In fact, she preferred it that way. Attractive men were dangerous, arrogant, shallow, too aware of their power over women. They got what they wanted too easily, and they never noticed plain, boring women like Lucy Connors. Even if they had, she was immune to their charms.

Then why did it feel as if her whole body sighed when she took in the sight of the half-naked Buck on her bed? Why did it feel as if her pulse had centered itself between her legs? And why was there a thin film of perspiration breaking out on her upper lip?

Lucy glanced down at herself and suddenly felt self-conscious in her buttoned-up white blouse and brown tweed skirt. She looked like an uptight bore. Her chest tightened ever so slightly as she admitted that she was exactly what everyone thought she was—a woman who didn’t have the slightest clue how to have fun.

Claire’s words echoed in her head. I dare you to be a little naughty for once in your life.

Forget Claire. She and her best friend were just different, that’s all, and she didn’t have to change who she was to suit that woman. No, if she wanted to spend the weekend in her flannel PJs, eating carrot sticks and unsalted, unbuttered popcorn, and watching TV as she caught up on her laundry and maybe balanced her checkbook, then that’s exactly what she would do. Claire wasn’t going to lose respect for her just because she refused to run off to some ridiculous hedonistic resort with a male bimbo named Buck.

Lucy made up her mind. She wasn’t going to accept Claire’s silly dare. But that didn’t change the fact that she still had to get rid of Buck. She took a step into the bedroom, then hesitated. She couldn’t wake a gorgeous guy like that wearing her wallflower work outfit. No, she would slip into something a little less boring while he was still asleep, and he’d never know the difference. When she woke the sleeping stud, at least she would do it with her womanly ego intact.

She tiptoed several feet without making a sound, but the closet across the room seemed a mile away; her chest of drawers wasn’t any closer. She couldn’t let a little thing like that stop her, though, she reminded herself as she took one more tentative step and sighed with relief when Buck continued to snore softly.

She did a mental inventory of her wardrobe, wondering which outfit best suited the occasion. What she realized immediately was that she owned a dizzying array of beige garments, and almost nothing that was appropriate for waking up a stud-muffin. She stopped in her tracks in front of the closet. There sat a black suitcase with a hot pink bow on top and a small note card tucked under the bow. Lucy bent and plucked the card out, recognizing her name written in Claire’s handwriting. She opened the envelope to find a card within that read, “This is everything you’ll need for the week, except an outfit to travel in. That, you’ll find hanging on the back of the bathroom door. Just wear it!” The words “wear it” were underlined twice. Claire had signed the note, “Love, C.”

Lucy eyeballed the suitcase warily. Where her tastes ran toward conservative styles and neutral colors, Claire had a penchant for outrageous platform heels and leopard-print undergarments. It was best not to look at the contents of the suitcase right away, not when she had Buck, who could wake at any moment, nearby.

She hurried across the room as silently as possible and slipped into the bathroom, gently closing and locking the door behind her. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears. When she finally turned on the light, the outfit in front of her was worse than she could have imagined.

And she couldn’t wait to try it on.

Two minutes later Lucy’s work clothes were lying in a heap on the bathroom floor and she was peering over her shoulder at the reflection of her butt in a pair of skintight black pants. As many other shocks as she’d received this evening, perhaps the greatest one of all was the realization that she didn’t look half bad in the outfit Claire had picked out. In fact, she might even say she looked…darned good. All those years of eating wheat bran and steamed veggies had paid off.

But whether or not she could walk out of the bathroom and allow another human being to see her like this was a different matter. She finished fastening the tiny eye-hooks on the front of the stretchy red top—red, a color she never wore—and slid on the black platform sandals that turned out to be a lot more comfortable than they looked, then took another look at herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door.

Okay, she wasn’t exactly blessed by Mother Nature in the chest department, but still…She inspected herself further. Not bad for an outfit that made her look like a groupie hoping to sneak backstage at a rock concert. Her hair, however, was all wrong.

She reached up and removed the pins that held her French twist in place, then ran her fingers through her light brown hair until it fell around her face in waves that hung to her shoulders. She’d never liked her hair much, especially not the mousy color that made her about as noticeable as white wallpaper, or the flyaway curls that, on bad days, gave her the appearance of having wispy little horns, but with the groupie getup, she had to admit that the tousled look went quite nicely.

She wasn’t wearing a spot of makeup, but there was no time to fix herself up any more than she already had, especially when her makeup collection consisted mostly of ointments and facial cleansers—not tubes of lipstick with names like Scarlet Passion.

She had a cowboy to awaken. But as she took a deep breath and stepped out of the bathroom, her throat seized up and she felt her knees begin to buckle. What could she possibly have been thinking? She couldn’t wake up this strange man and let him see her like this.

She heard Claire’s voice again. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life with no one but your cats to keep you warm at night. Lucy loved her cats, but they didn’t make great bed partners. Aside from their more obvious shortcomings, Romeo hogged the bed and Juliet liked to deposit dead, mangled insects on Lucy’s pillow—her feline version of fancy hotel chocolates.

With that depressing thought, she decided the least she could do for herself was be proud of the way she looked in her new outfit, even if it was only for the couple of minutes it took to get Buck out of the apartment.

Her confidence somewhat renewed, she couldn’t help pausing for a moment to marvel again at the male form in all its glory. Why did such gorgeous men have to exist, to remind plain women such as herself of all they couldn’t have? She decided it would be wise not to spend much more time contemplating the unfairness of it all, but she still couldn’t stop staring. What she really wanted was a closer look.

It only took one more gander at that perfect expanse of chest to convince her that a closer look wouldn’t hurt anyone. Besides, she’d never actually seen a half-naked hunk at close range before.

As she knelt beside the bed, a little alarm sounded in the back of her brain that she quickly shut off. This was her one chance to gawk at Buck up close, and she wasn’t going to waste it. She eased her elbows onto the edge of the bed and leaned in, inhaling the scent of him—an advantage of getting close that she hadn’t even considered. He smelled of something warm and woodsy and unmistakably male, and the scent was intoxicating. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeper, nearly melting as the smell overtook her.

Eyes open again, she admired the smoothness of his tanned, olive skin and the little brown nipples that were nearly flat against his chest. The only body hair he had was under his arms, and a thin, dark trail that started below his belly button and disappeared into the waist of his jeans, calling Lucy’s eyes lower to the impressive bulge that filled his worn-out Levi’s. She felt her jaw sag as she contemplated the size of the bulge. Were there really men out there who were that well endowed? If so, she’d been missing the boat. Heck, she hadn’t even known the boat existed.

“Hey there, darlin’. Like what you see?”

The shock of Buck’s voice sent Lucy sprawling backward, landing on her rear end with a thud as she stared up at the man she’d thought to be asleep.

“H-how l-long have you been awake?” She felt her face burn as he watched her with amused eyes.

“Since you leaned against the bed.”

“Oh.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Lucy found herself mesmerized by his mouth as it formed words, words she didn’t want to hear at the moment because he had the sexiest mouth she’d ever seen and all she wanted to do was to find out how it would feel to kiss it. Oh, it wasn’t just his mouth, but his whole face! The hat had slid back to reveal features just as stunning as those below his neck. Straight nose, strong jawline, hint of a five o’clock shadow, dark brown lashes to match his tousled dark hair.

“What question?”

“Do you like what you see?” He had a lazy smile and a deeper voice than she’d imagined.

Lucy pushed herself up from the carpet and stood, futilely trying to brush cat hair from her black pants. Anything to hide her flaming-red face from Buck. “I was just a little shocked to find a strange man handcuffed to my bed, that’s all.”

“You’re hurting my feelings, darlin’.”

Lucy swallowed the acid taste of fear in her mouth and wished she could slink under the bed. She forced herself to look him in the eyes, and found that they were a most intriguing shade of pale gray. “You look quite acceptable.”

“Acceptable?”

“Nice, I mean.”

“Look, hon, I can call the ranch and have them send another guy if I don’t meet your standards—”

“No, that won’t be necessary. I mean, I’m afraid my friend—the woman who arranged for you to be here—she made a bit of an error in judgment.” Her face must have turned the same color as her shirt by now. She cleared her throat in the futile hope that he’d stop staring at her so blatantly.

“What sort of an error in judgment?”

“She assumed I would agree to go on this trip, but…”

He adjusted his shoulder and winced, and she realized he must have been in pain because of the handcuffs.

“Oh, dear, let me get you out of those. Do you have the key?”

“It’s in my right-hand pocket,” he said. “Just reach in there and feel around for it.”

Lucy’s mouth went dry as she caught his meaning. “You mean, in your pants?”

He nodded, a smile playing on his lips.

“I don’t think my hand will fit in there.” She eyeballed the skintight denim and wondered how she’d gotten herself into such a predicament. Claire. She was going to strangle that woman.

“You could unzip them if you think that would help.”

“That won’t be necessary.” She took a deep breath and tried not to think of the things that could possibly go wrong while fishing around in a stranger’s pocket.

What the heck? This is your one chance to stick your hand into a gorgeous man’s pants.

She lurched forward, the toe of her platform sandal catching in the plush carpet, but found her balance just in time. He didn’t seem the least bit uncomfortable as she slid her hand inside his right pocket for the key. It was a tight squeeze, and she had to lean over his torso a little to get her hand at the right angle. Her position forced her to inhale that dreamy scent of his again, and for at least the second time that night she felt certain parts of her anatomy turn tingly and liquid with sensation.

But there was no key.

“Are you sure you put it in your right pocket?” She withdrew her hand and breathed a sigh of relief that she had managed not to bump certain parts of his anatomy.

“Hmm, maybe it was the left pocket.”

Lucy glared at him as she realized that he had possibly sent her fishing in the wrong pocket on purpose, that he was actually enjoying this little game. Okay, so maybe she was enjoying it, too. Just a little.

Bracing her knees on the bed, she leaned further across his torso and started to slide her hand into the left pocket, but that was when she noticed that the sizeable bulge she’d been admiring a few minutes earlier was situated on that side. Her hand froze and she became all too aware of her compromised position leaning over him, at least four inches of her bare waist exposed by the short top.

She said a silent thank-you to the genius who’d invented fat-free yogurt. At least she could rest assured there were no unsightly rolls hanging over her too-tight pants. That is, if Buck were even interested enough to notice, which she doubted.

The quicker she found the key, the quicker she could put a comfortable distance between them, so as she swallowed her fear, she plunged her hand the rest of the way into his pocket and luckily felt the edge of something hard and metal rather than that other something she was trying to avoid. She caught it between her fingers and pulled it out.

“Is this it?” She held it up for him to see, but what surprised her was that she had caught him staring at that little slit of exposed skin at her waist.