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The taste of him was ripe on her tongue

Abby glanced at herself in the bathroom mirror and literally did not recognize the face reflected there. Large hazel eyes were made more prominent by too much mascara, short tousled hair, cheeks blushing scarlet, mouth swollen and reddened from the heated pressure of Durango’s kiss.

A sex goddess.

A passionate überbabe.

So this was what it felt like…a bold vixen, a passion hound, a wicked femme fatale. She was now the kind of woman men bought naughty outfits and sinful chocolates for. Tonight she wouldn’t worry about what the neighbors might think. Tonight she was a rowdy sex nymph ready, willing and eager to take a big juicy bite out of life.

Emboldened, Abby stepped out into the hallway and headed for the club’s dance floor. But Durango captured her from behind and began to pull her into a long, slow, moist, deep kiss.

Hadn’t she read somewhere about a connection between how a man kissed and the way he performed in the bedroom?

Abby’s heart fluttered. If that was true, she was in for one hell of a fine treat.

Dear Reader,

Last spring my husband and I visited Sedona, Arizona. I was awed by the red rock formations and struck by the incredible energy field surrounding the place. The Native Americans there consider it sacred ground.

There are numerous energy vortexes in those compelling mesas, and if you’re attuned you can actually “feel” the vibrations coursing up from the earth. My mind started swirling. Just imagine making love where the energy field emanates not just from you and your man but also from the strumming force of the earth.

All your senses are intensified and stronger, and they resonate. You’re a tuning fork at perfect pitch vibrating with your soul mate. You two become one with all that there is. It’s incredible. When I felt it, I knew I had to put it into a book to share the experience with my readers.

I would love to hear what you think. You can visit my Web site, www.loriwilde.com, or write to me at Lori Wilde, P.O. Box 31, Weatherford, TX 76086.

Lori Wilde

Gotta Have It
Lori Wilde

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Heather Rae

A very special person who’ll one day soon

see her own book in print.

You’ve come a long way, baby.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Epilogue

1

“YOU KNOW WHAT you need?”

“What?”

“To get plastered and pick up the first sexy stud who crosses your path. It’s the best cure for those pesky just-got-stood-up-at-the-altar blues.”

Abby Archer arrowed a glance at her best friend, Tess Baxter. They were seated side by side on wooden playground swings behind the church rectory. Abby was still wearing her eight-thousand-dollar ecru Vera Wang wedding gown and matching ballet style slippers, while Tess was dressed in a peach-colored spaghetti strap maid-of-honor dress and opened-toed sandals.

It was only then that Abby realized Tess’s toenails were painted electric-neon-green. She couldn’t help smiling at her quirky gal pal’s choice of polish.

Tess wagged a bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold in one hand, a baggie of sliced limes in the other. “I’ve got the hooch, now let’s go find us some stallions.”

“Thanks for trying to cheer me up, but honestly I don’t need to get drunk or have a one-night stand in order to salve my ego. Jilting me is the best thing Ken could have done for either one of us.”

“Will you just stop it?” Tess twisted the top off the tequila and tossed it over her shoulder. The lid landed with a quiet plop onto ground still soft with the rare treat of an early-morning May rain in Phoenix.

“Stop what?”

“Making lemonade from lemons. You got ditched on your wedding day. You’re entitled to be p.o’d.”

“Seriously, I’m cool with it. In fact…”

“In fact what?”

Abby lowered her voice, fidgeted with the powder-blue chantilly lace on the hanky she was supposed to have tucked into her pocket for something blue and admitted, “I feel relieved.”

Tess made a derisive noise. “Be that as it may, Ken humiliated you. If I’d gotten stood up, I’d hunt the guy down with a pickax and dispatch his manly parts. Chop, chop.”

“My best friend the drama queen,” Abby said affectionately.

“Hey,” Tess snapped her fingers. “Do you want me to emasculate him for you? I volunteer to be your personal hit woman.”

“I appreciate the loyalty, but I think I’ll let Ken keep his manly parts. He might need them for his future with Racy Racine.”

“I still can’t believe he ran off with an exotic dancer.” Tess took a swig of the tequila, grimaced and bit down on a lime wedge. She extended the bottle to Abby and arched an eyebrow invitingly.

Abby shook her head and waved away the tequila. The swing’s rusted metal chains creaked. “I just never expected Ken to do something so out of character. I mean the reason I was marrying him was because he was stable and predictable and reliable.”

“And because your dad approved of him.”

“That too.”

“You know what? I think we oughta cash in your honeymoon tickets and go on a trip. You already have two weeks off and I’m in between jobs. Let’s do something completely wild and crazy. Like drive to New Orleans and get our tongues pierced.”

“Ouch! No!”

“Come on, I heard it enhances the sexual response,” Tess cajoled.

Abby rolled her eyes. “You think everything enhances the sexual response.”

“Well, if it doesn’t it should.”

“Sex is overrated.”

Tess grinned impishly. “You’re just saying that because you’ve never had great sex.”

“I don’t see what the big deal is.”

Tess sighed and ran a hand through her short, spiky red hair. “Jeez Abby, don’t you ever just allow yourself to get carried away by the moment?”

“You know how I feel about letting my emotions spill out of control. It’s undignified and destructive.”

“Come on, tell the truth. Somewhere deep down inside, when you were sleeping with Mr. Boring Buttoned-Down, didn’t you fantasize about an explosive, passionate man who would sweep you off your feet, spirit you away to some mountain top and savagely ravage you?”

“Tess!”

“Just answer the question.”

“Sometimes,” Abby mumbled.

All the time, she thought to herself, and that was why she fought so hard to keep her sexual desires under wraps. She knew from experience the havoc unbridled passion wrought. Dark obsession scared the pants off her.

Tess’s eyes lit up. “Do tell! Is he somebody famous? Or is your dream lover someone you know?”

“I don’t really want to discuss this,” Abby said, but a mental picture of Durango Creed immediately jumped into her head.

In her mind’s eye he looked exactly as he had at eighteen when he had ridden out of her life forever. Black jeans, black leather jacket, black White Snake T-shirt, straddling his Ducati and begging her to run away with him. His ruggedly handsome face had glistened in the moonlight. His shoulder-length ebony hair was windblown, his black eyes deep and penetrating.

And his wicked, wicked smile had promised nothing but trouble.

He’d been the dead opposite of a knight in shining armor on a white charger.

In her daydreams, she longed for him to fulfill the promise inherent in his smile, but in reality, she’d sent him away without crossing that dangerous line. She had not acted on her impulses.

Thank God.

It was the smartest thing she’d ever done.

Or at least that was what she kept telling herself.

“This is the first time you’ve even hinted that you have secret sex dreams,” Tess said. “You’ve been holding out. Fill me in, woman.”

“It’s silly. Illogical. And I should know better.” Abby toed the dirt, staining her pristine white slipper with rich red Arizona soil. She knew she was ruining the shoes, but at this point, who cared?

“Abby, everyone has sex fantasies. It’s normal. Honestly, I was beginning to think you were some kind of freak. It heartens me to hear you have a dream lover.”

“Normal? For ten years? Even when you have a fiancé? It doesn’t seem normal to me. I shouldn’t have been fantasizing about anyone but Ken.”

“If you had been fantasizing about Ken, you would be sitting here bawling your eyes out, brokenhearted over getting dumped.”

“Maybe if I had been fantasizing about my nice safe Ken, instead of some dangerous, long-ago hell-raiser, I wouldn’t have gotten dumped.”

“Omigod.” Tess clapped her hands with sudden glee. “Your midnight man is Durango Creed!”

“No, he’s not,” Abby lied quickly, and immediately had to raise her hanky to her nose to stay a sneeze.

“If your fantasy lover isn’t Durango, then how come you’re sneezing?”

“Because I have allergies.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it. Whenever you deny your passion, you start sneezing.”

“No, I do not,” Abby refuted her claim and promptly sneezed again.

“See what I mean? If you don’t stop lying about your desires, you’re gonna go into anaphylactic shock. Besides, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, half the women in Phoenix had a jones for Durango.”

“Precisely why I didn’t…I don’t have a thing for him.” Abby sneezed a third time.

“Me thinks thou doth sneeze too much.”

“Okay, all right. I did have a crush on him,” Abby grumbled.

“Now was that so hard to confess?”

Yes. But at least she didn’t sneeze again.

“Well, it really doesn’t matter. I’m sure Durango Creed hates my guts. I was such a bitch to him.”

“Oh please, you’ve never been a bitch to anyone.”

“I refused to trust in him. I told him I couldn’t have a future with a common criminal.” Even now the memory of the harsh words she’d been forced to say made her cringe with regret.

“You did it to protect yourself. What else could you do? And I’m sure he’s gotten over you rejecting him by now. What was he thinking anyway? Giving you an ultimatum, expecting you to choose between him and your life in Silverton Heights?”

“He was hurt and confused. It was a real blow when his father remarried a woman half his age only four months after Durango’s mother died. And then for his dad to take his new wife’s side against his own son…” Abby let her sentence trail off.

“And it probably didn’t help matters any when your dad had Durango thrown in the slammer for a week for vandalizing his stepmother’s warehouse.”

Abby shook her head. It had been a rough time in her life.

Yeah, and it was even rougher for Durango.

“Can we just drop this conversation, please?” she asked.

“Aw, just when I finally got your number? No wonder you’re glad Ken ran off with Racy Racine. You’re still in love with Durango.”

“I was never in love with him,” Abby denied, but her heart skipped a beat at her denunciation. “It was all teenage angst and hormones.”

“Okay, then you’re hot for him because he’s the one you let get away.”

“I’m not hot for him, dammit. It’s just a stupid fantasy.”

“Ooh, watch out,” Tess teased. “Or you’ll start sneezing again. Sure you don’t want a shot of tequila?”

“Liquor is not the answer.”

“Then what is?”

Abby doubled her arms across her chest. “I don’t know.”

“I do.”

She shot Tess a sideways glance. “Well?”

“You gotta get it out of your system.”

“Get what out of my system?”

“Durango.”

Abby snorted. “Please.”

“I’m serious. When he left town, you were left wondering what it would have been like if you two had hooked up. And you’re probably still feeling guilty for hurting him the way you did, even though we both know you had no real choice.”

“I couldn’t have gone with him, Tess. I was only seventeen and my father was livid.”

“I agree completely, but you’ve apparently spent the last ten years spinning this mental fantasy about him that no guy would be able to live up to, especially someone as dull as Ken. Ideally, the best way to exorcise the Durango demon would be to find the delectable Mr. Creed and screw his brains out.”

“He’s probably happily married with a backyard full of cute kids who possess those same mesmerizing dark eyes.”

“No he’s not.”

Abby frowned and her pulse quickened. “How do you know that?”

“I saw an article on him in Arizona magazine a couple of months back. He’s doing some kind of Outward Bound charity work for disaffected youths, and the reporter made a point of saying he was a very eligible bachelor.”

Abby covered her ears with her hands. She didn’t want to hear any more. “Let’s not talk about him.”

“Okay, forget Durango. Then go find a surrogate and screw his brains out instead. Any wild, black-sheep bad boy should do the trick.”

Abby’s heart hitched.

Tess’s wacky solution actually made some sense. She was concerned about these incessant midnight fantasies she couldn’t seem to shake. Obsessive fantasies that bothered her far more than she cared to admit.

She didn’t want to feel this way. She wanted to free her mind of Durango so that the next time she found a stable, calm, sensible man she could give herself to him heart, mind and soul, the way she hadn’t been able to give herself to Ken.

“I’m just not gutsy enough for a rowdy fling. You know me, Tess. I have to do a thorough consumer investigation before I change toothpastes. Can you actually see me hopping into bed with the first good-looking guy who nods my way?”

“Uh-oh,” Tess warned. “Speaking of bed hopping, here comes Cassandra.”

Abby sighed and watched her mother, who was wearing a skintight miniskirt and three-inch heels, take mincing steps across the playground toward them, a glass of champagne clutched in one hand, a skinny dark brown clove cigarette in the other.

“Well, at least she’s minus the boy toy,” Tess observed.

“Thank God for small favors.”

“You know what?” Tess said, springing up off the swing as Abby’s mother drew closer. “I think I’m going to call your travel agent about cashing in your honeymoon tickets to Aruba. We could take off tonight on an exciting adventure. Vegas, New Orleans, Miami. Let’s cut loose. Whaddaya say?”

“I’d say you’re just running off so you won’t have to talk to Cassandra,” Abby accused.

“Well, there is that.” Tess grinned. “Want me to leave the tequila? You might need it.”

“She’d probably just drink the entire thing.”

“Good point.” Tess tucked the bottle under her arm. “The tequila stays with me.”

Tess and Cassandra gave each other fake smiles as they passed. For some reason her best friend and her mother rubbed each other the wrong way. Abby had never said anything to either one of them, but she’d always figured their animosity toward each other stemmed from the fact that they were two peas in a pod, both of them flamboyant, impulsive and audacious.

“Hi, sweetie.” Her mother, smelling of her signature honeysuckle cologne and the clove cigarette, plunked down on the swing Tess had just vacated.

“Hello, Cassandra.”

She reached over and gently touched Abby’s shoulder. “You can call me Mom today, if you want.”

Abby shook her head. After her mother had left her father, she’d insisted Abby call her Cassandra so the guys she dated wouldn’t know she was old enough to have an eight-year-old daughter. As Abby grew older, Cassandra raided her closet for hip clothes and flirted with Abby’s boyfriends.

All except for Durango. Abby had never introduced him to her mother.

“How you holdin’ up?” Cassandra polished off her champagne and then set the flute on top of the adjoining slide.

“I’m doing okay.”

“Your father seems to be having a rough time of it. He’s apologizing to the guests like he’s the one who did something wrong.”

“Ken was his campaign manager and now he’s going to have to fire him. That’s causing him grief. Plus, Daddy feels responsible because he was the one who got us together and he really likes Ken.”

“Yeah well, birds of a feather,” her mother muttered.

“Please, don’t even go there.”

“You’re right. No need to get petty, but I’m betting your father lost the sticker price of a showroom BMW on this failed shindig. And I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and pretend he’s more worried about you than how this is going to reflect on him with the voting public.”

Abby poked her tongue against the inside of her cheek. She’d had years of practice mediating truces and cease-fires between her parents. That skill had actually been excellent training for her job as a public relations specialist for a large nonprofit organization and she’d learned her lessons well. She refused to rise to Cassandra’s dangling bait.

“Nobody cares that I got stood up. Daddy’s running for governor, not me. And you needn’t worry about the cost of the wedding.” As if her mother would. “Daddy took out wedding insurance.”

“But of course he did.” Her mother gave a dry laugh and took a drag of her cigarette. “Wayne is nothing if not sensible.”

She said “sensible” as if it was a dirty word.

They sat in silence. Her mother smoking, Abby kicking more dirt onto her slippers.

“You wanna go shoe shopping or something?” Cassandra asked. Bonding over a sale on Manolo Blahniks was her mother’s answer to everything.

“I’m doing okay.” Abby forced a smile. “Honest. You can go back to Tahoe with Tad, guilt free.”

“It’s Tab, darling.”

“Whatever.”

Her mother reached over and brushed a lock of hair away from Abby’s forehead. “Ken wasn’t right for you. You do know that.”

“I think I sort of got the clue when he didn’t show up at the altar.”

“You are much too passionate for a dullard like him, my dear.”

“Apparently Ken isn’t all that dull. He caught Racy Racine’s attention.”

Cassandra waved a hand. “That won’t last. The stripper is just out for his money. Soon as she discovers he’s as exciting as watching paint dry she’ll abscond with his wallet and he’ll come crawling back to you. But don’t you dare take him back. Like I said, you’re much too lusty for the likes of him.”

Abby laughed humorlessly. “Yeah, right. I’m so lusty even dull Ken deserted me.”

“You just hide your passion because you’re scared that if you let yourself go you’ll turn out like me.”

“I’m not like you. Not in the least,” Abby protested, and then she sneezed.

“Deny it all you want, sugar babe. That sneeze says it all.”

“I have allergies!”

“Then how come you only sneeze when the topic of conversation turns to passionate feelings?”

“I sneeze at other times.”

“Do you really?”

“Yes.” No.

Cassandra just smiled knowingly. “Like it or not, my hot Gypsy blood courses through your veins and those sneeze attacks are nature’s way of trying to get you to realize it.”

Abby thought of Durango and a flame of fear leaped into her heart. Could it be true? Was she sitting on a volcano of passion that was just waiting to erupt and spew disaster on everyone in her path?

She swallowed. “It’s nothing a good antihistamine won’t cure.”

“You wish. Truth is, you’re just aching to express your secret inner desires. Deep down inside, you know that’s the case.”

“You’re wrong. I have no secret inner desires,” Abby fibbed, and crinkled her nose to keep from sneezing.

“Then why do you have Tess for a friend.”

“Because I like her.”

“And why do you like her?”

“Because she’s fun.”

“Exactly. You made her your best friend so you can live through her vicariously. She does all the things you’re afraid to do and you tag along. But sooner or later, no matter how hard you try to sublimate it, that passion of yours is going to come bursting out. Just like it did with me.”

“Not if I refuse to give in to it.”

“It’s bigger than your will, darling. God knows I tried to be a good wife to Wayne and a good mother to you. I tried to live the suburban lifestyle, but it just wasn’t possible. I felt suffocated, smothered, invisible. I had to be me and I won’t apologize for that.”

“You don’t have to justify yourself.”

“I’m not justifying myself. Don’t you get it? I’m trying to warn you.”

“Warn me?”

“Once you open that Pandora’s box, Abby, once your true passion is released, watch out. There’s no going back.”

“So what you’re saying is that I’m correct in suppressing my impulsive, irrational desires in favor of calm, cool, calculated objectivity.”

“No, what I’m saying is that sooner or later you’re going to have to face up to who you really are. And when you do, you’ll stop having ‘allergies.’ Sooner or later something has to give. You can’t keep trying to be this perfect person just to please your father.”

“You’re so off base it’s laughable.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“Then prove it,” her mother challenged.

“Prove it?” Abby blinked. What was Cassandra talking about?

“Let yourself go. Do something wild and crazy and uninhibited.”

“Wild and crazy and uninhibited,” Abby echoed.

“Yes. Clear it up in your mind. Establish once and for all that you’re not like me,” Cassandra continued. “Go on a trip where you don’t know anyone and make a complete fool of yourself. Pick up a stranger. Have great sex. Emulate Tess.”

“There’s no need for that.”

“Really? Are you trying to tell me you’re not plagued by secret fantasies of breaking loose, breaking out, breaking away?”

Abby swallowed but did not answer.

“Give it a shot. If I’m wrong and you’re not this passionate naughty girl trapped in a good girl’s body, then nothing bad will happen. You’ll come home with some nice memories, you’ll resume your safe, stable life and you can rest peaceful in the knowledge that passion will never induce you to run out on your husband and kid.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks for your input.” She sat on her hands because she didn’t want Cassandra to see they were trembling. “Your motherly advice is incredibly valuable at this stage of my life.”

“Why, Abby, are you being sarcastic?” Her mother looked amused.

“Sorry, I’ve had a bad day.”

“Don’t back off now. Stand up for yourself. Let me have it. Show some passion.”

But Abby wasn’t about to give her mother the satisfaction of losing her composure. “Have a safe trip home.”

“I’m being dismissed?” Her mother’s grin widened, and she got to her feet and retrieved her empty champagne glass.

“I love you, Mom,” Abby said. “But we’ll never see eye to eye on this issue.”

“Oh you dear, sweet, innocent girl.” Cassandra dropped a dry kiss on her cheek, then turned and sashayed away, leaving the scent of honeysuckle and cloves lingering on Abby’s skin.

Two minutes after her mother had returned to the rectory, Tess came bouncing back outside, beaming like a flood lamp and waving a piece of paper in her hand. “I found us the perfect getaway spot.”

With a sinking sensation, Abby wondered if they would be shooting craps in Vegas or getting smashed on hurricanes in the French Quarter or mamboing with Latin lovers in Miami.

Could she do this? Should she do this? Would she do this?

Abby sneezed delicately into her lace hanky, and the parting words that Ken had spoken when he’d called to tell her he wasn’t showing up for the wedding echoed in her ears.

“You’re just not fiery enough, Abby. Look at you. If you were emotionally committed to me, you’d be jealous of Racine and scratching my eyes out for treating you this way. Instead you’re telling me it’s okay. That’s what’s wrong with us. Why I can’t marry you. No fire.”

And then she heard Tess say, “The best way to exorcise the Durango demon would be to find the delectable Mr. Creed and screw his brains out.”

And lastly came her mother’s dangerous challenge. “Let yourself go. Do something wild and crazy. Prove once and for all you’re not like me.”

Part of her wanted to accept the dare. Take a risk. Vanquish her fantasies.

But part of her was terrified. What if her mother was right? What if they were alike?

“Earth to Abby.” Tess snapped her fingers in front of Abby’s face.

“Huh?”

“Don’t you want to know where we’re going?”

Abby closed her eyes and braced herself for the worst. “Lay it on me.”

“A week of total pampering at the Tranquility Spa in Sedona.”

Abby opened one eye and peeked at her friend. “Sedona? Really?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re not kidding me? Serene, slow-paced Sedona? With the soothing red rock mesas and inspirational vortices?”

“I figured peace and quiet was really what you were looking for.”

Love for her friend overwhelmed her. This was exactly the kind of regenerative trip she needed. She didn’t require endless thrills or excitement. She didn’t have to act wild and reckless in order to prove herself. All she needed was a calm place where she could relax and get some perspective on her life.

She jumped off the swing and enveloped Tess in a big hug. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“Hey,” Tess said, “what are friends for?”

“But what about you? You wanted fun and excitement and to get laid.”

“Well.” Tess grinned. “My fantasy lover, Colin Cruz, happens to be making a movie in Sedona. I was hoping we could watch them film. Plus, you know what I heard?” She lowered her voice.

“What?”

“The electromagnetic energy in Sedona intensifies orgasmic pleasure.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Apparently, there’s no sex like vortex sex.”