“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