“I do.” She pulled to a stop outside the bed-and-bath motel connected to the truck stop.
“You think it’s that easy to just turn your mood around?”
“Fake it till you make it, baby.” Okay, maybe she was being glib, but there was only so much gloom and doom she could handle and she’d noticed whenever she issued a challenge, he got feisty. “You know what I think?”
“How can anyone know what you think? Your mind jumps around like a spider monkey.” The blinking lights of the motel sign flashed across his face in green neon.
Vacancy.
“I think that maybe deep down, underneath the pain and grief and pissiness, you’re just plain bored.”
“Bored, huh?”
“Yep. You’re accustomed to lots of action and you’re not getting any.”
“Is that supposed to be a double entendre?” He lowered his eyelids, gave her a sultry look that sizzled her shorts.
Tara gulped, ignored that and trudged ahead. “From here on in, I want to see smiles, smiles, smiles.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I’ll drive off and leave you.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Just try me.”
He reached over and plucked the keys out of the ignition.
“Hey!”
“I’ll give them back to you in the morning.”
“You’re a pain in the butt,” she said. “Anyone ever tell you that?”
“All the time,” he said. Then, for the first time that day, he gave her a genuine smile. “All the damn time.”
EVEN IF BOONE didn’t want to admit it, Tara was right. He was a pain in the butt, he was bored and he hadn’t had any action in a very long time.
That included sex.
He lay on the narrow motel bed and stared up at the ceiling. He could hear the chuff of Jake brakes as eighteen-wheelers rolled in off the highway. He tried to sleep, but Tara crowded and clouded his mind. He had underestimated exactly how tough this was going to be—sitting beside her in the car, hour after hour, smelling her feminine scent, taking in the bare stretch of skin from the hem of her shorts to her sandals, hearing the sweet sound of her voice. It was all he could do to keep his hands off her. Now, he fully realized why he’d kept her at arm’s length all these months.
She was in the room next door. The walls were thin and when she’d taken her shower, he heard the water come on.
Instantly, he pictured her in those shorts that crept high on her thighs when she sat down. She had million-dollar legs and he imagined her sliding them over his. Her features were etched on the back of his eyelids and it was as real as if she were standing right in front of him—from the gentle arch of her sandy eyebrows to her determined little chin beneath those wide, luscious lips. Her face was shaped like a soft heart, wider across the forehead, smaller at her jawline. Her nose was short with a delicate tip.
He might want to deny it, but she was cuter than a basketful of puppies. Boone hated cute. Nothing could trip a guy up faster than cute.
An unwelcome stiffness gripped him.
Dammit. He did not want her starring in his X-rated fantasies, but his body had other ideas, his brain teasing his appendage with provocative images of her. Stepping out of the shower, naked, wet and slippery.
She turned him inside out and she wasn’t even in the same room.
“Stop thinking about her,” he commanded himself, but it was like telling a dieter to stay away from chocolate cake.
Goose bumps spread over him at the thought of what it would feel like to take her into his arms with those spectacular breasts pressed against his chest. Inhale the scent of her hair. Taste the sweetness of her lips.
His erection tightened, throbbed.
Ah, hell.
He flopped ungracefully over onto his side, dragging his injured knee after him and stared at the digital clock on the bedside table. Two in the morning. He was never going to get any sleep at this rate.
His shaft ached. He pulled in a deep breath.
Just do it and get it over with so you can get a few hours of sleep.
He didn’t want to give in. His body had betrayed him enough, but if he didn’t do something about this erection soon, he’d lie awake until dawn.
Once upon a time, he’d had an iron will, but these days? No such luck.
The persistent throbbing won out. Blowing out his breath, Boone reached down a hand, and with visions of Tara parading through his head, proceeded to take care of his problem in the most expedient way possible.
SUNLIGHT PUSHING through the dusty window jerked Boone awake sometime later. He sat up abruptly and immediately regretted it when his knee twinged. He gritted his teeth, shoved a hand through his hair. What in the hell time was it? His plan had been to get on the road at dawn. What he’d done last night had worked, but he’d slept far longer than he intended.
A glance over at the clock told him it was seventhirty—a good hour and a half later than he’d planned. He’d no sooner gotten dressed and put on his knee brace than a knock sounded at his door. He opened it to find Tara standing there wearing a short red sundress and matching red sandals that showed off the sexiest toes this side of Montana.
“Good morning,” she chirped.
“Why did you let me sleep so long?” he groused. “I told you we needed to be on the road by six.”
“Relax. We’ve got plenty of time. You don’t have to be in Key West until Saturday.”
“It’s already Wednesday and I don’t like cutting things close.”
“C’mon.” She beckoned with a wriggly finger. “Let’s go have breakfast.”
“No. Let’s get on the road. We can hit a drive-through on the way out of town.”
But she was already swishing away from him, headed across the parking lot toward the truck-stop diner, her oversized purse slung over her shoulder.
He swore under his breath, picked up his knapsack and limped after her as fast as he could. “Tara,” he hollered. “We don’t have time for this.”
Stepping lightly, she turned and, still walking toward the diner, grinned at him. “You’ll feel better after a hearty breakfast.”
“I’ll feel better when we’re on the road.”
“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
“Watch where you’re walking.”
“I’m—” Her retort was cut off by an eighteen-wheeler bread truck as it whizzed away from massive gas pumps at the back of the diner. The truck came barreling straight for Tara.
Adrenaline shot through Boone. His natural instinct was to run toward her, throw himself between her and the truck, but given the shape his knee was in, he simply could not move that fast. “Stop!” he commanded and then took half a dozen deities’ names in vain.
Tara froze, her face gone deathly pale.
The driver of the eighteen-wheeler blasted his horn, coming within inches of Tara as he rocketed from the parking lot.
Boone’s stomach had vaulted into his throat.
She jumped then, leaping into a hedge of bushes surrounding the diner. Boone moved as fast as he could, heart hammering. He’d