The Girl with the Golden Spurs

Wiping her eyes with the back of her hands, she pulled Vanilla into her lap and fought to look calm and composed.

By the time Walker entered the apartment and called to her, she and the baby were playing an innocent game of patty-cake.

“How’s it going, Little Lizzy?”

“F-fine.” She swallowed.

Their eyes met, and she knew he knew something was wrong.

Walker could read souls.

He waited for her to say something. When she didn’t, he reached for the baby, who started clapping.

Then all he said to Lizzy was, “What’s for supper?”

Three

Houston, Texas

Caesar

“Hi there.” Cherry’s lazy velvet voice caressed Caesar across twenty feet of darkness, but it was as if she reached out and circled his cock with her hand and lowered her head. His groin got as hot as if her talented tongue was already wetting him there.

Not that he was in the mood for sex or her lies. Hell, he’d just flown in from a board meeting in San Antonio. His temples ached with tension. He’d gone to the meeting hoping to iron out the details of the Golden Spurs Ranch Museum opening and the following celebration.

Only Joanne had been there. She’d asked the board to tell him to break up with Cherry or step down. She’d listed various ranch crises and how little he’d done for the ranch lately and how much she’d done. And how much Cole Knight had done as well—damn his rotten soul!

“You have no right to air our dirty laundry to the board,” he’d growled when she’d gone on and on about Knight.

“My children own stock in the ranch,” she’d said.

“She has no right to be here,” he’d yelled at the board, pointing toward Joanne.

Then Leo, the CEO stood up. “I invited her here.”

“Who is she—who are you, any of you—to tell me what to do?”

“I said, ‘Hey, there…’” Cherry’s warm, silky voice floated to him again.

“Sorry.” He rubbed his aching temples. “My mind’s a million miles away.”

Break up with her? In a week?

He was furious at the board, at Joanne, at himself, and at Cherry. And he had a hard-on.

So what else was new?

Lately he hadn’t thought about Cherry much when he wasn’t with her. Why was that? But when he was with her, she consumed him.

Lying naked beside her, he loved her female scent and the dark color of her nipples. He loved the way they lay together afterward, drinking Scotch from the same bottle. The only reason he’d agreed to marry her was that she’d said she wouldn’t let him screw her anymore if he didn’t. When she’d stuck to her guns, he’d figured he’d get out of the bargain somehow. Then he’d given her a great big diamond and a credit card at her twentieth birthday party to appease her. Ever since he’d felt like his life was hurtling toward some fatal destiny that he was powerless to avoid.

He slammed the door of her Houston studio apartment and stomped toward her.

“Want me to give you some special candy, lover buver?” she whispered.

His groin tightened. Special candy was their secret code.

Caesar flushed as he pitched the wad of credit card bills onto the low table near the bed.

“Did you bring me a present?” she cooed.

He looked around, pained. Sequined costumes, thong panties and bras dripped from chairs. T-shirts and dirty jeans littered the stained, turquoise shag carpet. Lingering in the closed room was a stale smell that he associated with airless rooms and unwashed sheets after too much sex.

Joanne was a neat freak. He used to hate the way she hung up each garment as she took it off—even when he was on fire to have her—and the way she stripped the sheets off the bed seconds after he came.

Caesar’s head ached. He’d taken more Tylenol than he should’ve today, but the tablets weren’t cutting it. The pill bottle in his glove compartment was running on empty. He felt old today, way older than fifty. Everybody told him, at least those who dared, that he was looking bad, that Cherry was dragging him down.

He’d given Cherry lots of presents because her joy in receiving them had always been rapturous. For her, presents were an aphrodisiac.

When he spoke, all he could manage was a rough, semiharsh whisper that didn’t sound much like himself. “You’ve been buying yourself quite a few presents lately. More than I can afford.”

She laughed. “Oh, is that all that’s eatin’ you, big daddy? You’re rich. I’m poor.”

“Land rich. Cash poor.”

“If it was the other way around, I’d give you the moon.”

Would she? Would she even look at him twice?

“Relax, big daddy. Relax.” She sounded young and spoiled and very self-confident.

He knew their affair was as ridiculous as everybody said it was. When he’d agreed to marry her, he’d made himself the laughingstock of the state. Joanne’s lawyers were having a field day, and still, he couldn’t stop seeing Cherry. He simply couldn’t…not when he remembered how he’d felt before he’d met her.

Sheets rustled as she rolled lazily across her bed toward him. Her diamond ring flashed. “Why don’t you come to bed? I’ve gotten real horny lying in this big ol’ bed playing with myself.”

The room smelled muskily of other men. Not that he’d been here lately. He wasn’t so stupid he didn’t realize that she didn’t crave him a tenth as much as he craved her.

He leaned down and yanked at the chain of the lamp beside the bed. Golden light flooded the messy room and lit up the silver sequined cowgirl hat she’d hung on a nail on a far wall. She’d been wearing that hat the night he’d first laid eyes on her. The rest of her fetching costume had been matching pasties, a G-string and high-heeled, sequined boots.

He pointed to the bills. “We need to talk.”

She stretched like a cat. She slept in the nude. Deliberately she pushed the sheets lower to expose her soft, round body. Then she smiled up at him, batting her long lashes.

Don’t look at that bright red mouth. But he did. Next he thought about what those lips did to pleasure him and was instantly aroused. She saw, and her smile brightened with childish delight.

“Come to bed, love. Let little mama scratch your itch.”

Then she shoved the bills onto the floor and said, “Let little mama prove she’s worth every single penny—and way, way more.”