Texas Temptation

A woman called his name again, and he heard the alarm in her voice. This was no dream, he realized abruptly.

Maybe there was a problem, after all.

He opened his eyes slowly, waiting for them to adjust to the dim light. There was a woman in bed with him. A living breathing long-limbed woman with short blond hair.

And she sure as hell hadn’t been here when he’d gone to bed. He definitely would have remembered, no matter what state he’d been in.

Lifting his head, Jared peered at the woman in the semidarkness. She was breathing rapidly and her breasts were pressed firmly against his chest. The hardened peaks of her nipples burned his skin. He could feel the furious beating of her heart and realized his own heart was keeping time.

Dammit. The woman in his dream had not only been willing, she’d been eager. This woman was obviously distressed, and the pressure she exerted on his shoulders was hardly an invitation to lovemaking.

“Who are you?” he said raggedly. “And what the hell are you doing here?”

“Jared, it’s Annie,” she said breathlessly. “Annie Bailey.”

He went completely still. He blinked, then sucked in a deep breath. “What?”

“Annie Bailey,” she repeated.

Jared frowned deeply, drawing his dark brows together.

“Annie?” Bewildered, he lifted his head higher, blinking again as his eyes began to adjust to the light and focus on the woman lying beneath him. “Annie...Bailey?”

She nodded.

They both lay there, breathing hard, neither one of them moving, whether to hold on to the contact or because they were both too stunned to move, Jared wasn’t sure. He stared at her, absorbing the fact that she was not only real, but she was in his bed.

And one of them wasn’t wearing any clothes.

He rolled away from her, swearing as he grabbed the covers and pulled them over his hips. Annie sat, turning her back to him, and he watched as she took a few deep breaths.

He narrowed his eyes. It was Annie. Her hair was shorter, but she most definitely was Jonathan’s fiancée.

Ex-fiancée, Jared reminded himself grimly.

Her eyes were wide and full of expression as she turned back to him. “Hello, Jared,” she said, smiling weakly as she forced a short laugh. “It’s, uh, nice to see you.”

He frowned at her. She certainly had seen him. That was like Annie, to try to alleviate tension with a joke. The only problem was, he wasn’t exactly in a joking mood at the moment.

He was still reeling with the realization that he’d woken up with a woman in his bed. That hadn’t happened in a hell of a long time. And it wasn’t just any woman. It was Annie, for God’s sake.

He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, still trying to bring his body under control. He’d been dreaming something incredibly erotic. Although that certainly wasn’t strange, considering the state of his sex life lately. The woman in his dream had been tall and slender and blond, and while that wasn’t strange, either, the fact that she’d looked remarkably like Annie was. He still wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, but he did know that he’d nearly made love to her, that he sure as hell had wanted to.

Dammit. He still wanted to.

His throat suddenly felt dry as a Texas plain. He stared at the bottle beside the bed and realized he’d probably had a little too much last night. He did that occasionally. Sometimes he had weird dreams.

But Annie had been no dream. She was very real, and sitting twelve inches away from him.

He couldn’t stop the ache that tightened his loins. Damn, but she had felt good. She’d smelled like spring flowers and tasted like something minty. Her skin had felt soft and smooth under his hands, and her hardened nipple under his palm—

He cursed himself again. This was Annie. Jonathan’s Annie. He couldn’t think about her like that. He had no right.

He’d never have that right.

He raked a hand through his tousled hair and closed his eyes. “Annie... God, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

“Hey, Jared, it’s okay,” she said with a flip of her hand, but he could see her fingers shake as she tucked a loose strand of blond hair behind one ear.

Dammit, she had every right to be scared. He’d practically attacked her!

“Besides,” she went on, “it’s my fault. I never should have come in here like I did. It’s just that I heard a crash and you called out, and I, well, I thought you were sick or something.”

A crash? Jared glanced around the room, then realized that a glass, the one that had been sitting beside the whiskey bottle, had fallen behind the nightstand and shattered. Good Lord, had he been reaching for the bottle even in his sleep?

“I’m fine.” Careful to keep his distance from her and just as careful to keep the sheet over his hips, Jared scooted to the edge of the bed. “I had a late night, that’s all.”

It must have been later than he thought, Jared realized, as he searched the bedroom floor. “Where the hell are my pants?” he mumbled irritably to himself.

“There’s a pair of jeans in the living room,” Annie said awkwardly. “They’re wet, though.”

Jared frowned. He’d been outside on the steps, and it had started raining. He’d obviously stayed out longer than good sense dictated.

But then, good sense was hardly one of his strong points, he reminded himself, in light of what had just happened.

He stood, intending to grab a dry pair of jeans from his dresser, then remembered his state of undress. When he quickly sat back down, she looked away and started to rise.

“I...uh, I’ll just wait for you in the other room.”

“No.” He took hold of her wrist and gently tugged her back down. Her pulse beat hard and fast under his fingertips.

He knew he should ask her to leave, but for some strange reason, he didn’t want her to go. Not just yet, anyway. Maybe because after nearly four years it was easier to face her here in the darkness, or maybe it was because he still didn’t want to face reality. He wasn’t sure what the reason was, but he did know that, even if it was only a few more minutes, he wanted her to stay right where she was.

“Just grab a pair of jeans out of that top drawer for me.” He gestured toward his dresser.

“Sure.” She stood and opened the drawer, then handed him the jeans. She folded her arms and looked away as he tugged the pants on.

When Annie felt brave enough to chance a look at him again, she was relieved to see that he was at least partially dressed. It was difficult enough standing here talking to him, pretending nonchalance, after what had just transpired between them. Her knees were the consistency of dry sand and her cheeks burned with embarrassment. Thank God the room was dark, she thought. She wasn’t quite sure how she could look Jared directly in the eyes at the moment, let alone have a calm conversation with him in the light of day.

He reached across her and pulled a T-shirt out of the dresser. She watched as he dragged it over his head, and it was impossible not to notice the ripple of lean hard muscle as he tugged it on. Goodness, but the Stone men were well built, she noted, quickly looking away.

Extremely well built.

“I—” she drew in a deep breath “—I just heard about your father. I’m sorry. I would have come for the funeral if I’d known.”

Jared tucked his T-shirt into his jeans, and Annie’s throat tightened as he pulled up the zipper. “Myrna made all the arrangements so fast even I couldn’t make it in time. I barely made it to the reading of the will.”

Annie remembered Jared’s stepmother. An attractive woman with red hair, she’d been somewhere in her late forties when Annie had last seen her. J.T. had married the woman close to twelve years ago, one year after Jonathan and Jared’s mother had died. Annie knew that Myrna was more tolerated by the Stone children than accepted.