Paying The Playboy's Price

“You ready to call for your ride yet?”

He couldn’t wait to get rid of her. How embarrassing. Had she ever had a date so eager to show her the door? “Certainly.”

The evening was not going as she’d anticipated and she had no idea how to get it back on track. What did she know about seduction? She’d counted on him doing all the work.

Why hadn’t she developed a backup plan?

“So is he as great as he looks or is he all beauty, brawn and no brains?” Holly asked as Juliana climbed into her friend’s Jeep outside Renegade.

“He’s not just a pretty face.” His dedication to his nieces and his business savvy in using the auction and the monthlong newspaper coverage as advertising proved Rex was more than an empty-headed pretty boy. “Did you get your firefighter?”

Holly abruptly reached for the radio and flipped through the stations. “No.”

The rat. Had she and Andrea chickened out after sending Juliana into the bidding wars like a sacrificial lamb? “You promised you’d buy him.”

“No, I promised I’d buy a bachelor and I did. The firefighter went for more money than we agreed upon—although you certainly broke that rule, didn’t you? Besides, Eric was desperate.”

Juliana recoiled. “Eric! My brother, Eric?”

Holly darted a glance in her direction and nodded.

“You cheated.”

“No, I didn’t. I wanted a man who would give me candlelit dinners and take me dancing. Eric’s package promises Eleven Enchanted Evenings.”

Juliana didn’t like the blissful smile on Holly’s face—not in connection to her brother. “But it’s Eric.”

“So?”

“You wanted romance. Eric is no Prince Charming to your Cinderella. I’m having really icky thoughts of my brother kissing you good night, and I don’t want to go there.” She shuddered.

“I know you don’t want to believe it, Juliana, but Eric is as much of a hunk as your rebel.”

“Ick. Ick.” She stuck her fingers in her ears. No matter what her friend said, Holly had cheated by taking the safe way out. She unplugged her ears. “You and Andrea convinced me to go out on a limb and buy Rex. There is no risk involved in buying someone you know. Did Andrea also turn coward? Who did she buy?”

“Clayton.”

Sympathy squeezed Juliana’s heart and she sighed. “So she’s really going through with it, then?”

“That’s what she said.” Holly didn’t sound any happier about the situation than Juliana.

“I hope he doesn’t break her heart again.”

“I hope your rebel doesn’t break yours. Those were some serious sparks between you when he walked you out.”

Sparks? One-sided sparks, maybe. Rex Tanner didn’t seem the least bit interested in fanning the flames Juliana could feel licking at her toes. At the moment, she had no idea how she’d change his mind, but given what she knew of his past, it shouldn’t be too difficult.

“You are completely off base with that observation, my friend, and my heart will be just fine, thank you. Remember, my time with Rex Tanner is limited. He’d never fit in with my long-term career goals, and I seriously doubt an anal-retentive bank auditor whose idea of adventure is trying a new shade of nail polish would fit in with his.”

Rex peeled his gaze from Juliana’s behind for the fifth time and shook his head. Jodhpurs. He should have expected as much from a high-society chick who wrote five-figure checks without blinking.

“Next time wear jeans.” Her formal riding attire was a far cry from Saturday night’s scanty, sexy dress, but her jodhpurs looked as if they’d been spray painted over the luscious curve of her butt, and her sleeveless cotton blouse conformed to the shape of her breasts like a lover’s hands. She’d pulled her shiny hair back with a clip and perched one of those prissy black velvet hard hats on her head—the kind horse-jumping folks wore. The siren-red nail polish was gone and so was most of her makeup. She looked better without the war paint. And why was he noticing? Her smooth skin had nothing to do with riding lessons.

“The boots are okay, and I can live with the hat.”

“Please stop. Your flattery will turn my head,” she replied with a hint of sarcasm, making him wonder if he’d read her lingering glances wrong Saturday night. “If I can find the time, I’ll buy some jeans before Thursday.”

He paused with the saddle midair. “You don’t own a pair of jeans?”

“No. Casual Friday at the bank never gets that casual. You certainly have a lot of requirements for this package that weren’t included in the description listed in the program.”

“Most of it’s common sense.” He settled the saddle and saddle pad on Jelly Bean, the palomino mare he’d bought for his nieces. “Putting on a western saddle is similar to an English one. Here’s how you secure it.”

After demonstrating, he unfastened everything and stepped back. “Your turn.”

Juliana tackled the task, but the mare tended to be lazy on hot summer afternoons. She bloated her stomach to prevent the tightening of the cinch around her belly. Juliana lacked the strength to make Jelly Bean exhale.

Positioning himself behind her, the way he did with the girls, he reached around to help her pull the leather strap. Having his arms around an attractive woman made his veins hum. He tried to ignore it. Unlike with his petite three- and five-year-old nieces, Juliana’s taller frame lined up against his like a spoon in a drawer. Or a lover in bed. The mare shifted, bumping Juliana and her tightly wrapped behind against him.

Within seconds, her pants weren’t the only tight ones. Rex steadied her and then stepped back, putting several yards and the hitching post between them. “Try the bridle next.”

Juliana definitely knew her way around a horse. She rested the mare’s muzzle against her breasts while she eased the bridle over her ears and brushed her forelock out of her eyes, and then she rewarded Jelly Bean for cooperating with a stroke down her golden neck and a scratch between her perked up ears.

He envied the horse being pressed between Juliana’s breasts. Unacceptable. The auditor was off-limits. “Mount up.”

She lifted her foot a couple of feet off the ground until the pull of fabric across her hips restricted her movements, and then she put her boot back down and looked at him over her shoulder. “Would you give me a leg up?”

Was there more than a legitimate request for help in her words? A tentative smile quivered on her lips—nothing seductive about it. In fact, he’d swear he saw nervousness in her eyes.

Get over yourself, Tanner. What does it say about your ego that you suspect every woman you meet of trying to get into your pants?

“Sure.” As he did with the girls, he clasped Juliana’s waist and lifted. Bad move. He didn’t need to know that her waist was tiny or that her body heat would penetrate the thin fabric of her pants. He yanked his hands free so quickly Jelly Bean—the calmest horse he’d ever encountered—spooked and sidestepped. Rex lunged forward again, expecting Juliana to fall off, but she grabbed the saddle horn and managed to stay on.

“Is this another test?” More sarcasm. Okay, he’d definitely read her wrong.

She shifted in the saddle, and then stood in the stirrups and sank back down. She repeated the motion a couple of times. “This saddle feels odd, but comfortable.”

Tugging at the suddenly tight collar of his T-shirt, he looked away, cleared his throat and shifted his stance to ease the pinch of his jeans. The last time he’d seen a woman move like that, she’d been riding him. How long ago had that been? Too long. And hell, he couldn’t remember her name or what she’d looked like.

There had been a lot of nameless encounters in his past—not something he was proud of now, but at the time he’d been floating on a wave of fame, taking the women who fell at his feet for granted and using them to make himself believe he was finally somebody. He’d been somebody all right. Somebody stupid.

His bandmates had used booze or drugs to come down from a post-performance high. Rex had used women—a practice that now disgusted him. He was damned lucky his carousing hadn’t landed him in the morgue or given him an STD the way his father had predicted. Most of Rex’s father’s lectures had gone in one ear and out the other, but thank God the safe-sex one had stuck.

Rex had had a lucky escape, and he planned to put his sordid past behind him in a new city with a new career. He’d be the kind of brother he should have been to Kelly and an uncle Kelly’s girls would be proud to claim. With their father deployed overseas, they needed someone they could depend on when their mom needed help.

Back to business. “The seat of a western saddle is deeper than an English one. It conforms to your shape.” And a damned fine shape it is. “Take the reins in your hand with only one finger between them.”

She did as he instructed, but looked unsure.