The Pleasure Principle

Until this man.

She ignored the crazy thought and concentrated on finding her voice. “Pardon?”

His grin was slow and easy and as breath-stealing as the record-breaking hundred degree heat baking the surrounding stretch of pasture. “To put her out of her misery.” He motioned behind him. “The engine block is cracked and nothing short of a miracle is likely to revive her.”

She couldn’t help but return his smile. “Sorry, but I’m fresh out of miracles today.”

His grin faltered and something passed in his gaze. “Me, too. Thankfully.”

His last comment, coupled with the flash of relief in his blue eyes, made her think that Mr. Handsome, Sexy and Hot wasn’t all that disappointed to see his fifty-thousand-dollar car steaming in the midday heat.

The thought passed as he turned his attention back to her. A hungry light fired his gaze and her breath caught. It was a look she was all too familiar with since she’d given her virginity to Jake Marlboro back in high school. He’d violated her trust and turned what should have been something beautiful into a tawdry good time to brag about to his friends. Thus, her reputation had been born and she’d endured it ever since. The bold pick-up lines, the raunchy comments, the hungry looks.

But this was different. Her response was different. She didn’t just want to slap his face. She wanted to throw her arms around him and see if his lips felt as soft and mesmerizing as they looked.

“If you don’t mind, I could really use a ride.”

The last word lingered in her head and stirred a vivid image of him stretched out on her flower print sheets, his body dark and masculine and hard beneath her.

“But if it makes you uncomfortable, I could just walk.”

But that was the kicker. The notion of giving him a ride, in or out of bed, didn’t make her uncomfortable in the least.

Just hot.

“I’d be happy to help.” The words were out before she could consider that the man was a stranger, no matter how familiar he looked. He could be a serial killer for all she knew. A Porsche-driving, Gucci-wearing madman.

Then again, she’d been on blind dates that looked far more scary and intimidating. This guy was neither, and her gut told her he wasn’t dangerous either—except to her hormones. But she could maintain control of herself for the five minutes it would take to drive him to Merle’s Service Station. Eden Hallsey always kept her control. She was notorious for it. She was notorious for a lot of things.

“I really wouldn’t want to put you out,” he went on, mistaking her silence for hesitation.

“You’re not. You’re the one who’ll be inconvenienced. I’m afraid the closest gas station is about two miles straight into town.”

“It’s no inconvenience. That’s where I was headed.”

His words surprised her. She’d figured he’d pulled off the interstate near the town’s only exit out of pure necessity, not by choice. They didn’t see many of his type in a desperately small town like Cadillac. Not that the place didn’t have it’s share of wealth. Cadillac was home to two of the largest ranches in Texas, not to mention Weston Boots, the oldest and largest western boot manufacturer in the country. But the wealthy were still just locals. Country folk. Men like old Zachariah Weston and rancher Silver Dollar Sam—so named because of the silver dollars he handed out to the kiddies when he played Santa Claus at the yearly winter festival. While they might drive fancy utility vehicles and wear solid gold belt buckles, they still spent their Saturday nights having ice cream at the Dairy Freeze right alongside everybody else.

Her gaze shifted to the man standing outside her truck window, with his expensive Italian suit and his elite sports car. Again, a strange sense of familiarity hit her, as if she’d seen him in this exact pose before.

She shook away the crazy thought and reached over to unlock the opposite door. If she had come into contact with him before, she couldn’t imagine ever forgetting. He was too handsome, too sexy, too stirring.

Then again, maybe she was remembering. A memory from long ago. A man who’d been just a boy…

She searched her mind as he climbed in beside her. But then the door closed and his scent surrounded her, and her thoughts scattered. Her heart pounded and her stomach jumped and it was all she could do to concentrate on pulling away from the shoulder of the road, out onto the main strip leading into town.

“So,” she licked her lips and tried to calm her thundering heart, “are you visiting friends in town? Family?”

“Both.” He didn’t spare her a glance as he drank in the passing scenery, as if he were seeing pastureland and farmhouses for the very first time. “At least I hope so.”

“Have you ever been to Cadillac before?” she asked, eager to satisfy the curiosity bubbling inside her.

“Yes.” He didn’t offer any more information, telling Eden as plain as day, that he wasn’t as interested in getting to know her as she was in getting to know him, despite the openly hungry look he’d directed at her earlier.

It seemed that not only had her response to this man strayed from her usual indifference, he was acting different from most men. Any other man would have taken the opportunity to flirt and tease and even openly proposition her should they have found themselves alone with her in the close confines of her truck.

Not that Eden was some irresistible beauty queen. Far from it. It wasn’t her average looks that made her attractive to men. It was the rumors. She’d learned over the years that a woman with a reputation was like a plate of free cookies. Even if a person wasn’t hungry, they reached for a sweet just because it was there and it was free and everybody else was taking some.

It was a fact of life. Men flirted with her. All men. Her gaze snagged on the man seated next to her. The guy didn’t so much as spare her a glance. Okay, so make that most men.

Then again, if he wasn’t from around these parts he didn’t know her or her reputation. As far as he was concerned, she was just another woman.

Eden bit her bottom lip to keep from asking him more questions. He didn’t want to talk and she wasn’t going to make a pest of herself no matter how much she suddenly wanted to know everything about him, from his name to his likes and dislikes. Instead, she fixed her attention on trying to place him in her memory. He’d admitted that he’d been to Cadillac before. Maybe she had seen him. Eden was still searching her memory when they pulled into Merle’s Gas-n-Go.

“Thanks,” he said as he started to climb out, that same preoccupied look in his gaze that made Eden wonder yet again if she’d only imagined that initial hungry look he’d given her.

“Wait,” she said as he moved to close the door. “Don’t forget your duffel bag….” The words faded as she leaned over to grab his bag and her gaze snagged on the worn boots he was wearing—worn when the rest of him was polished to the max. The heel had the familiar trademark W branded into its side.

An image rushed at her of a blue-jean-clad senior with long legs and an easy smile. He’d worn a similar pair of boots as he’d stood on the side of the road next to his granddaddy’s pickup, one of the rear tires as flat as Jamie McGee’s hair after a good ironing.

Eden’s head snapped up and her eyes collided with his. “Brady Weston. You’re Brady Weston.” The Brady Weston. The boy who’d been every girl’s dream, Eden’s included.

His grin was as slow and as warm as she remembered on that hot July day when she’d given him her tire jack and a long swallow of her ice-cold Coke.

“The last time I looked.”

“It is you.” Her heart pumped ninety-to-nothing at the realization. “Y-you probably don’t recognize me. I’m—”

“Eden Hallsey,” he finished for her. “I’d know your smile anywhere. Thanks for saving me. Again.” Then, with a wink, he closed the door and Eden was left with the startling knowledge that after a bitter fight with his grandaddy and an eleven-year absence, Brady Weston—the captain of the hockey team, the heir to the Weston boot fortune and the star of Eden’s wildest adolescent fantasies—had finally come home.

HE WAS HOME.

Reality hit Brady as he stood before Merle’s gas station and stared at the fading red sign that hung in front. The same painted oval that had always teetered back and forth from two small chains. The edges were a little more worn than he remembered, the paint chipped in several spots, but otherwise it was exactly the same. The same name with the same familiar twenty-four hour service guarantee printed just below. A red-and-white T-ball banner flapped in the wind depicting one of the local teams in the peewee league. The same team—the Kansas City Royals—that Merle’s station sponsored each and every year.

Thankfully.

Brady had seen too many new barns, new fences, even a few new houses dotting the horizon on the drive into town and the scenery had made him worry that maybe things had changed too much for him to simply waltz back home after all these years and pick up where he’d left off.

And he wanted to. Christ, he wanted it more than his next breath of air.

He glanced behind him at the familiar span of buildings lining main street, from Turtle Jim’s Diner, where he’d eaten chili cheese fries after school every Friday afternoon, to Sullivan’s Pharmacy, where he’d purchased his very first condom. The breath he’d been holding eased from his lungs and he drank in another lungful of Texas heat.

Home.

He’d dreamt about this moment so many times over the past eleven years, when the stress of a fast-paced advertising career and a less than perfect home life had overwhelmed him and he’d longed for the peace he’d known while growing up. The freedom. The control.

He’d been the one in control back then. But for the past eleven years, life and circumstance and his ex-wife had called the shots, dictating the how, when and where.

Only because he’d allowed it, he reminded himself. It wasn’t as if he’d been forced away from Cadillac. He’d fallen in love, or so he’d thought at the time, and walked away by choice—to do the right thing. In the end, however, everything he’d done that fateful day and every moment since had been wrong. So wrong.