The Calamity Janes: Gina and Emma: To Catch a Thief

Okay, he told himself, all that proved was that he was a healthy, virile male who’d been without intimate female companionship for way too long. Whose mind wouldn’t wander just a bit around a woman like Gina? Pleased with the assessment of his state of mind as being perfectly normal, he gave himself permission to study her even more intently.

Gina’s dark-eyed gaze was fixed on the current bronc rider with total absorption. Her cheeks were bright. Her hair, which was caught up in a red and white bandanna, had surprising auburn highlights in it. At the moment, as some man she apparently knew tried to stay on the back of a particularly wild horse, she appeared to be holding her breath. When time ran out and he was still solidly in the saddle, her cheer almost deafened Rafe. Eyes shining, she faced him.

“Did you see that? He did it. That’s the toughest horse in the competition and Randy stayed with him. Amazing.”

“Amazing,” Rafe echoed, but his comment had nothing to do with the winning rider.

Her gaze narrowed. “Are you even paying attention?”

“Absolutely. Your friend won.”

“He’s leading, at any rate. There’s another round of competition,” she said, excitement still shining in her eyes.

It was the most unguarded she had been around Rafe since they’d met. Seeing her like that, filled with enthusiasm, her expression open, laughter glinting in her eyes, made him want things that were impossible. It had probably been safer all the way around when she’d kept him at a cool distance. The temptation to kiss her was almost too much to resist.

“Want something cold to drink?” he asked, needing to put some space between them. Being in a state of semiarousal for the past hour was beginning to get to him.

She feigned exaggerated shock. “You’re willing to go off and leave me here all alone for a few minutes? Are you sure you trust me not to steal the wildest horse in the stables and flee over the Canadian border?”

“Actually, no, but since the horses are otherwise engaged and I have the car keys, I’m not nearly as worried about it as I might be if the circumstances were different.” He was still rather proud of the way he’d managed to get those keys away from her and into his own pocket.

“How do you know I don’t have a spare set?” she retorted.

He gazed directly into her eyes, a look he’d perfected in the courtroom. It commanded total honesty. “Do you?”

She hesitated, then sighed. “No. And just for the record, I resent like crazy the fact that you manipulated those keys out of my possession.”

He grinned. “I didn’t wrestle you for them, Gina. You handed them over so I could drive.”

“Right, after you gave me some very sincere hogwash about how you’d been just dying to test-drive a car like my mother’s.”

“You bought it, didn’t you?”

“Long enough for you to get behind the wheel,” she agreed. “Then I remembered that my mother’s car is a very nondescript Chevy with eighty thousand miles on it.”

“And what I told you was the absolute truth,” Rafe insisted. “I’ve never driven anything like it.”

Gina rolled her eyes. “Yes, that I can believe.”

He chuckled. “Do you want something to drink or not?”

“A soda,” she said finally, fanning herself with the program. “Orange, if they have it.”

The action only drew attention to the perspiration beaded on her chest. Rafe’s gaze seemed to be riveted to the exposed skin. He swallowed hard and resisted the urge to nab that program and use it to cool off his own overheated flesh.

“Lots of ice,” she added. “I’m sweltering out here.”

“Want to come with me?” he asked, forgetting all about his intention to give himself a break from her nonstop assault on his senses. “Maybe we can find some shade somewhere and cool off.”

She seemed to debate that, then finally nodded. “Let’s go.”

Rafe let her lead the way to the refreshment stand, ordered large sodas for both of them, then glanced around until he spotted a spreading cottonwood tree with a patch of shade beneath.

“Over there okay?” he asked.

“Perfect,” Gina agreed.

Seemingly oblivious to the fact that the ground was more dirt than grass, she sank down, accepted her drink, then sighed. “This is heaven,” she murmured. She snagged an ice cube from the drink, held it at the base of her throat and let it slowly melt. The water trickled across her flushed skin, then ran between her breasts.

As he watched her, Rafe’s throat went dry as a parched desert. Not even a long, slow swallow of his drink had a cooling effect. He was beginning to regret inviting Gina to leave the stands with him. Hell, he regretted accompanying her to the rodeo in the first place. It was testing him to his limits to keep his hands to himself.

He could have been in a nice, air-conditioned motel room, a beer in his hand, and all those damning Café Tuscany figures right in front of him. That’s where he ought to be, not out here on the verge of sunstroke and filled with more lust than he’d felt in the past twelve months combined, all directed at a woman who was totally untrustworthy, perhaps even more so than his own mother.

“Something wrong?” she inquired.

Her expression was all innocence as she let another ice cube melt, holding it a little lower, a little more provocatively this time. She’d stripped off her blouse when they’d first arrived, giving him a bad moment or two before he’d realized that she was wearing a tank top beneath. Between her deliberately provocative actions with that ice and the perspiration, the already revealing tank top was damp and clinging in a way that left very little to Rafe’s overheated imagination.

“Not a thing,” he claimed. “Why?”

“You look a little flushed.”

“Is that so surprising? It must be ninety-five degrees out here.”

“But it’s a dry heat,” she countered.

“Heat is heat.”

Pure mischief lit her eyes. “I could help you cool off,” she offered.

Before he could respond or guess what she intended, she upended her drink over his head. Fortunately, it was mostly water and melting ice by now, but the splash of frigid liquid against his burning skin was a shock.

Gina was already up and dancing away by the time he caught his breath. Rafe was on his feet in a heartbeat, fighting indignation and—to his own surprise—laughter.

“You are in such trouble,” he said.

“Mighty tough words from a man who’s dripping wet,” she taunted. “I did you a favor. Try to keep that in mind.”

“Oh, I have no intention of forgetting what you did,” he said, regarding her with a deceptively lazy look as he halted his pursuit.

He waited until she stopped backing nervously away, gave her time to grow complacent, then moved so quickly she didn’t have time to react. He snagged her wrist and hauled her into his arms.

He captured her gasp with his first kiss, then settled in to discover exactly how she tasted, exactly how her lips felt beneath his. There was a lingering sweet taste of orange soda to her mouth, a willing pliancy to her lush lips.

Her body fit against his as if they’d been made for each other. Between the dousing his clothes had taken, the dampness of hers and the skyrocketing heat of that kiss, he was surprised they weren’t enveloped in steam.

It took a very long time—too long, by his own rigid standard of ethics—for him to discover everything he’d wanted to know about the taste and texture of her mouth. He released her suddenly and with tremendous reluctance, muttering a curse under his breath.

Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, she stared at him for a full minute and then the heat rose in her cheeks right along with a flash of temper in her eyes.