A Stranger's Touch

Gripping his beer, Quinn made his way toward the only empty table in the place, a small one near the dance floor. He hooked his foot around a chair leg, pulled it out and sat. Okay, so the joint wasn’t a gay bar. But considering the low percentage of female clientele, he might soon wish he were anywhere but here. His odds of snagging a prime, long-legged woman interested in spending an hour between the sheets with him were looking slim, with all these jocks roaming the place. He glanced to where a waitress was taking a swat to the bottom from the guys at the neighboring table. Her grimace made him grin. Then again, maybe his chances weren’t that bad, after all.

Good. After three months on the range, with nothing but fellow weathered ranch hands as company, he needed to get laid. As soon as humanly possible. Tonight. It was the reason he’d stopped at the hotel for the night rather than heading straight for his best friend Brad Wheeler’s family estate. He needed the release before he could even think of facing his friend and hearing all the details about his upcoming nuptials. Besides, merely thinking of Brad’s mother Beatrix Wheeler made him roll his eyes. Would the self-proclaimed Queen of Albuquerque appreciate his having trimmed his hair for the occasion, rather than relying on a simple leather cord to hold it back? He doubted it. To her, he’d always been that offensive boy Brad had dragged home when they were kids, no matter the style of his hair.

Married.

Quinn settled back more comfortably into the chair. He couldn’t believe Brad was getting married. Of the two of them, he’d figured he’d be the one to settle down long before his restless friend. Well, he supposed he had settled before Brad, at least in an important way. Only, his lifestyle didn’t include a woman. Not many females were interested in life on an isolated ranch where you had to drive over an hour just to go to the market. He’d thought he’d roped one, once. He wasn’t about to make that mistake again. But Brad…

He shook his head and took a hefty swallow of beer. Since he was a kid, Brad’s mother had tried to force him into a mold that spoke of wealth, power and kowtowing…mostly to her. But while Brad could wear a tuxedo like he was born in one, he’d also thought nothing of hanging out with wrong-side-of-the-tracks Quinn. And while Brad had the latest model Jaguar, the fifth one he’d gone through since coming of age, Quinn still had the old Chevy in need of some TLC that he’d bought when he was sixteen with money he’d made breaking his back on his uncle’s ranch.

And while Brad had embraced the idea of running his family business, Wheeler Industries, Quinn was satisfied with the spread he’d bought from his uncle three years ago. He enjoyed getting his hands dirty—literally—and working a muscle other than his brain.

He peered through the scant couples on the dance floor toward the band. The sax player wasn’t bad. Hmm…neither was the female backup singer. He had just shifted to get a better look, when three women passed in front of him, blocking his view—correction—improving the view. Taking a long, slow pull from his beer bottle, Quinn considered the threesome, who were obviously minus three guys.

The black-haired one definitely had possibilities. She moved that slender body of hers in a way that virtually guaranteed she’d be killer in bed. His gaze slid to the redhead. She wasn’t bad. Obviously shy but with the pink tinge to her cheeks and a fire in her eyes that revealed she could be coaxed to take risks.

He put his bottle down on the table and sat up, trying to see around to the blonde’s face. She put her hands up in the air, attempting to emulate the brunette’s steps…then fell smack-dab in the middle of his lap.

He grinned.

Bingo.

2

ONE MINUTE Dulcy was dancing—at least she preferred to call it dancing while Jena called it clucking—and the next minute she was sprawled across the very warm, very hard lap of a guy sitting next to the dance floor.

Okay, no more tequila for her.

She laughed at her silent quip, then tried to gain a foothold. “I’m sorry. I…must have tripped.”

She twisted to get up, her bottom rubbing against the man’s…strategic area.

His groan caught her off guard and she blinked up into his face. Then blinked again. Not because she was having difficulty seeing. But because if she wasn’t mistaken, she had just landed on top of the star of her most recent fantasy—the guy from the door. And, oh boy, he was even better this close up. Not since she was a teen and had plastered pictures of Sting all over her room—posters her mother had immediately taken down—had she reacted so strongly to the mere sight of someone.

Either that, or she was completely smashed.

“No hurry,” her fantasy lover said in a deep baritone, drawing the words out, sounding better than even her imagination could have supplied.

A delicious shiver ran the length of Dulcy’s spine, then inched back up again, leaving her stomach quivery and her breasts achy. She brazenly allowed her gaze to flick over the guy’s features. Over his broad forehead and thick shoulder-length jet-black hair, the type of hair a girl could lose her hands in. She took in his strong, tanned silk-covered jawline and criminally generous mouth, the kind a woman might be tempted to run the tip of her tongue along the rim of. Then she skimmed her gaze up along the length of his nose to lash-rimmed eyes the color of the amber tequila she had just gulped down with her friends, the sort of eyes that should bear a warning Dangerous Waters Ahead.

She blinked, just then realizing he was returning her gaze with equal intensity, his strangely penetrating, predatory…hungry.

But it was his grin that made her stomach yo-yo to the floor right next to her high-heeled shoes, then bounce back up again.

He cleared his throat, the bobbing of his Adam’s apple mesmerizing. “I was just sitting here, trying to come up with a good come-on line to use on you and, bam, you fall straight into my lap.” He straightened her when she would have slid to the floor. “If that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is.”

Dulcy clutched his shoulder to straighten herself, intrigued by the rock-hard muscles she felt bunched beneath the soft, beige chambray of his shirt. Brad wasn’t exactly soft, but he wasn’t this hard, either.

She noticed she had a good portion of the shirt clutched in her fist. She set about smoothing out the wrinkles, her huge diamond engagement ring flashing in the lights from the dance floor.

She snatched her hand back as if scorched. “I’ll say it’s a sign. It’s a sign that me and tequila don’t mix.”

She finally struggled to a standing position, finding the strange thunk-thunk of her heart disconcerting, and the burning in her lower abdomen completely foreign and as intoxicating as the tequila. She felt as if she’d barely escaped being hit by a charging horse.

“You can dress her up…” Jena’s voice edged its way through the silken cobweb crowding Dulcy’s mind. “Well, since you’ve already been personal with the man, don’t you think you should properly introduce yourself?”

Introduce herself? What was Jena talking about?

The man stood. And it seemed her gaze had to travel up and up, and up again before she could see his grin.

“I’m Quinn.”

Dulcy made a face. “Quinn? That’s the name of my—” She yelped when Jena elbowed her strongly in the ribs, the words “groom’s best friend” effectively lost.

Not that it mattered. Even though she’d yet to meet Brad’s mysterious friend, no exclusive, blue-blooded Wheeler associate, much less Brad himself, would ever be caught dead in a meat market like Rage. And the connecting hotel didn’t have nearly enough marble to be considered fashionable, which was one of the reasons why Dulcy had given in so easily to Jena’s demand that they come here. For one last night, she wanted to be in a place where no one gave a hoot who the Wheelers were. And the man in front of her, with his longish wild hair, his brawny body and decadently suggestive grin, would not only not care who the Wheelers were, but also effortlessly make her forget about them.

“I’m Jena,” her friend said, shaking the man’s very tanned, very large, very fascinating hand, and shaking Dulcy out of her reverie.

“Hi. I’m Marie.”

Dulcy watched dumbly as Marie followed suit, then stood back expectantly. Another nudge. She glared at Jena, then smiled at the stranger. What had he said his name was? Oh, yeah. Quinn. “I’m sorry to have—” she looked around, but saw that the other chair at the table was empty “—to have interrupted your evening, Quinn.”

“No name?”

“Oh. I’m—”

“Dee,” Jena said quickly. “Her name is Dee.”

Dulcy made a face at her. Why would Jena give him a name that she and Marie had used when they were kids? God, Dulcy couldn’t remember the last time either of them had called her that. Of course, she’d been the one to insist on the nickname when she was a teenager, hating that her given name was so different from everyone else’s. Jena was a derivative of Jenny or Jennifer, Marie…well, it went without saying that her name, as well, was common. Only Dulcy had been stuck with a peculiar name solely because it had belonged to some dead ancestor and her mother had liked it.

The man’s large, rough-skinned hand completely dwarfed hers as he took it, knocking her train of thought completely off track. Dulcy felt a strange vibration move up through her fingers, swirl around her arm, then travel the entire length of her body. Good God.

“It’s nice to meet you, Dee.”

“Me, too. I mean, it’s nice to meet you, too…Quinn.” The song “The Mighty Quinn” popped into her mind. Oh, yeah…the Quinn standing in front of her would, indeed, be mighty in all the ways a woman needed. She started at the thought, then grimaced. “Um, if you’ll excuse me…I think I’m going to be sick.”

WELL, AS FAR AS COMEBACKS WENT, Quinn had to say that Dee’s ranked right up there with some of the most memorable. While he wasn’t arrogant enough to think himself capable of charming any woman, he could safely say he’d never made one feel sick before.

Still, he couldn’t help grinning, as Dee teetered back on her heels. He hoped she didn’t plan to be sick that moment. On him.

Only she didn’t look sick to him. She looked…well, damn good. Rather than being bereft of color, her cheeks were flushed, and while her eyes were bright, he suspected it was more a result of their very close encounter just now than from whatever she’d had to drink.

“Okay, I think I’m going to be all right now,” she said, obviously relieved as she pushed her blond hair back from her face. “Yes. I’m fine. I just got…a little dizzy, that’s all.”

Dizzy was good, Quinn thought. Dizzy was real good.

The redhead stepped up and wrapped her fingers around Dee’s arms as if to steady her. “Are you sure? Would you like some water? Maybe you should sit down.”

Quinn deftly pushed the chair opposite him out. “Be my guest.”