Notorious

That look triggered a vivid memory. She’d kissed him with the passion of a woman that night in the barn, even at the tender age of sixteen. “Strictly as friends,” he said quickly. “It’s a minisuite. I’ll take the couch and you can have the bed. This isn’t a proposition, Keely.”

“Are you sure?” The mischief had returned to her green eyes. “I realize you’re not in the habit of kicking over the traces, but we’re not in Saguaro Junction anymore. No one from back home has to hear about this. And we all know what a naughty girl I am.”

Warmth flooded through him. She really had a knack for saying exactly what would bring a reaction. “That’s the kind of thinking you need to get away from,” he said. “Life is about more than sex.” At the moment he couldn’t think what else it was about, but he’d get his bearings again soon.

“Let me make sure I understand. You’re inviting me to stay in your room for the weekend, but you have no intention of us fooling around. Instead, you’re going to do some career counseling for me.”

“That’s right.” Not that fooling around with Keely didn’t hold some appeal. But she apparently thought that’s all she was good for, and he didn’t want to reinforce that notion.

She frowned in confusion. “I asked you if you had a wife back home and you said no. But is there a serious girlfriend? Because I can imagine you would be totally loyal once you committed yourself to somebody.”

“No serious girlfriend.” Come to think of it, he hadn’t even had a date in months.

“Noah, are you gay?”

He choked. As he was coughing and sputtering, he shook his head and gasped out his denial.

She ticked off her conclusions on the tips of her fingers. “You’re not committed to anyone, you’re not gay, and you don’t want to have sex with me, even if no one back home would ever find out.”

“That’s right.” He did want to have sex with her, always had, but that was a white lie he could live with.

“Then you surely must be a saint who has dropped down out of the sky to save me from my wicked ways. Okay, I accept.”

He cleared his throat and tried to look more confident than he felt. “That’s great.” Now that she’d pointed out to him that only a saint could be expected to resist her, he’d begun to think this whole idea was doomed. But if he could somehow find the strength to keep his hands off her, then maybe she’d develop a new image of herself. And that was worth doing. After all, his brother was marrying her sister. She would be family soon.

“We should probably go pick up your stuff,” he said. “Is your hotel far from here?”

She looked suddenly worried. “Uh, the thing is, they, um…lost my luggage. You know how that happens. I don’t have any stuff.”

“Oh.” So it was worse than he thought. Obviously she was making up the story about lost luggage, so that must mean she was staying in some fleabag motel and didn’t want him to know it. Worse yet, her belongings were pitiful enough to be embarrassing to her. As together as she looked now, the outfit she wore was probably the only decent thing she owned.

Knowing that fact renewed his resolve to pull her out of this nosedive she was in. “Okay, then!” he said with more heartiness than the situation called for. He sounded like a damn used-car salesman. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Let’s walk on back to my hotel. Then I can advance you a little money if you want to go shopping for a few clothes later.”

“We’ll see about that. But before we leave here I want to duck inside and let them know I won’t be keeping the appointment. I don’t want a black mark beside my name, in case I need to come back someday.”

“I’ll go with you.”

She smiled at him. “I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“In this neighborhood, if some guy is tagging around after a woman, looking like he’s keeping track of her, people might think he’s her pimp.”

As he wondered how she’d become so knowledgeable about such things, ice water shot through his veins. “Keely, please tell me that you’ve never—”

“No. I’ve never. I may be a naughty girl, but I’ve never been that naughty.”

He sighed with relief.

“Yet.”

His muscles tensed all over again and he opened his mouth to deliver another warning.

Keely’s musical laugh cut him off. “Relax. I’m kidding. You were around for the first nineteen years of my life. You should know by now how much I love to tease people. Especially people like you.” She fluttered a hand at him. “Hold down the sidewalk. I’ll be back before you know it.”

He watched her walk through the entrance into the cavelike interior of the club. That Keely. She always could get him going.

Then he blinked as if coming out of a trance. He had just arranged to spend the weekend sleeping in a hotel suite with Keely Branscom.

What the hell had he been thinking? He’d arrived in this place feeling on edge and sexually deprived. Now he’d invited the sexiest woman he’d ever known to stay with him in extremely close quarters. Less than four hours into his Vegas stay, and the city had him right where it wanted him.

2

KEELY HAD MADE a career of acting on impulse. This particular impulse—to play along with Noah’s outrageous plan to save her—could be lots of fun, especially if she turned the tables and took him for a walk on the wild side, instead. So why this sudden attack of nerves?

Maybe she was still dealing with the news that her sister and Jonas were getting married. That situation would definitely take some getting used to. Yeah, it was the sudden word of their wedding that had her spooked.

Surely she wasn’t still into Noah the way she had been at sixteen. And seducing him here in Vegas would be an awesome way to get revenge for the way he’d brusquely pushed her away at that tender age. But in order for that revenge to be sweet, she had to be certain she was completely over him. Well, she was. Of course she was.

Shaking off her uneasiness, she walked into the sparsely populated bar and glanced at the blond woman gyrating on the small stage. No, that wasn’t the one. Her interview subject was a brunette.

“Would you like a table?” A thin man dressed in a white shirt and tight black pants appeared at her elbow.

“No, thanks. I’m Keely Branscom and I’m here to talk with Suzanne.”

“Oh!” The man grew more animated. “You’re the reporter from Attitude! She’s in the back. Please sit down. I’ll go get her.”

Keely pulled out a chair at the nearest round cocktail table and sat. This might take longer than she figured. No doubt Noah would be outside having a conniption, thinking she was secretly filling out a job application. But she couldn’t be rude and leave without speaking to Suzanne.

The sound system in the bar wasn’t very good, but the blonde on the stage was an excellent dancer. Keely counted five men in the place, all of them with their attention glued to the stage. She’d love to believe they were admiring the skill of the performance, but after years of reporting on the guy/gal scene for Attitude!, she could reasonably conclude they were fixated on the dancer’s chest instead of her footwork.

In general, a man’s motivation was pretty simple, which was one reason she was so intrigued by Noah’s offer to reform her. His motivation was more complex. She really believed he didn’t intend for them to have sex. Well, he just might have to reevaluate that decision.

“Ms. Branscom?”

Keely glanced away from the stage and saw that a curvy brunette in purple spandex stood next to the table. Keely pushed back her chair. “Suzanne?”

“That’s me.” Suzanne held out her hand.

Keely stood and shook her hand. She had to practically shout to be heard over the pounding music. “Please call me Keely. Listen, it turns out now isn’t a very good time for me to do the interview, after all. I wonder if we could reschedule.”

“I guess so.” Suzanne raised her voice and leaned closer to Keely. “The only thing is, I have, like, this horrific exam coming up in my psych class, so I need to spend most of my free time, like, inhaling the textbook. And tonight I’m dancing.”

“Right.” Keely was glad they weren’t conducting the interview like this. It would give her a headache in no time. She wasn’t sure when she’d stopped loving loud music.

She quickly considered how to work around Suzanne’s schedule and her own interesting situation with Noah. He’d probably have some wedding-related thing going on tonight, so she might be able to slip over here.

“Do you get a break tonight?” she asked.