Читать книгу Good Time Girl - Candace Schuler - Страница 9

“WELL, I’M HERE to tell you, sugar, rodeo cowboys are a whole hell of a lot of fun but they’re the most irresponsible sons o’ bitches in the world when it comes to women. You can’t trust ’em any farther than you can throw ’em, and you sure as hell can’t believe a word they say. Especially the good-lookin’ ones. They’re the most dangerous kind, you know, ’cause they’ve been gettin’ by on looks and charm their whole lives and they got it down to a science. I’m tellin’ you the pure honest-to-God truth here, sugar. You got to keep an extra sharp eye on the good-lookin’ ones or you’ll get your poor little heart broke for sure.”

Roxanne Archer heard those cautionary words of advice echo through her mind as she pulled into one of the few remaining parking spaces in front of Ed Earl’s Polynesian Dance Palace, and resolutely reaffirmed her decision not to let the dire warnings of one crusty old ex-barrel racer from San Antonio put a damper on her quest.

She was going to get herself a cowboy.

A good-looking one.

The most dangerous kind.

If she got her heart broken in the process, well, so be it. It was no more than she expected, in any case. And a broken heart had to be better than one that had shriveled up from disuse. Not to mention a few other body parts that were in imminent danger of dehydration from prolonged neglect.

She turned off the ignition of her rented candy-apple-red Mustang convertible and sat there for a moment, her fingers still clasping the key, her foot on the parking brake, staring blindly at the flock of pulsating pink-neon flamingos atop the roof of Ed Earl’s, and contemplated the series of events—the series of non-events, actually—that had brought her to a cowboy honky-tonk on the outskirts of Lubbock, Texas, in the middle of her summer vacation. It was simple, really.

Roxanne Archer had been a good girl—a very good girl—for the entire twenty-nine, uneventful years of her life. She wanted to take a crack at being a good-time girl before it was too late. If it wasn’t already too late. She’d been mired in good-girlness an awfully long time, and it was an awfully deep rut to climb out of—even with the help of a dangerous, good-looking cowboy.

Provided, of course, that she actually managed to get herself one.

“I just won’t go home until I get him,” she muttered stubbornly, and reached up to flip open the lighted makeup mirror in the visor so she could check her lipstick—glossy candy-apple red like the car—and make sure her hair hadn’t blown all to pieces on her drive over from the Broken Spoke Motel. It had. But as promised by the young woman who’d cut it for her in Dallas just two days ago, being blown all to pieces had only improved the style. Roxanne smiled at herself, delighted by the chunky, layered cut that tangled with her eyelashes and caressed the back of her neck with such reckless abandon.

It was amazing what a new hairdo could do for a woman. Not to mention a new shade of lipstick. And new clothes. Especially when each and every item of those new clothes—right down to the leopard-print bikini panties and matching push-up demi bra—were so radically different from what said woman usually wore.

Feeling wild and wicked and blessedly unlike her usual boring self, Roxanne pushed the car door open, swung her feet out onto the graveled parking lot, straightened up to her full five feet nine inches…and teetered precariously as the high, stacked heels of her brand-new, lipstick-red Sweetheart of the Rodeo cowboy boots sank into the rocky, uneven surface. She made a hasty grab for the top of the car door to steady herself, wondering if maybe the high-heeled boots had been a mistake. She always wore flats at home, or sensible pumps with little one-inch heels so she didn’t tower over people—men—any more than necessary.

But, then, no, she told herself firmly, good-time girls didn’t wear sensible shoes, whether they towered over people or not.

And, besides, she’d always wanted a pair of red cowboy boots, ever since she was a little girl growing up in Greenwich, Connecticut, secretly dreaming about riding the range as a dangerous outlaw queen like Belle Starr or Cat Ballou. Although it didn’t actually say so in any of the books she’d read, she’d been absolutely positive an outlaw queen would wear red cowboy boots. She’d gathered up her courage and asked her mother for a pair.

Charlotte Hayworth Archer had lectured her nine-year-old daughter about her poor choice of role models and footwear, then bought her proper brown leather riding boots and a proper English saddle and signed her up for proper riding lessons, no doubt believing all that wholesome, healthful propriety would rechannel Roxanne’s interests and ambitions in a more socially acceptable direction.

Which it had.

Sort of.

Roxanne learned to keep her admiration for unconventional women to herself, and she never mentioned her desire for red boots again.

After a while, she almost forgot she’d ever wanted them. Dressage riders didn’t wear fancy red boots, nor did honor students or members of the debate team or the Latin club, and certainly no class valedictorian had ever pranced across the stage to the podium in red boots. A cheerleader might, of course, or a member of the drama club, but Roxanne was too tall and too inhibited and…well, just too plain geeky to belong to either of those cliques. A girl like Roxanne had been during her high school years—tall, gangly, scholarly, shy—would never wear or do or say anything to attract attention to herself. It got to be a habit, and Roxanne passed out of her awkward teens and into her marginally less awkward twenties without attracting any undue notice from anyone.

Shortly after her twenty-fourth birthday she became one half of a mature adult relationship with another teacher at the exclusive private school were she taught English Lit and beginning Latin to fifth graders, but she never really attracted his attention, either. Not completely. In the three years they spent together as a couple, he never once remembered how she liked her coffee—a half a spoonful of sugar, damn it!—or noticed that she faked her orgasms.

Which, in a roundabout way, was the reason she was standing in front of a cowboy honky-tonk outside of Lubbock, Texas, in the middle of her summer vacation, wearing red cowboy boots and the shortest, tightest skirt she’d ever worn in her life.

Roxanne Archer was finally ready to call some attention to herself, to cut loose, to kick over the traces, to take a walk on the wild side and find out what all the shouting was about. In the immortal words of Auntie Mame—another admirably unconventional woman with a flamboyant fashion sense—Roxanne was ready to “live, live, live!”

For the duration of her vacation, anyway.

She let go of the car door, then reached down with both hands—freshly manicured with glossy fire-engine-red polish instead of her usual tasteful French manicure—and carefully smoothed her sweaty palms over the curve of her hips to make sure her tiny denim skirt was still covering everything it was supposed to cover.

Someone whistled appreciatively

Roxanne started at the unexpected sound, her body stiffening instinctively, as if to ward off a threat or an insult. And then, deliberately, remembering her mission, she forced herself to relax. She’d dressed to attract attention, hadn’t she? Well, she’d attracted attention. Now she just had to figure out what to do with it.

She turned her head slightly, glancing over her shoulder, and flashed what she hoped was a saucy smile at her admirer.

The response was immediate. And immensely gratifying.

He puffed up like a rooster and swaggered toward her with the loose-limbed, bow-legged gait of a man who’d spent a lot of time on a horse. “Well, hey, there, baby doll,” he crooned appreciatively as he honed in on her.

He was six foot four, at least, with shoulders like a bull, a trophy buckle the size of a pancake decorating his belt, and a smile as wide and open as a Texas prairie beaming out at her from under the rim of a cream-colored Stetson. An honest-to-goodness cowboy. Good-looking, too, in an open, aw-shucks, country boy sort of way that, unfortunately, wasn’t the least bit dangerous.

Roxanne had her heart firmly set on dangerous.

Still, a cowboy was a cowboy, even if he had freckles and a snub nose. And she could certainly use the practice. She fluttered her eyelashes experimentally.

“Hey, yourself, sugar,” she drawled. Her accent was a near perfect imitation of the San Antonio barrel racer who had warned her against trusting cowboys. The flirtatious tilt of her head was the result of two weeks’ worth of close observation and diligent practice in front of a mirror. Amazingly, it worked.

The cowboy swaggered a bit closer and leaned in, putting one big, beefy hand on the open car door. The mingled scents of horses, saddle soap and a musky men’s cologne, liberally applied, engulfed her. “You here alone, baby doll?”

Roxanne stifled the urge to take a quick step backward, out of range of that too strong cologne and the unfamiliar burden of his undivided attention. It was what she would have done. Before. Now, she shut the car door with a sassy little thrust of her hip, dislodging his hand, and gave him what she hoped was a provocative look from under the fringe of her chunky blond bangs. “I’m meeting someone inside.”

“Girlfriend?” he said, looking so much like an eager, oversize puppy that Roxanne couldn’t help but smile at him again.

“Boyfriend.” She touched the manicured tip of her index finger to the center of his massive chest and pushed lightly, backing him up. “And he’s real jealous, sugar, so I’d be careful if I were you.”

The cowboy’s grin widened. “I’m willing to take a chance if you are, baby doll. We could run away together before he even knows you’re here. My truck’s right over there.”

Roxanne laughed and shook her head, causing her tousled flyaway cut to shimmer in the pink neon glow of the flock of flamingos gracing the roof of Ed Earl’s. “I wouldn’t want your death on my conscience, sugar. But thanks for the invitation.” She sighed regretfully. “It was a real sweet offer and if I wasn’t otherwise engaged, I’d be tempted.” She batted her eyelashes again for good measure. “I really would.”

She patted his chest and turned away, tucking the car key into the pocket of her stretch denim skirt as she sauntered across the parking lot—slowly, because of the unaccustomed height of her boot heels and the graveled surface beneath her feet. The careful pace made her hips sway seductively, in a way they never did in her usual flats.

“Man, oh, man,” she heard him say reverently, and she slowed down even more, exaggerating the fluid movement of her hips, enjoying the moment, reveling in her unexpected success.

Oh, it had been so easy! Who would have ever believed it would be so easy?

With a triumphant, self-satisfied smile tugging at the corners of her glossy red lips, Roxanne pulled open the front door of Ed Earl’s Polynesian Dance Palace and sashayed in like she owned the place.

It was as if she had stepped into another world and—like Dorothy torn from her black-and-white life and thrust over the rainbow into a brilliantly colored Oz—she could only stand there and blink in stupefied amazement. It was loud, smoky, and tacky. Unapologetically, unrepentantly, gloriously tacky.

Chinese paper lanterns were strung from life-size wooden cutouts shaped like palm trees. Brightly colored plastic fish dangled from the ceiling. Bedraggled fisherman’s netting, studded with glass floats, striped beach balls and pink plastic flamingos of various sizes, was draped across the walls. Gyrating hula dolls—the kind found on the dashboards of cars of people with questionable taste—decorated each table. The wait staff wore gaudy Hawaiian Aloha shirts and paper flower leis with their Wranglers and boots. The four members of the twanging cowboy band stood on a small, raised stage constructed to look like a log raft. The crowded dance floor was huge, kidney-shaped and painted a vivid blue. Roxanne’s cocky smile faltered a bit as she watched the dancers’ whirling, skipping, kicking progress around the scuffed blue floor.

Dancing had never been her strong suit. Not that she didn’t love to dance. She did. But girls who were five feet nine inches tall by the time they were thirteen, especially girls who were brainy and wore glasses, too, didn’t get much opportunity to learn all the latest dance moves. Her mother had insisted she learn all the standard ballroom dances, of course—and what a wretched embarrassment those lessons had been, being waltzed around the room by an unwilling partner whose head barely reached her chin!—but she’d never danced any of the popular dances all the kids her age were doing back in high school. Not in public, anyway.

Determined not to be left out this time around, she’d secretly taken a six-week series of dance lessons in preparation for her Wild West adventure, but none of the half a dozen country-western dances she’d so painstakingly learned bore more than a passing resemblance to the bewildering series of steps currently being performed on the floor of Ed Earl’s Polynesian Dance Palace. Obviously, her instructors—a fresh-faced young preppie couple in matching pastel plaid shirts—had never been in a Texas honky-tonk. Or six weeks of lessons hadn’t been nearly enough. Either way, she couldn’t possibly—

“Dance, ma’am?”

Roxanne shifted her gaze from the dance floor to find another cowboy smiling at her from beneath the rim of a broad-brimmed, black cowboy hat. This one was lean and rangy, with dark, soulful eyes and an uncanny resemblance to a young John Travolta. Unfortunately, he was also no more than twenty, at most. Still, it was heartening to be hit on as soon as she came in the door, as it were. Another sign, if she needed one, that her transformation from party pooper to party girl had been successful. If she hadn’t been ninety-nine percent sure she’d fall flat on her face, she might have taken him up on his offer, just out of pure gratitude that he’d asked.

“Thank you, no.” She smiled at him to cushion the blow. “I’m meeting someone.” She gestured across the sea of dancers toward the bar and pool tables on the other side of the blue lagoon. “Over there.”

“How ’bout I dance you over that way, then? Little bitty slip of a thing like you might get stomped on, you try to make it through this rowdy crowd on your own.”

Even without the warning from the San Antonio barrel racer about a rodeo cowboy’s proclivity for stretching the truth, Roxanne knew a line when she heard one—and his was long enough to hang clothes on. No one had ever, in all her twenty-nine years, referred to her as a “little bitty slip of a thing.” She’d been called skinny. Scrawny. Bean Pole. String Bean. Arrow Archer. But never a little bitty slip of a thing. And by someone who was smiling at her as if he really, truly meant it. At the moment, anyway. It was irresistible.

“All right, sugar,” she drawled, suddenly feeling powerfully, erotically female. Little bitty slip of a thing. If she could call forth that kind of shameless flattery from a young, good-looking cowboy by just standing there, she could do anything. Even dance in public without disgracing herself. “For that, you get one dance. The man I’m meeting can wait.”

He whooped as if he’d just won the lottery and snagged an arm around her waist, whirling her onto the floor before she had a chance to change her mind.

“One dance,” she reiterated as they joined the enthusiastic throng.

They danced two dances.

After all, the first dance hardly counted, as the song was more than half over when they joined in. And the second dance was the Cotton-Eyed Joe. It would be an affront to Texans everywhere to leave the dance floor when the Cotton-Eyed Joe was playing. Roxanne acquiesced to that argument, spurious though it was, but managed to stand firm when he tried to cajole her into a third go-round. Cute as he was—and he was darn cute!—she had other plans for the evening. And it was about time she quit stalling and put them into action.

“I’m meeting someone,” she stated firmly, resisting when her dance partner tried to twirl her into the two-step that was just beginning. “And you said you’d dance me over there—” she gestured with her free hand “—after one dance, now didn’t you, sugar?”

The cowboy gave an exaggerated shrug, pantomiming both compliance and disappointment, and obligingly two-stepped her backward through the crowd. As they approached the edge of the dance floor, he spun her in a series of quick, showy turns that ended with her pressed up against his lean, rock-hard young body, their joined hands clasped against the small of her back. Breathless, laughing, Roxanne clutched at his shoulder with her free hand for balance and found herself looking into his face from only inches away. The expression in his soulful brown eyes had her reconsidering her definition of dangerous.

“Oh, my.” She slid her hand from his shoulder to his chest in an effort to give herself a little more breathing room. Unlike the cowboy who’d accosted her in the parking lot, he didn’t budge. “Well…um, that was certainly invigorating,” she said brightly, forgetting to drawl. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” he purred, and dipped his head with unmistakable intent.

Roxanne drew back sharply, as far as the arm encircling her waist would permit.

“Is that a no?” he murmured.

“No. I mean, yes. That’s a no,” she stammered, fighting a curious combination of schoolgirl panic and equally schoolgirlish triumph.

He wanted to kiss her!

It was out of the question, of course. He was just a kid. Younger than her youngest brother, Edward, who was a junior at Brown. But still…this young John Travolta lookalike wanted to kiss her! It was a heady thought and if he were a few years older or she were a few years younger, she might be tempted to let him. Maybe.

“Sure I can’t change your mind? I know lots of other—” his arm tightened fractionally, pressing her closer to his overheated body; his voice dropped an octave, becoming intimate and suggestive “—invigoratin’ things we can do together.”

“Yes, I’m quite sure you do,” she said primly, wondering how she’d gotten herself into this. And how she was going to get out of it. “But I’m meet—” She sucked in her breath, startled into silence when he reached up and brushed her cheek with the back of one finger.

“You sure have soft skin,” he murmured, his finger wandering down her cheek to the side of her neck. His dark eyes sizzled with potent male heat. “You this soft all over?”

Roxanne reached up and grabbed his hand, stopping its unerring descent toward the scooped neckline of her lace-edged camisole blouse. “No,” she said firmly, with no equivocation in her voice this time, and no indecision in her expression that might lead him to think she could be convinced to change her mind.

The young cowboy sighed and let her go. “I enjoyed the dance. Dances,” he said with a smile, as earnest and polite as if he hadn’t just tried to cop a feel. “And if you change your mind about anything—” his voice took on a playful, suggestive timbre “—you just give a holler and I’ll come runnin’.”

His easy, good-natured capitulation to her rejection boosted Roxanne’s confidence another notch. Obviously, she was better at this man/woman thing than she’d thought. Or, rather, her sexy alter ego was better at it.

“And just who should I holler for, sugar?” She tilted her head, looking up at him from beneath her lashes. “If I do happen to change my mind, that is.”

“The name’s Clay.” He offered his hand. “Clay Madison.”

Roxanne put hers into it. “Roxy Archer,” she said, giving him the version of her name she’d decided went with her new persona.

“Well, Roxy, it’s been a real pleasure.” He lifted the hand he held to his lips and brushed a careless kiss across her knuckles before letting it go. “You remember what I said now, hear? Holler if you change your mind.”

“I’ll do that,” she promised mendaciously, knowing it wouldn’t happen.

Clay Madison knew it, too. He touched two fingers to the brim of his hat in a brief cowboy salute, then turned and left her standing at the edge of the dance floor while he zeroed in on a big-haired, big-bosomed young lovely in skintight jeans and a skinny little tank top that exposed a great deal more cleavage than Roxanne could ever hope to possess, even with the help of a push-up bra.

“Oh, well,” she said to herself, watching without rancor as he twirled the delighted girl onto the crowded dance floor with the same smooth moves he’d used on her. “Easy come, easy go.”

She had no doubt at all that if she’d been willing, it could have been her out on the dance floor, plastered up against young Clay Madison with his hand inching inexorably toward her butt. It was a comforting thought. Before Clay and the cowboy in the parking lot, her belief in her ability to inspire that kind of lustful feeling in a man had been based on little more than research and hope. Now, it was established fact. She could do it. She had done it. She could do it again. All it took, apparently, was a short, tight skirt, a provocative smile, and the ability to flutter her eyelashes.

She was utterly amazed it had taken her nearly twenty-nine years to figure out something so simple, but now that she had, she was going to put her new knowledge to good use. With a confident toss of her head, Roxanne turned and headed for the bar with a sultry, hip-swinging stride that drew more than one admiring male glance.

“Lone Star,” she purred when the bartender smiled and asked her pleasure.

She waved away the mug he brought with the beer, wrapped her hand around the frosty long-necked bottle and swiveled around on her bar stool so she was facing the pool table tucked into the far corner of the honky-tonk. She raised the beer to her lips and took a long, slow swallow, surveying the men playing pool over the upturned end of the bottle.

There he was.

Her cowboy.

The good-looking, dangerous one.

She lowered the beer, resting the cool frosty bottom on her bare knee, and watched him as he circled the pool table with the cue in his hand. He wasn’t movie-star handsome like young Clay Madison, but Roxanne didn’t want movie-star handsome. She wanted craggy and rugged. She wanted virile and manly. A real cowboy, not the rhinestone version.

The cowboy playing pool was as real as it got.

He was long and lean, an even six feet according to his stats, although his boots and hat made him seem taller. Broad at the shoulders and narrow at the hips with the strong, hard thighs of a horseman, he moved around the pool table with the ambling, easy, loose-kneed gait of a man who knew the value of patience. He was older than most of the other rodeo cowboys—an important consideration to a woman staring her thirtieth birthday in the face—with tiny lines of experience etched into the tanned skin around his eyes, and laugh lines creasing his lean cheeks. His dark hair was conservatively cut, neither short nor long, with the appealing tendency to curl from underneath the edges of his hat. His snap-front, Western-cut shirt was a plain, pale blue; his jeans were snug but not tight; the silver trophy buckle on his belt was moderately sized. His whole manner bespoke quiet, rock-solid confidence with no need to advertise either his physique or his prowess.

Roxanne had been surreptitiously watching him for the past two weeks, sizing him up from the safety of the stands and around the rodeo grounds. Now, her decision made, her quarry in sight, she leveled her gaze at him from across the room and stared openly, her interest obvious to anyone who cared to look.

The object of her interest stood, hip cocked, head down, the brim of his hat shadowing his face, his upper body bent over the pool table as he lined up his shot, seemingly oblivious to the woman watching him.

Roxanne kept staring, willing him to look up. According to all the books she’d read and the research she’d done in preparation for her Wild West adventure, the easiest and most direct way for a woman to signal her interest in a man was with eye contact. Prolonged, direct eye contact. The trick, she realized now, was to get him to look at her in the first place. The books and magazine articles had made it all sound so simple. Catch his eye, lick your lips, trail your fingertips suggestively over your cleavage or the rim of your glass, all the while holding that all important eye contact, and he’d come running. That was the theory, anyway. Unfortunately, nothing she’d read had mentioned what to do if he was so intent on his next pool shot that he didn’t even notice you were staring at him.

She was just about to switch tactics, steeling herself to slide off the bar stool and saunter over to the pool table for a more direct approach when, suddenly, his shoulders twitched under the pale blue fabric of his shirt. His hands stilled on the pool cue. He raised his head, slowly, his upper body still positioned over the felt-covered table in preparation for his shot.

She saw the chiseled angle of his jaw first as it emerged from beneath the shadow of his hat…the full, sculpted curve of his lips…his blade of a nose…the strong, angled cheekbones under skin the warm golden color of old doubloons…and then, finally, the startling blue of his eyes as he looked straight at her from under the brim of his hat.

Their gazes locked.

Held.

Roxanne felt the jolt all the way down to her toes. Steady, she told herself, fighting the urge to lower her gaze. Steady. Now wasn’t the time to get all girlie and flustered. She’d caught his attention. Now she had to engage his interest enough to make him approach her. Deliberately, with a gesture she’d practiced a hundred times in front of the mirror in preparation for this moment, she lifted her free hand and touched her crimson-tipped fingers to the lace-trimmed edge of her scoop-necked blouse, brushing them lightly, languidly, back and forth over the cleavage produced by the push-up bra.

The cowboy’s eyes widened and his gaze flickered downward, following the sultry movement of her fingers on her skin. The expression in his blue eyes when they came back to hers was hot, focused and intent, rife with speculation and frank sexual curiosity.

Roxanne felt equal parts fear, excitement and sheer female power sizzling through her at the success of her ploy. She’d done it. She’d hooked him. Now all she had to do was reel him in.

Come to mama, she thought, and smiled in blatant, unmistakable invitation.