Читать книгу The Pleasure Principle - Kimberly Raye - Страница 9

AS OWNER AND OPERATOR of the only bar in Cadillac, Texas, Eden Hallsey came into contact with more than her fair share of men. Males of all shapes and sizes—rich and poor, young and old, annoying and nice, homely and handsome. But never had she seen one as handsome, as sexy, as hot as the man standing on the side of the road, next to a steaming black Porsche.

Handsome, as in short, dark hair that framed a GQ face, complete with a straight nose and strong jaw and sensual lips.

Sexy, as in the sensual way his white dress shirt outlined his muscular shoulders and broad chest, while soft, black trousers accented a trim waist and molded to his hips.

Hot as in the beads of perspiration that clung to his forehead, slid down his cheeks, the tanned column of his throat. He wiped his brow as he lifted a hand to flag her down.

Before she even realized what she was doing, her foot shifted to the brake and she started to slow. A few seconds later, she pulled up in front of the sleek sports car and rolled down her window.

“Need some help?” she asked as he walked up. She reached beneath the seat for the Triple A kit her waitress and friend Kasey had given her last Christmas. A click and she started rummaging in the tackle-size box. “Let’s see. I’ve got jumper cables. A jack. Spare can of oil.” A girl had to be prepared, as Kasey always said. Of course, in this situation her friend would have been referring to the tube of Passionate Pink lipstick she’d taped inside the top of the tackle box.

Eden barely ignored the urge to grab the tube and rub some of the color on her lips. Eden Hallsey primped for no man, even one as handsome as this one.

“Pick your poison,” she told him after she’d licked her lips and ticked off the remaining contents of the box.

“A gun would be nice.”

Her head snapped up and her gaze collided with his. She realized he looked vaguely familiar as her breath caught and her mouth actually went dry at the sight of the most intense, vivid blue eyes she’d ever seen.

A crazy reaction, because Eden’s mouth never went dry over a man. Sure, she appreciated the opposite sex. She even enjoyed them on occasion—though the last being so long ago she could hardly remember. She liked men, all right, as everyone well knew. But she never, ever let any one man get to her.

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.

Not now. Not ever again.

The past was just that—the past. Over. Finished. Bye, bye. It was the future that mattered now, and Brady wasn’t making any more mistakes. Rather, he was finally going to set things right.

He ran a hand through his sweat-dampened hair and spared a glance around him. A handful of kids were gathered around a nearby candy machine at the far corner of the building. Brady turned, letting his gaze sweep the other side. The gleam of an old-fashioned Coke machine caught his eye and he smiled. Yep, Cadillac was still good old Cadillac.

Sliding a coin into the slot, he pushed the same button he’d pushed every day after school since the moment he’d been tall enough to swipe quarters from the top of his older sister’s dresser once she’d left for school in the morning.

The machine grumbled, then stalled the way it always had for several long moments before finally spitting out a bottle of Orange Crush. He popped the tab and lifted the opening to his lips. Anticipation rolled through him, thirst coiled in his stomach—familiar feelings that he’d felt every time he’d stood in this very same spot with his favorite drink.

Yet, at the same time, he felt different. Hotter. More anxious. Downright needy.

Thanks to Eden Hallsey.

He took a long swig of soda, but it did little to ease his body temperature which had soared the moment she’d pulled up in her beat-up Chevy to rescue him from his own stupidity.

At first, he’d been convinced she was a mirage. He’d been stranded on the highway just miles from his home-town. It only made sense that he would conjure the sexiest girl from his past.

But then she’d touched him, just a soft gesture on his hand, and every nerve in his body had jumped to awareness. In a matter of seconds, he’d been as hard as an iron spike.

He’d reacted the same way on their one and only date. That had been before Sally, or rather, before his head had lost the battle with his hormones, he’d fancied himself in love and had forgotten to wear a condom on one of their dates. She’d gotten pregnant and they’d gotten married, and his dating days had been over. She’d lost the baby shortly after, but it was too late. He’d taken sacred vows, and he had loved her, or so he’d thought at the time, and she’d claimed to love him. He’d believed her, up until six months ago when she’d run off with one of his business associates.

So much for love.

But before…

There’d been Eden Hallsey. From tenth grade on, she’d been the prettiest and sexiest girl around and the fantasy of every boy at Cadillac, Brady included. He’d heard every rumor about her, and while he didn’t believe them all—he’d known her before tenth grade—when she’d been shy and naïve and a nice girl—he knew there was at least a kernel of truth. She was sexy.

And he’d wanted her.

The date had been nothing more than tradition. He’d been the star prize in the yearly football lottery, where girls bought tickets for a chance to win a date with their favorite jock. He’d been surprised to see her raise her hand when the number had been called. After all, Eden hadn’t needed to buy a ticket to get a date. She could have any guy. But she’d bought a ticket for him. For a few seconds, he’d been excited until a friend had alerted him to the fact that she was making her way through the football team and he was the last on her list. Just another conquest.

Oddly enough, he hadn’t wanted to be another in a long line. He’d wanted to be different. To stand out, and so he’d done what no other guy had ever been able to do—he’d kept his distance. Barely.

That had been a long time ago. His hormones had never been more out of control than at this time, or so he’d thought until he’d climbed into the cab beside her today. He might as well have been sixteen again, with raging needs and a permanent hard-on. The reaction was the same. Fierce. Immediate.

Thankfully, that reaction had jolted some common sense into him. He’d let his passion get him into trouble before. He’d lost everything because of one night and it wasn’t happening again just because Eden was every bit as luscious as he remembered. He wouldn’t screw things up again before he’d even had the chance to set them right.

A chance. That’s why Brady was back in Cadillac. He wanted a chance to reclaim his old life. A chance to make amends for mistaking lust for love and beg his grandfather’s forgiveness for forsaking his family for a girl who’d never really loved him.

Not that love had been the sole deciding factor that had figured into his decision to forfeit an all expense paid education at Texas A & M for two jobs and community college in Dallas. Duty had been a part of his decision as well. And responsibility. And commitment. They were the reasons Brady had left.

The reasons he’d finally come back.

“Say there, son. Can I help…” The words trailed off as astonishment lit the old man’s face as he walked around the corner of the building. He wore faded jean overalls and a worn Kansas City Royals T-shirt beneath it. Salt-and-pepper hair framed a wrinkled face, and a matching mustache twitched on his upper lip. “Why, I declare. Brady Zachariah Weston! Is that you, you ole sonofagun?”

“It’s me, all right.” He took the older man’s hand for a hearty shake. “It’s good to see you, Unc.”

Merle Weston was Brady’s great uncle, his grandfather’s little brother, and the classic black sheep of the Weston clan. For as long as Brady could remember, Merle had been the outsider. He’d declined any part of the Weston boot business and opened up his own gas station some thirty-odd years ago, despite his older brother’s fierce objections. After all, Weston Boots was a family affair and Zachariah Weston didn’t take too kindly to his kin going against family tradition.

Brady knew that firsthand.

Merle had never seemed to care, however. If anything, he’d gone out of his way just to stay at odds with his older brother. He’d traded the family business and fortune for his own service station that barely made ends meet.

He’d married the wrong woman, at least according to his older brother whose definition of right involved money—lots of money. And he’d moved clear across town, away from the family ranch that still housed three generations of Westons.

The older man scratched the side of his head with a faded, rolled-up issue of Popular Mechanics. “Why, I was wonderin’ when you’d finally make it back—hey, there!” His attention shifted to the kids poking around the candy machine. “You young’uns either put some change in or skeedadle, otherwise I’ll take a hickory switch to every single one of you!” He turned back to Brady and his face split into a grin. “You’re lookin’ awful good, son. A little slick,” he said, his gaze sweeping Brady from head to toe as he let out a low whistle. “Awful fancy threads you got there.”

“One of the hazards of working in Dallas. I see you’re still too cheap to spring for a current edition of Popular Mechanics.” He indicated the rolled-up magazine.

“The back issues I get from the beauty parlor every six months when Eula cleans off her coffee table are plenty good enough for me.” He winked. “What can I say? The price is right.”

“There is no price.”

“That’s why it’s so right. I ain’t made of money like some folks around here.” He winked. “Speaking of which, I heard you’re headin’ up one of them highfalutin ad agencies out there.”

“Was. I’m through doing the corporate thing. I want to slow down. Speaking of which, my car quit on me out on the highway. You think you could dig up a wrecker and give me a tow?”

“Sure thing. What kind of car?”

“Black.”

“I’m talking make and model.”

Brady drew in a deep breath. “A Porsche 366.”

Merle let loose another whistle. “Slick car to go with the duds.”

“Not for long. These clothes are a mite too hot for me. I’m thinking of changing before I head over to Granddaddy’s place.”

“You sure as hell better. He’s still a little attached to his Wranglers, and anybody who ain’t wearin’ them amounts to an outsider.”

“I’ve got a pair in my suitcase.” Several pairs to be more exact. While Brady had left straight from his office and hadn’t taken the time to change, he had come as prepared as possible to face his grandfather after all these years.

“Since my car’s out of commission, you have any loaners you can spare?”

“All’s I got is ole Bessie out back.”

“You mean she actually still runs?” Brady remembered the old Chevy pickup being on its last legs back when he was in high school.

“On occasion. She’s pretty reliable, so long as you stroke the console ‘afore you start her.”

“Will do.”

“I don’t think your grandfather will take too kindly to you driving up in Bessie.”

True enough, but Zachariah would like it even less seeing his only grandson drive up in a fancy car the likes of which no salt-of-the-earth cowboy would be caught dead in.

“A truck’s a truck. So,” Brady went on, eager to change the subject, “you’re looking really good. Still sponsoring the same T-ball team and wearing the same shirt.”

“It ain’t the same. They give me a new one every year. One of the perks. As a matter of fact, I made ‘em give me two shirts this past year ‘cause I hit my twenty-year mark.”

Brady grinned. “Still spittin’ vinegar, I see.”

Merle winked before casting a glance at the kids and giving them a look that sent them running. “And pissin’ fire,” he added, turning back to Brady. “Thanks to Maria’s cookin’.”

“She still make the best tamales this side of the Rio Grande?”

“And the best dadburned enchiladas. I keep tellin’ her she ought to put all that good cookin’ to use and open up a restaurant. Then I could retire and let Marlboro have this old place.”

“Jake Marlboro?”

He nodded. “He’s been itchin’ to buy me out all year. Already talked Cecil over at McIntyre Hardware into selling his place.”

“Why would he want the old hardware store?”

“He’s fixing on putting in a Mega Mart. It’s got everything from hardware to groceries. Opened one up over in Inspiration and it’s a big hit. Folks like the convenience, I guess. Me, I’m just a little attached to this place. Not to mention, I ain’t sold Maria on the restaurant idea. She says she’s too busy with all the young’uns.”

“How many are you up to?”

“Out of seven grandkids, we’ve got nineteen great-grandbabies, and number twenty’s due any day now.” A smile creased his old face. “Your gramps is pickle green with envy.”

“And you’re loving every minute of it.”

Merle’s grin widened. “I never had too many chances to one-up your old grandpa when we were growing up, and I ain’t ashamed to admit that it’s a mite satisfying to know there’s something the old coot wants that he cain’t have.” At Brady’s smile, Merle shrugged. “What can I say? Things ain’t changed much in the past eleven years.”

Brady sent up a silent prayer. “That’s what I’m counting on.”