Читать книгу A Stetson On Her Pillow - Molly Liholm, Molly Liholm - Страница 9

AT EXACTLY 1:25 p.m. of what she was sure was about to be the first of the worst four days of her life, Laura placed her two suitcases on the floor of the lobby of her building and looked out the front window. No cowboy on a white stallion.

She let out a pent-up breath, angry at herself. “You are a complete idiot and a juvenile one at that. You weren’t even this bad when you had a crush on Kevin Beckins in seventh grade!” If she’d thought talking to herself would fix her unreasonable and unwanted crush on Clint Marshall, it didn’t work. She’d never been so humiliated in her entire life. She had a crush on the cowboy. A crush!

Deliberately she replayed his words in her mind: Trust me, the last thing I want to do is get my hands on Ms. Carter’s body. Us Texas boys don’t like frostbite.

He hadn’t even used her first name. He probably thought his tongue would freeze if he said her name out loud. He clearly considered her a stiff, prissy socialite.

She softly kicked one of her expensive suitcases with her even more expensive shoes. Sweetums whimpered in disagreement. “Baby, did I scare you? I’m sorry. Mummy was thinking about that nasty man we’re being forced to spend a very long weekend with and I was trying to work out my frustration.” She scooped the bundle of white fluff into her arms and adjusted the blue bow tied to the tiny dog’s collar. “How’s my little Sweetums?”

The dog squinted at her from under her long blond bangs and blinked. Laura kissed the top of the dog’s head, amazed she’d come to care as much as she did for the ridiculous dog. She scratched Sweetums behind her ears and continued her running monologue. Sweetums liked to hear the sound of human voices. “If you were a real dog you’d bark. Or growl, or make some kind of loud noise—anything more than those little whiny noises you make when you sleep. Try barking for Mummy. Bark,” Laura coaxed and then demonstrated by making a loud woofing sound. Sweetums looked at Laura curiously, opened her mouth and licked Laura’s face.

“Well at least somebody likes me,” she said ruefully and wished the cowboy’s words hadn’t hurt so much. Normally she liked her ice-princess routine. After all, she had spent years refining the image. She was very good at it. Because of it most men stayed far away.

Romantic involvements only confused most women’s lives. At present count her mother had been married five times and each husband had had his own horrible qualities. Her mother continued to sail blithely across extremely dangerous seas from man to man, never noticing how much of her fortune each husband cost her or even more importantly how they destroyed her emotionally.

But Laura had noticed. And when she caught herself repeating her mother’s pattern—completely changing herself to fit into her ex-fiancé’s life—she’d stopped. Brian Simpson had almost been the biggest mistake of her life, but she’d gotten smart. Like her mother, men were her weakness so she’d stopped dating. Joined the police force. Concentrated on her career. Exclusively.

She liked being a cop and she was good at it. She loved the challenge of figuring out a case: following obscure leads, interviewing witnesses until something clicked and she knew who had broken the law. She sympathized with Garrow’s frustration; he knew that Monroe Investments laundered Russian Mafia money but he didn’t have the evidence he needed to arrest Peter Monroe. When she’d first made detective, she and her partner had kept a case open for three years, working on it whenever they could squeeze in the time, until they’d finally made an arrest.

Once she’d proven she wasn’t just playing at being a police officer, her colleagues had assumed that she would request a transfer to a unit like Special Financial Investigations. But while she appreciated the work Agent Garrow did, Laura preferred being on the street, helping ordinary people.

Being a good cop was her only priority. No man had been able to even chisel an inch of permafrost off her carefully developed exterior.

Until Clint Marshall.

A red sports car pulled up in front of her building and Clint unfolded his tall form from within. She watched and waited as he smiled at her neighbor, Mrs. Schwarz, and then held open the lobby door for her. He tilted his cowboy hat to the elderly woman and Mrs. Schwarz giggled as she passed him.

Laura’s pulse quickened as she studied him from under her eyelashes. Clint was tall, well over six feet and since she was five-nine, he’d be the perfect height to kiss. He had broad shoulders and a well-muscled chest. She knew because he’d had his shirt ripped off once during a violent arrest and he’d spent ten glorious minutes in the squad room processing the paperwork before going to the locker room to change. She’d had to take a tight hold of her desk to stop herself from running her hands over his bronzed muscles.

Clint’s long strides had him next to her and she took a deep breath, inhaling the crisp masculine scent of Clint Marshall. She held Sweetums up to her face to mask her swirling emotions. Whenever she was around Clint, it always took a little longer for her to put on the face she showed the rest of the world.

“What in the blazes is that?” Clint demanded as he frowned at the bundle of white fluff in her arms.

“Her name is Sweetums.” She raised the dog to his eye level.

Clint scowled at Sweetums. “What is it?”

“She’s a dog.”

“Darlin’, I’ve got cats bigger than that and with a lot less fur.”

Laura knew perfectly well the picture she and the Lhasa apso made. She was dressed in a pale blue suit, cradling a poofy white dog that in turn wore a bow that matched the exact shade of her blue suit. The image they presented was both sweet and ridiculous and, as she planned, Clint was looking at her in puzzlement. What was most important to Laura, however, was that she did not look like a member of Chicago’s finest. Looking at Laura and her dog, people would assume she was a socialite with too much time on her hands rather than a hard-working police officer. Laura straightened the bow on her dog’s head. “Sweetums is a Lhasa apso. She’s not supposed to grow any bigger, which is a good thing, because she’s just perfect as she is.”

“Just big enough to fit into your pocketbook?”

She smiled sweetly and scratched Sweetums behind her ears. The dog panted and sighed. Ever since Sweetums’s first owner had passed away, the dog loved to be petted and fussed over. Clint shook his head, his lips twitching and stroked Sweetums’s head. The dog drooled. Of course, if Clint touched her like that, Laura reflected, she’d drool, too.

“The dog is named Sweetums?” Clint asked.

“Yes. Say hello to the nice man, Sweetums,” she cooed into the dog’s ear and waved one little doggy paw at Clint. Sweetums looked bored and yawned. “I guess she doesn’t know what to make of a cowboy.”

“I get that reaction a lot in Chicago. Although people are generally a little more polite.”

“Is that why you turn the Texas drawl on and off?”

He shot her a quick look with his steel colored eyes but said nothing. He picked up her two suitcases. “Is this everything?”

“Yes.” She patted Sweetums on the head and straightened the dog’s bow again so that she wouldn’t see Clint pick up her bags, see the rippling muscles in his arms or appreciate the view as he walked away from her. When she looked up she realized she was too late. Clint was already outside her building. She scrambled after him and caught up just as he put her two bags in the miniscule trunk of his convertible—his own bag was on the pretend excuse of a back seat—and then opened her car door.

“Darlin’,” a mocking smile teased his lips as he gestured wide with his arm and helped her in. He touched her arm as she settled herself in, unaware that his touch marked her with greater power than any branding iron could have done.

As he walked around the car she looked at her left arm expecting to see the imprint of his fingers.

What was it about Clint Marshall that reduced her to a quivering mass of want? As Clint got in the car she pulled herself together—she’d spent enough evenings wasting her time thinking about Clint. She needed to establish a professional working relationship with him, that was all. But she was curious about him.

He started the sports car and pulled out into traffic. Laura settled Sweetums on her lap and readjusted the bow, choosing her words. If she was going to spend the next four days with him, she didn’t want to offend him, but she wanted to understand him—for purely professional reasons, she told herself. She and Clint would be a team for the next number of days. “With some people the good old boy accent is so thick I can barely make sense of what you’re saying through all the y’alls and cow metaphors. But when you’re with people you like, the whole routine disappears.”

She waited. Unlike how he behaved with most of their fellow officers, Clint always turned on the Texas routine when he spoke to her.

“Darlin’, I just give the people what they want. They see a Stetson and a pair of cowboy boots and have certain expectations—especially in a big established city like this.”

She certainly understood his reasoning and she’d heard the other women gossiping often enough about the handsome cowboy. One of the very young and gorgeous female cops on the force had stated that she couldn’t imagine anything sexier than a cowboy in her bed. Unfortunately that image had stuck in Laura’s mind and she’d spent too much time fantasying about his Stetson on her pillow.

She realized that she and Clint shared a common trait: she, too, gave people exactly what they expected.

Clint passed a car and then looked at her. “Why did you bring that dog with you? Hotels have rules about not allowing pets.”

Sweetums settled herself more comfortably on Laura’s lap, drooled, sighed and closed her eyes. Luckily Laura was familiar with this routine and had her handkerchief ready to wipe away the drool before it landed on her silk suit or the soft leather of the car seat. Most Lhasa apsos didn’t drool, but after the trauma of losing her first owner the dog had stopped barking and started slobbering. She ran a hand along the calfskin. “Nice car,” she said, avoiding his question.

“The department loaned it to me. Garrow must have some kind of pull—or else his bosses are giving him a last chance. They figured a red sports car would suit our image as wealthy newlyweds.”

“It’s lovely.” Her mother’s third husband, Larry, had loved cars and spent a lot of money filling a seven car garage. Laura had liked the vintage roadsters, and was quite sad when Larry and her mother had divorced and Larry had taken all the cars in the settlement. Laura missed the cars more than she’d missed Larry. As her mother was already in love with husband number four, she wasn’t sure if her mother had noticed the absence of either.

Clint thumped the driving wheel of the red sports car. “Maybe you’re used to a useless expensive car like this but back home this car wouldn’t make it through the first pothole. You couldn’t transport anything with it.”

“Some things are designed to look good and go fast. Period. Not to haul around outhouses or maneuver around giant potholes. Maybe you should fix the roads back in Three Mule Station,” she snapped and realized she’d lost her temper, deliberately making fun of Clint’s hometown. She never, ever, lost her temper. But then again she never behaved like herself when she was around the cowboy.

“It’s Two Horse Junction,” Clint said without any heat. “I guess I prefer the practical to the purely decorative.”

She knew he meant her, but she chose to ignore his comment. The knowledge that Clint Marshall didn’t like her would not bother her. She ruffled Sweetums’s bow, schooled her face not to reveal any emotion and pretended she didn’t understand his real meaning. “Sweetums is a completely useful dog.”

“Ha! She probably couldn’t bark loud enough to call for help if someone was trying to break into your apartment.”

“I have a doorman for that,” she replied, but in truth she had been trying to teach Sweetums to bark for the past three months, ever since her neighbor, Mrs. Novak, had passed away. Laura had been the first person to enter Mrs. Novak’s apartment, alerted by Sweetums’s whining and scratching to find the elderly woman in her bed. The coroner had diagnosed heart failure. As Mrs. Novak hadn’t had any relatives, or even many friends, Laura had handled the funeral arrangements. And, unable to turn the dog over to the city pound and an uncertain future, she had taken Sweetums home to live with her.

Laura had never had a dog, or a desire to saddle herself with a fluffy white useless creature that didn’t even bark, but neither could she abandon the defenseless creature. So Laura took Sweetums home and tried to make her feel safe.

But after a month of silence, a month of the only sound of Sweetums making being an occasional pathetic whimper along with the excess drooling, Laura had taken the pooch to an animal psychologist. The therapist, after several expensive sessions, assured her that Sweetums just needed time to grieve for the loss of her mistress and to adjust to Laura. Sweetums would bark again, the doggie therapist had assured her and offered further counseling.

Laura declined and hired one of the kids in her building as a dog walker. Sometimes she worried that her long and erratic hours weren’t fair to the dog, but Sweetums was delighted every time she came home.

Laura had to admit she rather liked having Sweetums to come home to. Never before in her life had anyone ever been excited to see her come home. In fact, Sweetums made her apartment feel much more like a home.

The dog was all the company she needed. Once she got over her inexplicable lust for the cowboy her life could return to normal. She pushed away the thought that she and Clint would be sharing a hotel room for the next four nights. What if he slept in the nude? No, she wasn’t going to let her ice-princess façade chip one millimeter. Clint would never know how much time she had spent wondering what it would be like to kiss him…or anything else!

She continued playing with her dog’s bow as she snuck covert looks at the cowboy. Mrs. Novak had liked to dress up the small dog and Sweetums seemed to enjoy it, so Laura occasionally tied a ribbon on her, or dressed her in one of the many sweaters Mrs. Novak had lovingly knit for her pet. Laura had brought along Sweetums’s entire wardrobe for this assignment.

She shifted slightly in her car seat and stole another look at Clint Marshall. My, but he was a fine specimen of manhood, as Mrs. Novak would have said. And as Mrs. Schwarz had appreciated him when he had held open the door for her. Laura and all the little old ladies of Mortimer Manor would agree that Clint Marshall was the sexiest man they had ever seen.

Part of her wished that Clint found her attractive, that she could seduce him and have a passionate wild weekend. Wild, sweaty, hot sex. She would taste every inch of his broad chest that strained against his shirt, run her fingers through his dark hair, while his strong hands would caress her breasts and…she licked her dry lips.

Clint Marshall wasn’t attracted to her.

She peeked another look at Clint. How she wished she was the kind of woman who could sleep with him just once, or twice or even half a dozen times and let that be it!

Instead she knew her weaknesses. If she gave in, Clint Marshall would be the biggest mistake she could ever make. But only if she let down her defenses and let him know even for one second how much she wanted him. The state of Texas would host a Cowboys Getting in Touch with their Feelings convention before she would ever admit to her lustful fascination with Clint Marshall.

She wasn’t the kind of woman who could have a fling without regrets, but she stupidly fell in love with whatever man she was with and let herself become distracted from her goals. It had happened with Brian. It could happen again. She was weak when it came to men.

She liked being a cop. She was good at being a cop. And despite the rumors that had followed her from Boston, the other officers were beginning to think she might be okay as well. She knew she had a lot of ground to cover before her colleagues believed her quick promotions had been because of her skills at detection rather than in the bedroom, but she was on the right track. The absolute worst thing she could do for her career would be to have a fling with Clint while on the society wedding assignment. She should be relieved that Clint found her repulsive.

It was much safer to talk about the dog. “Sweetums has been through a lot recently and was traumatized by the death of her first owner. The animal therapist said she’d start barking when she finished grieving.”

“A doggie shrink.” Clint shook his head as he shifted gears, and Laura wished his hand was on her leg. “We sure do live in different worlds, Princess.” He reached over and patted Sweetums’s head, while Laura tried not to notice how close his hand was to her thigh.

“How did you finally figure out that burglary case?” Clint asked suddenly. “It had been passed around the department for a year before you took it over.”

“I got lucky because Captain Clark assigned me all the grunt cases. The small-business burglaries and the purse snatchings.”

“Every other detective was thrilled not to have those cases.”

“I was the new guy, I had to pay my dues.” Laura shrugged. “Anyway, I was checking out the various pawn shops to see if any of the items from the purse snatchings might have ended up there. I know muggers usually take the money and ditch the bag, but sometimes women have jewelry in their purse. Instead I found personal items stolen from the businesses that had been robbed over a year ago. That made me realize the thief was very local and someone who was willing to wait a long time to fence the personal items he took. Mostly he stole laptop computers and fax machines, but every once in a while the thief wasn’t able to resist jewelry, expensive photo frames or other personal items.”

“So the thief is local and patient. Then what?”

Laura could feel him watching her, but she continued to pet Sweetums and stare straight out the window. “The most reasonable assumption was that the thief didn’t steal full-time for a living, because of how long he would wait to pawn the items. So I tried to think of someone who would go into a lot of offices on a regular basis so he’d know what was where. And then when I was in a pawn shop the watercooler guy made his delivery.”

“That’s what made you realize it was the water delivery guy?”

“Him or someone like him.” Laura had been delighted that she’d been able to solve a burglary case that had sat open for a year. Clark had even grudgingly told her she’d done a good job. “I realized it was the water delivery guy when he asked what case I was working on and whether I’d heard anything about the local burglaries. He wanted to talk about himself. I didn’t have enough for a warrant so I staked him out for a week and saw him break into a real estate office. I had him.”

“A week’s stakeout? There’s no way Captain Clark would have approved that.”

“I used my own time.”

Clint pulled the car in front of the hotel, the Chicago Regal, one of the city’s oldest and most elegant buildings. The York-Chandler wedding had reserved most of the rooms in the hotel. Laura looked at the gracious building, surprised the drive had passed so quickly.

He turned to her. “You’re very determined. We’re going to need that on this case.”

She didn’t wait for Clint to open her car door, but scrambled out. Sweetums looked around excitedly and made a high-pitched squeaking sound. Laura held her breath as she listened for any sound that could be called a bark, but Sweetums squeaked again and stopped.

She turned back to watch Clint wrestle his bags out of the back seat. A bellboy loaded them onto a waiting cart and the valet slid into the front seat of Clint’s car.

“Woowee, Sugar, this here looks like a mighty fine hotel.”

Clint draped a casual arm around her shoulder and a surge of warm pleasure washed over her.

Her reaction to Clint Marshall confused and surprised her. She’d dated since she was fifteen but she’d never experienced such a strong sexual attraction to any man as she did to Clint. She wanted him.

Ever since she’d first laid eyes on him six months ago, her dreams had been filled with erotic fantasies starring Clint. Too often she caught herself staring at his muscular forearms, the fine hair on his hands. She even admired his easy camaraderie with his colleagues. His drawl reduced her to a pool of longing. A mass of quivering Jell-O.

She stiffened under his arm. For the sake of her pride, she wasn’t about to let Clint suspect even an inkling of her feelings toward him.

Clint leaned in and whispered in her ear. “Relax, Princess. We’re the happy couple—everything Peter Monroe’s subconscious wants to be. We have to look deliriously happy together.”

“We’re not big on overt public displays of affection in my family or my social set,” she said smoothly, annoyed at herself for telling him anything about herself. It wasn’t in her nature to confide in others, especially near-strangers.

Maybe that was Clint’s appeal for her, she considered as Sweetums stretched forward and sniffed Clint’s leather jacket. He was so different from all the men she’d known, especially those from her upper-class background.

A cowboy would shock her mother clear down to her pedicured toes.

Wasn’t she a little old at twenty-seven to be going through a rebellious stage? Laura wondered.

Clint’s warm breath continued next to her ear. “Besides I’m looking forward to you talking that little dog’s way into the hotel.”

“Watch me.” She smiled sweetly and walked briskly into the hotel, cooing to Sweetums every step of the way, all too aware of Clint directly behind her. She wished she was the kind of woman who could swing her backside, instead she smiled at the doorman who scrambled to open the door for her, all the time pretending she was her second cousin, Mindy, who traveled with an entourage of pets, including a potbellied Vietnamese pig, to the most exclusive hotels.

She sailed through the lobby, Sweetums’s bow flapping in the breeze, and went straight to the executive check-in. Luckily there was no one else waiting and she bestowed her most gracious look on the young clerk behind the desk. She smiled. “What a charming hotel you have, you must be very proud.”

The young man looked confused but he recovered. “Thank you.”

“And you’re so young to be in charge.” She looked at his name tag. “Ralph. May I call you Ralph? I’m Laura Marshall and this gorgeous man behind me is my husband Clint.” She turned to Clint. “Say hello to the nice young man, darlin’,” She drawled the last word in a fine imitation of his Texas twang.

Clint pushed back his cowboy hat and grinned. “Howdy.”

“This is Sweetums.” Laura placed the dog on the counter, fussed with the blue bow, continuing blithely as Ralph blanched. Sweetums panted and drooled on top of the marble countertop. “Oh, she really likes you, Ralph, but then again Sweetums has always had exquisite taste.”

Ralph blushed. “I’m sorry ma’am but—”

“Oh no, please don’t call me ma’am. It makes me feel…” she shivered and said in a low voice, “…matronly.” She leaned in closer, engulfing him in a wave of perfume. “You don’t think I look matronly do you?”

The top of Ralph’s ears turned pink. “No. You’re beautiful.” He gulped for breath. “Er, I mean—”

“No need to apologize for a compliment, young man.” She leaned in a little closer and caught Ralph’s eyes with her own, letting him fantasize for a moment about her. “But you’ll be wanting to do your job. You can look us up in that computer now. We have a suite. Mr. and Mrs. Clint Marshall.”

Ralph began typing into his computer, his gaze flickering between the screen and the dog. “Got it.” He looked at her apologetically. “I’m afraid the hotel has a policy against animals.”

“A very good policy it is, too.” She straightened Sweetums’s ribbon. “Imagine animals in a hotel. Whatever do some people think of?”

Ralph’s ears turned red. “I meant pets. I’m afraid we don’t allow pets of any kind.”

Laura smiled at him. “Of course not. It’s a very sensible policy. I knew I liked this place. Didn’t I say so as soon as we saw the hotel. I said, ‘Clint, honey, this looks like a first-class establishment.’ Didn’t I say that, dear?”

“You sure did, honey pie,” Clint agreed from behind her.

She heard the laughter in his voice, but she refused to turn around and glare at him. Instead, she continued to smile sweetly at Ralph.

Ralph’s ears reddened even more as he swallowed and looked again at Sweetums. “I’m afraid we can’t, I mean—” he faltered as he pointed to Sweetums. The dog yawned and drooled on the marble countertop. “Your pet…”

She picked up Sweetums and kissed the top of the Lhasa apso’s head. “Sweetums isn’t a pet, she’s part of the family.”

“She’s a dog,” Ralph persisted.

Laura covered the dog’s ears. “Ssh, you mustn’t say those words around her. Sweetums has species issues.”

Clint made a curious sound, but she ignored him. She’d told him she was going to get Sweetums into the hotel and she was enjoying playing the part of cousin Mindy. Perhaps this odd sense of power was why Mindy traveled with her animal menagerie. “Ralph, I thought this was a first-class hotel. I hope you’re not about to change my impression within the first five minutes. We’re here for the York-Chandler wedding. Sweetums goes everywhere I go. Surely you don’t want me to tell the happy families that you’re refusing to let us stay?”

“Of course not, Mrs. Marshall, but your do—”

“Not that word,” she held up her hand. “Species issues.” She rubbed Sweetums behind her ears and Ralph gulped.

“Sweetums is against hotel policy,” Ralph said as he tugged on an ear.

“Of course I understand that for your average d-o-g,” she spelled out the letters, “this is a very good policy. But Sweetums isn’t average.” She leaned a little closer and stroked Ralph’s cheek, her hand lingering just beneath his earlobe. “Sweetums will be very good. No one will know she’s even here. I promise,” she breathed and raised her blue eyes to his and held him. She watched worry about his job and desire to please her cross his face and his ears wiggled. She held herself very still, every inch of her regal family’s genes giving her strength.

Just as she was afraid she might have lost him, Ralph hit some keys on the keyboard and nodded to the bellboy behind them. “They’re in the honeymoon suite.”

“We are?” Laura couldn’t keep the shocked surprise out of her voice. She cast a suspicious look at Clint, but he smiled blandly. There was absolutely no way she was going to spend four nights together with Clint in the honeymoon suite. “Won’t the bride and groom want that suite?”

“They have separate rooms until the wedding and are leaving for the Bahamas right after the reception.”

“How sweet and old-fashioned,” she muttered.

“Honeybunch, I reserved us the honeymoon suite.” Clint had stepped forward and he hugged her to his side. Her face was pressed into his leather jacket and she couldn’t breathe. She tipped her face up and saw Clint smiling down on her like he’d won a prize. “I thought it would be nice to combine a little honeymooning of our own with this wedding shindig.”

“How lovely. You should have told me.” She tried to move away from him but his hold was like a vise.

“Don’t worry, I packed my favorite negligee.”

She bared her teeth at him. She kicked him in the shins, but his cowboy boots protected him while her expensive shoes offered her no protection. “Ouch, er, a second honeymoon. What a nice idea.”

“Well, Sugar, nothing’s too good for you. And since we never saw anything of Paris on our first honeymoon, I thought we could do things proper this time.”

“Chicago isn’t Paris.”

“No but this time we’ll leave the hotel room occasionally.” He winked.

“Darling, you’re making my toes curl in anticipation.” She managed to loosen an arm and elbowed him in the side. Clint let go of her and grinned, enjoying her discomfort. Laura scooped her dog back into her arms to keep Clint away from her.

“I married a big strong man, didn’t I, Sweetums?” She stepped a little closer to Clint and rose on tiptoe so that her lips were next to his ear. Irritated with the man beyond belief, but also unable to resist, she brushed her teeth across his lobe and had the satisfaction of feeling his body stiffen. His hands shot out and grabbed her arms. Before he could pull her away from him, she whispered “Peter and Cassandra Monroe at four o’clock.”

His tight grip turned into a caress as he turned slightly so that he was able to see the couple. “Did he notice us?” he asked against her ear.

She ignored the shiver his warm breath sent down her spine. “He looked over in our direction, but that’s it.”

“The whole point of our being here is for him to notice us. Let’s make sure he does.”

Before Laura had any idea what he planned he took Sweetums out of her arms and she found herself holding her breath thinking: he’s going to kiss me. She’d considered that at some point over the festivities she and Clint might kiss, but she’d been sure she would know when it was going to happen and have time to prepare herself. She didn’t want to give Clint any inclination of her true feelings for him.

She took a deep breath, which steadied her nerves. She smiled at him, ready for his mouth to descend over hers and her world to turn upside down.

Her world turned upside down. She felt her feet leave the ground and found herself staring at Clint’s very attractive behind. Sweetums was decorously cradled against Clint’s chest while she was tossed over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Laura didn’t care who heard her. “Put me down you big oaf!”

Clint slapped her backside and strode across the lobby in huge man-eating steps. Laura ground her teeth in frustration as she realized every last person in the hotel lobby—including Peter Monroe and his wife Cassandra—were staring at them. Clint pushed the elevator button. She could hear the grin in his voice as he announced to the hotel lobby, “I’ve got me a first-class filly and we’re going to have a second honeymoon. Not that the first one ever really ended.”

As Laura raised her head she saw Cassandra say something to Peter Monroe and the target of their assignment smiled as he looked at her. Then he winked at her.

The elevator doors opened and Clint strode inside, turned around and stopped the bellboy who was about to follow them with their luggage. “Take the next car. The missus and I want to be alone for a minute.”

The bellboy obeyed, his mouth hanging open, and the doors closed behind them leaving her and Clint alone in the elevator.

“Put me down.”

“If I put you down, are you going to kill me?”

“Yes.”

He shifted her weight slightly on his shoulder. “Then I can’t put you down until you promise not to hurt me.”

“You hoisted me over your shoulder like a bag of wet laundry.”

“More like flour really. You’re not nearly heavy enough or lumpy enough for wet laundry.”

“Put me down!” she demanded.

“Not until I have your word.”

“You can’t keep me on your shoulder forever.”

Clint pushed the Stop button.

“Don’t do that. They’re going to think we’re…”

“We’re what?” he drawled the question in his most obnoxious Texan twang as one hand traced a circle on her inner knee.

Laura clenched her teeth together to stop herself from moaning. She tried to kick her leg but his arm was like a band of steel across her upper thighs. “You know very well what they’ll think.”

To her surprise she found herself back on her feet. She straightened out her skirt as the blood drained from her head.

“Well, at least we got Peter Monroe’s attention,” Clint said.

She knocked him back with both hands hard against his chest. Or rather she meant to knock him back but he didn’t move. Instead he caught her hands in his and held her captive. How did this man do this to her? She was far too aware of her racing pulse. Hopefully he would account it to anger and not lust.

“I apologize,” he said, surprising her again. He let go of her hands and leaned against the wall. “If Peter Monroe really has a subconscious desire to be a cowboy, then he got a taste of what people believe Texans are.”

She sighed. “Overgrown Neanderthals who think they’re charming?”

“Yes.”

She understood all about being mistaken for your image and her anger deflated. “You do get ribbed about being a cowboy cop. Okay, maybe you did have a good idea—but no more good ideas like that without consulting me first. I don’t appreciate having my butt stuck up in the air for everyone to ogle.”

“It’s such a cute butt how could they help but admire it?”

“Don’t try to sweet-talk me, cowboy. I’m not falling for any of your good old boy routine.” She pushed the Start button. “And don’t even think about manhandling me again.”

“What about when we get to the honeymoon suite? It’s customary for the groom to carry the bride over the threshold.”

Clint stood watching her, humor lighting his chiseled face, making him so handsome she had to catch her breath. She turned away from him and pressed their floor button again, wishing she could transport herself safely behind doors and away from Clint. She put on her best frosty expression as she raked him from head to toe. “It’s also customary for the groom to live through the night. You try any funny business and you won’t.”