Читать книгу A Stranger's Touch - Tori Carrington - Страница 8

MAYBE THERE WAS SOMETHING to the saying that women reached their sexual peak in their thirties. Dulcy Ferris shakily tried to light a forbidden cigarette as she sat in the bathroom stall of Rage—the nightclub that was all the rage in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that her two best friends had brought her to. The lighter she’d had forever didn’t seem to want to produce a spark. Not that it mattered. Lately her body seemed to be sparking enough for a thousand lighters.

Finally a tiny flame. Dulcy pulled deeply on the cigarette, then sat back on the closed commode seat, resting her head against the cool ceramic tiles behind her. She’d be the first to admit that she didn’t buy into the whole biological clock scenario. That’s not why she was marrying Brad Wheeler in a week. It wasn’t the reason why at thirty she was marrying for the first time. But it did strike her as strange that lately her hormones seemed to be running on overdrive, filling her with all sorts of decadent urges she’d never even thought about before, much less entertained. Then there were all the…weird physical side effects. Her skin seemed to tingle constantly. Her nipples were eternally taut. Her inner thighs seemed to generate a heat all on their own. And the mere act of taking a shower made her eye the soap in a naughty way, igniting in her a desire to do all sorts of wicked things to her own body.

She glanced at the glowing end of the cigarette, her gaze languidly sliding over her fingers and arm. Even now a light sheen of sweat coated her skin, though the central air system of the hotel that housed the club was likely adjusted to handle the dance-generated heat. If she didn’t know better, she would think she was suffering from an early stage of menopause. But she remembered when her mother had gone through her hot flashes. No, she definitely was not experiencing that. Catherine Ferris had been a murder away from becoming a homicidal maniac during that rough two-year period and her activity level had seemed notched up to warp speed. Dulcy, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to drum up enough energy to open the jar of dill pickles that had sat unopened in her refrigerator for the past month, despite countless half-hearted attempts that left her staring at the contents as if they were some unattainable dream.

Okay, she absently admitted, so maybe her sexual relationship with Brad, or lack thereof, was partially to blame for her current condition. If only she knew what it was like—

The outer door swung inward, letting in a blast of music. Dulcy stood up and tossed the cigarette into the bowl, then waved the smoke away, hoping she didn’t set off an alarm somewhere. A quick rap vibrated the pink metal stall door. Normally she would have jumped out of her skin at such an intrusion, despite her suspicion of who it was. But now she could only sigh and open the door to stare at her friend Jena McCade.

“Can’t a girl go to the bathroom?” Dulcy asked.

“Are you smoking? You were smoking, weren’t you? My God, when did you pick up that nasty habit? People are quitting smoking now, not taking it up.” Jena wrinkled her nose, then reached into her purse.

Dulcy tried to avoid the spray of her perfume.

“Only you would steal into the john for a smoke when the place is crawling with grade A men,” Jena added.

Dulcy snapped straighter and tugged at the hem of her short black leather skirt, an impulse buy she hadn’t had the guts to wear until tonight. The fact that the place was crawling with grade A men was all the more reason for her to be in the john. The cigarette she’d bummed off the barmaid was just an excuse, the lighter in her purse an old one she’d picked up eons ago when she’d briefly dated a smoker.

The truth was that all the men in the other room only served to heighten her awareness of her heated condition. She stepped to the sink and splashed cold water over her face. Jena grimaced at her in the mirror.

“What?” Dulcy asked.

“You do know you just messed up your makeup.”

Dulcy scanned her features. So she had. So what? She couldn’t bring herself to care. She wasn’t here to entice any of the guys out there to go out with her. In one week she was officially off the market, married and settled. And it couldn’t come soon enough for her. Maybe it was the thought of her honeymoon that was getting her all hot and bothered.

“Here—” Jena rifled through her purse and came up with a compact. Her perfectly made-up face was puckered in disapproval as she dabbed at Dulcy’s cheeks and nose.

Dulcy batted her away. “I don’t want to look like I’m on the make.”

Jena’s devious violet eyes twinkled. “This is your bachelorette party, babe. That’s exactly how you want to look.”

Dulcy wiped off some of the rouge her friend had applied. No, she didn’t want to look like she was on the make. Simply because she was afraid that if a particularly good-looking guy did approach her, she’d be hard-pressed not to wrestle him to the ground and have at him. And then where would she be? Or, more accurately, who would she be? Certainly not the woman she’d spent the past thirty years looking at in the mirror.

Then again, she was already having trouble with her.

She slowly touched up her lipstick, finding the silky way it glided on almost unbearably sensual. She squeezed her eyes shut. Now this was going too far. When she started thinking of her own lipstick as sensual, she was in big trouble.

God, Brad would think she was the biggest hussy alive.

Brad…

“Are you ready?” Jena asked, crossing her arms under her breasts and tapping her foot.

Dulcy recapped her lipstick then tucked it into her purse. She supposed she’d stalled as long as she could. She had agreed to this night out with Jena and Marie. She’d just have to see it through. She glanced at her watch. She only wished it were later than nine o’clock.

“HERE’S TO HOCKEY PLAYERS!” Jena toasted an hour later, then lowered her voice to a bawdy whisper. “And their big…sticks.”

Dulcy blinked and tucked her shoulder-length blond hair behind her ear. Her head felt as if it were stuffed with wool, her limbs felt peculiarly languid, and if she wasn’t imagining things, her friend had just made a brazen reference to hockey players’…private equipment. Not that she was surprised. Jena somehow managed to squeeze the topic of sex into any conversation.

Dulcy mentally repeated the word. Sex. Sex, sex, sex. She grinned. The magic of the liquor seemed to have squelched her hormone-ridden body. Or, if she was lucky, the unfamiliar feelings had bit the dust altogether.

“Dulcy, you dropped the ball,” Jena accused.

Balls and hockey sticks? She scrunched up her face, opening her mouth to correct the mixed metaphor, but somehow the words never made it out. Instead, she shifted in the corner booth of the nightclub and raised her shot glass, the tequila inside splashing out and coating her fingers, as she waited for Jena and Marie to pick up their shots. “To hockey… Hey, wait a minute. Haven’t we toasted hockey players already?”

Jena nearly gave herself whiplash watching three hot guys walk by the table. Well, at least they were what Jena considered hot. Which sometimes seemed to include any male under the age of forty who could financially support himself. These three guys weren’t Dulcy’s type at all. They were too…muscular, too…alpha, too…smug. She preferred a bit more of a challenge—a man whose own personal criteria in the women he dated extended beyond “breathing.”

Jena rolled her eyes heavenward, then groaned in lust. “Yes, we have toasted hockey players already. Three times. First, for their smooth moves. Second, for their large sports cups. Third…for their big sticks. Living in New Mexico, where hockey players are a rarity, you can’t possibly be complaining, can you?”

Dulcy glanced around the club, which was conveniently located just off the lobby of one of Albuquerque’s better hotels. From the real leather, deep-burgundy colored booths and stools, to the brass fixtures and mid-level rock band playing in the far corner, the place was teeming with NHL pro hockey players from a visiting L.A. team, a result of a season kickoff exhibition game against New Mexico’s WPHL division team. The instant Jena had gotten wind of their whereabouts, the location of Dulcy’s bachelorette party was a done deal. There was nothing she or Marie could do to change Jena’s mind. So all of them had checked into three connecting rooms on the seventh floor of the hotel, and headed straight down to the club to “get their party on,” as Jena had put it.

“To hockey players, then.” Dulcy clinked her shot glass against her two friends’. Licking the salt off the back of her hand and downing the fiery amber liquid, she grabbed for one of the dwindling lemon wedges on a plate in the middle of the table.

Dulcy shuddered. She’d never been much of a drinker. A beer here, a glass of wine there. And her lips had certainly never before touched a shot glass, much less tequila. Well, unless the glass was wide-rimmed and the contents were called a margarita. But this was her last real night out with the girls as a single, professional female, and she had agreed to give in to Jena and Marie’s hearty demands that she do it right.

She only wished they had chosen a better-tasting liquor. “Who said this was supposed to get easier after the second shot?”

“I said it gets easier. I don’t know. Maybe it’s after the third shot. How many have we had? Has to be more than three… But it will get easier.” As the youngest and the third member of the circle, Marie Bertelli had a smile, they all agreed, that could stop Tom Cruise dead in his tracks. Well, all except for Marie, anyway, who thought her looks rated as paper-sack material.

Dulcy leaned against the younger woman’s arm, Marie’s red hair nearly putting out an eye. She batted the curly strands away. “And you’re a terrible liar. Maybe that’s the reason why you’re not married yet.”

Marie made a face that only made her look cuter, if that was possible. “Yes, well, you probably wouldn’t be getting married either if you were still living under your parents’ roof. How’s a girl to get any man to stick around in that environment?”

Dulcy conceded the point. Marie’s parents, along with her three impossible older brothers, were convinced that sex was strictly reserved for the married—at least, when it came to women. All three Bertelli brothers had always had very active sex lives, from what Dulcy could remember. As for Marie, she couldn’t even kiss a guy at the end of a date without the entire Bertelli family swooping down and grilling him about his income and investments and religious affiliation. In that order.

“Arranged marriage,” Jena said.

Dulcy and Marie stared at her.

“Oh. Sorry. Guess they already tried that route, didn’t they.”

Not only had Marie’s family tried that route, but they had failed, virtually chasing her from town, until Dulcy and Jena had tempted her back.

Marie grimaced. “Anyway, in reference to my inability to lie, I’ll have you know that I talked my way out of a traffic ticket this morning, thank you very much. I told the nice police officer that I was late for a court date, batted my eyes and, presto—” she snapped her fingers “—he tore up the ticket.”

Jena waved her away. “That’s because you’re so damn cute, especially when you lie.”

Marie looked for support from Dulcy. “Sorry. She’s right, kid. You couldn’t lie to save your life.”

Finally, Marie smiled. “I resemble that remark.” She fingered nearly every one of the corn chips in the bowl she’d dragged closer, then picked the smallest one, always counting calories. “When are you two going to stop calling me ‘kid,’ anyway?”

Dulcy grabbed the largest chip. “I don’t know. When you move out of your parents’ house, maybe?”

Jena lined up the three empty shot glasses in front of her and began filling them. “You’ll also have to make up for the four years you’re younger than us. Don’t forget that.”

“So, in a word, the answer is never.”

Her martyr’s sigh never failed to amuse Dulcy.

“Yes, well, I wouldn’t be under my parents’ roof if not for you two. If you hadn’t called me six months ago with that proposal to move back and go into practice with you two and the infamous Bartholomew Lomax, I’d still be in L.A. in my comfortable little apartment in Redondo Beach.” She wiped the salt from her hands. “Not everyone has the money you were born with, Dulcy. Or makes a killing setting serial killers free like you do, Jena. I’ve spent two years keeping L.A. streets safe for John Q. Public by working in the DA’s office.”

“And making nothing in the process,” Jena added, sliding one overflowing shot glass in front of Dulcy, another in front of Marie.

“Yeah. Which is precisely why I have to live with my parents until we start turning a good profit.” Marie lifted her glass. “To success.”

Jena lifted hers. “To hockey players…and their tight buns.”

Dulcy laughed and hoisted her glass. “To love.”

She and Marie went through the salt-licking, fire-downing, lemon-grabbing process, then stared at Jena where she sat with her glass in the air.

“What is it?” Dulcy asked.

Jena shook her head so that her sleek raven hair swayed, then fell disgustingly back into place. “You had to go and do it, didn’t you. Say the L word.” She sighed.

“What’s wrong with the L word?” Marie asked.

“Nothing,” Dulcy said.

Jena twisted her lips. “Well, seeing as this is your night, I’m going to refrain from arguing that point with you.” She raised her glass again. “To hockey players.”

“And their tight buns,” Marie finished.

Marie started giggling, then slapped her hand over her mouth, appalled, which sent Dulcy over the edge. Dropping her head into her hands, she laughed until the bar was blurry. But that could also be a result of the cigarette smoke in the air, and the liquor, too, so she didn’t pay much attention.

“God, you two are pathetic.” Jena’s smile softened her exotic features as she pushed her glass away. “Anyway, Dulc, you haven’t told us yet how it feels to be eight days away from becoming a married woman.”

“Probably great.” Marie turned toward her. “Brad’s an absolute top-of-the-line hottie.”

Dulcy and Jena stared at her.

“What? He is.” Conviction vanished from her face. “Isn’t he?”

“Yes, he is,” Dulcy agreed, dragging the back of her hand across her mouth. She stared at it in horror. Had she actually just done that? God, her mother would die if she knew. She picked up a napkin, hoping she wouldn’t next be running the heel of her hand against her nose.

Then it dawned on her what Jena might be after. “Oh, no. You can just forget about it. I am not sharing any…intimate details about any part of Brad’s anatomy.”

Not that she could share details. At least, not specifically.

She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from blurting out what she had essentially kept from her friends for the past few months. Namely, that straight off the bat, at the end of their first date five months ago, Brad had suggested they not have sex. First he’d told her he didn’t want to move too fast, then after they became engaged two months ago, he’d said they might as well wait until their wedding night.

She’d thought it quaint—for a whole two minutes. Then her overactive imagination began wondering what he was hiding. Could the breathtakingly handsome playboy be a minute man? Done the instant he began? She shifted awkwardly. Then there was the size issue. Something she’d immediately set out to disprove by launching a surprise attack on him after dinner at his mother’s house one night. She smiled to herself. Oh, no. Size was definitely not a problem. But at the time, Brad’s scandalized reaction was.

So the guy was traditional when it came to the woman he wanted to marry. She told herself she should be flattered. Still, a little part of her thought the whole thing was a bit…weird. Not to mention immensely frustrating.

There. That was it. The reason why her hormones were running amok. It was only natural that she’d want to make love with her fiancé, the man she planned to spend the rest of her life with, right?

She swallowed. The only problem was that lately everything but Brad seemed to set her off. Her recent highly charged state had even made her consider acquainting herself with the gag gift Jena had given her for her last birthday. She probably would have if the damn vibrator wasn’t so large it took enough batteries to run a small car.

Jena rolled her eyes. “Good, because I, for one, am not interested in hearing about them…it.” She snickered. “Whatever. No, I want to know how it feels, generally speaking. You know, your being on the verge of becoming Mrs. Bradley Wheeler III.”

Dulcy straightened. “As a bride, in general, I feel pretty good.” Damn good, actually. At some point over the past year she’d stopped ignoring her mother’s incessant speeches about her needing to find a prosperous prospect before there were none left, and started listening to them. And rather than tossing the bridal magazines Catherine Ferris had subscribed to and had delivered to her condo, Dulcy had started absently leafing through them. Then she’d met Brad at a cocktail party and everything had fallen neatly into place. Too neatly, she sometimes found herself thinking.

She smiled at Jena’s frown and waved her finger. “But I know that’s not what you’re asking. As for that, all I have to say is that his being Bradley Wheeler III has absolutely nothing to do with my feeling good. I’d be just as happy if he were a…bartender.”

“That’s sweet,” Marie said.

“That’s dumb,” Jena disagreed. “Honey, bartenders don’t make Bachelor of the Year three years running.”

“Neither do hockey players,” she pointed out.

“Depends on which publications you’re reading.”

Dulcy laughed. “Sorry. My subscription to Jocks-R-Us must have run out.”

Jena playfully slapped her palm against the table. “Then, you must renew, pronto. These guys take home some whopping salaries.”

Dulcy tugged the bowl of chips closer to her. “I’ve already got a groom. Remember? And money has nothing to do with it. I’m marrying for love.”

She caught Jena’s cringe and silently chalked up another one.

“That’s nice,” Marie said, sighing.

Dulcy and Jena stared at her again.

Okay, so Marie got romantic when she drank. Jena grew even bawdier. And Dulcy was a sloppy drunk. Dulcy didn’t know how they’d gone so long without discovering this before, but she tucked the information into the back of her mind for future reference. Some night when they were vegging in front of the television with a stack of old videos, frapuccino and popcorn, she’d pull it out and they’d have a good laugh.

She propped her chin on her hand and gazed at her two friends. “Thanks, guys—you know, for doing this for me. I’m…I’m having a great time.”

“You’re drunk,” Jena said.

“That, too. But I meant what I said just the same.”

“But we’re just getting started, Dulcy Ferris.” Then Jena fixed the kind of determined gaze on her that made Dulcy and Marie say “uh, oh” whenever they saw it. That gaze was what made her such a great criminal defense attorney. It’s also what made her a downright nosey friend. “So tell me, Dulc. Since in eight days, when you go in front of that altar and profess your undying commitment for Brad Wheeler in front of God and everyone, you’ll forfeit all possibility of seeing it come true…tell us, what’s the sexual fantasy you’ll miss most?”

“Yes,” Marie chimed in, the dreamy expression vanishing and an almost voyeuristic interest taking its place.

“And if Brad satisfies all my sexual fantasies?” Dulcy asked. Oh, please let that be the case. Let them get married, hit the honeymoon suite and have Brad shed his conservative behavior and turn into a virtual Tarzan in bed. pImages** of hard abs, ropes and a leather loincloth leapt to mind, and she sighed.

“Ha ha,” Jena said. “I’m serious.”

Dulcy dropped her gaze and cleared her throat, then told a bald-faced lie. “What if I told you I don’t have one?”

Jena scoffed. “Everyone has a sexual fantasy, even Marie here. Don’t you, Marie?”

“Oh, yes. But we’re not talking about me. I still have plenty of time to fulfill mine. Dulcy’s the one getting married.”

Dulcy stared at them pointedly. She’d never been very comfortable discussing items of a personal nature. Being amused and sometimes appalled by Jena’s behavior was one thing. Telling her friends when she had her period or how frustrated she was that she and Brad hadn’t slept together yet…well, that was quite another. She knew her discomfort was due in large part to her upbringing. You could live in a conservative, emotionally repressed household for only so long before some of it rubbed off on you. In her case, it was talking about intimate matters.

She slumped back against the booth. “God. You’re not going to let me off the hook on this one, are you.”

“Uh-uh.”

“No.”

“Okay, then…” Resigning herself to the fact that putting them off would only make things worse, Dulcy searched her mind, trying to come up with something that would please them. “Okay. My secret sexual fantasy is a night of white-hot passion with an anonymous bad-boy.”

Jena grimaced. “Been there.”

“Done that,” Marie agreed.

Dulcy lifted her brows. “You have?”

Jena waved her away. “Never mind us. We’re talking about you. And certainly even you can do better than that. Half the female population has that fantasy.”

Okay, so she was a cliché. Wouldn’t be the first time. She twisted her lips and looked around the hockey-player-choked bar, then through the glass doors to the lobby of the hotel. The silhouette of a man seemed to appear out of nowhere. She swallowed hard. Boy, could her imagination work overtime with a little help from tequila. The silhouette moved closer to the club, then halted in the doorway, his face concealed, his body the stuff of which dreams were made. Tall. Broad shouldered. Long legged. Rock hard.

Every single last urge she had hoped she’d drowned with the liquor came rushing back tenfold. Especially when she realized the guy wasn’t an apparition at all, but a flesh-and-blood male who seemed to prowl rather than walk. His dusky skin hinted at a mixed heritage. The length of his longish black hair teased the back collar of his shirt.

All sorts of naughty thoughts popped to mind, suddenly making her task much easier. “Okay,” she said slowly, her throat mysteriously tight as she tugged her gaze away from the real thing and focused instead on imagination. “My secret fantasy is a night of white-hot passionate sex with an anonymous bad-boy…in an elevator.”

Jena’s gaze narrowed. Marie nodded encouragingly.

Dulcy’s pulse seemed to slow to a steady thrum as she worked her way through the vision. “I, um, would have on this short short skirt…and I wouldn’t be wearing any underwear. And he’d…um, he’d be wearing leather pants…black…” That was good. The guy who still stood at the door had on jeans. Close-fitting faded denim that hugged his crotch and thighs to perfection. “And he’d have leather straps in his pants pockets. Straps he’d use to tie my hands above my head….”

Dulcy couldn’t swallow, with the vivid pImages** in her head of open-mouthed kisses and soft moans; the glistening, silk-covered shaft of an erection pulsing in her hands; the scent of sex thick and musky, tanned skin pressing against her sensitive pale flesh.

Jena shifted, and Dulcy blinked her into view. It was the first time she’d seen her friend speechless. Afraid of how much she’d just revealed about herself, she curled her fingers into her palms and searched for a way out of the corner she’d painted herself into.

“Oh, and…there would be another hot guy standing in the corner of the elevator…watching.”

Judging by the way Jena’s brows shot up and the way Marie’s eyes bulged, she’d succeeded in her endeavor.

“You just made that up,” Jena accused.

Dulcy rubbed the side of her neck, glad she’d momentarily sidetracked her friends. The fact that the guy in her fantasies was real wasn’t improving her finely tuned condition any. “Okay, you’re right,” she lied. “But you have to admit, I had you two going.”

She’d also made herself more than a little hot and bothered. Not because she got into exhibitionism or S&M by any stretch. But the hot passion and the anonymous stranger part had long been a secret fantasy of hers. Ever since she’d graduated from ogling her high school P.E. teacher and had taken to privately rating men in public places on how she thought they might perform in bed. Like having coffee at the café around the corner from their office and summing up the young, athletic waiter in the tight black pants that left very little to the imagination. Or dining out at her favorite Mexican restaurant and watching the hot Latin dancer teach customers how to tango, making her wonder how he danced in bed. Or during lulls at work, eyeing the building’s new maintenance man, whose biceps practically split the seams of his shirt while he fixed the rash of broken light fixtures.

Dulcy twisted her lips. Curiously enough, all three examples were from the past week alone.

Her wedding—and wedding night—couldn’t come soon enough for her.

Jena folded her forearms on top of the table. “Okay, since you’re not interested in sharing your real fantasy with us…tell me, Dulcy, why did you say earlier that you have to lie to get married?”

Dulcy made a face. “I did not.”

“You most certainly did.”

Had she? She thought back and realized that, yes, she had, when she’d suggested that maybe Marie wasn’t married yet because of her inability to lie. “It was a joke,” she said.

“No, it wasn’t. You don’t make those kinds of jokes. Does it have something to do with Brad?”

“Jeez, Louise—Jena, give a girl a warning before you go back to something we talked about two days ago.” Had she really just said ‘Jeez, Louise’? Horrified, she realized she had.

“It was five minutes ago, not two days. And are you going to answer my question?”

Dulcy grimaced. “I plead the fifth.”

“It’s impossible to incriminate yourself with us, Dulc.”

When Dulcy merely smiled, Jena sat up. “Would you like me to rephrase the question in a simple yes-or-no format?”

Dulcy pursed her lips, then said, “Yes.”

“Okay. Did you lie to your groom, your husband-to-be, one certain Mr. Hottie,” she glanced at Marie, having used her name for Brad, “today?”

“Yes.”

“Did it have to do with sex?”

“No.”

Jena frowned. “Damn. Okay…did it have to do with your friends, one Ms. Jena McCade and Ms. Marie Bertelli?”

Dulcy went completely still, the question hitting a little too close to home. “Well…it’s more complicated than that—”

“A simple yes or no will do, Ms. Ferris.” Jena looked to Marie. “May I request Your Honor instruct the witness to respond in the manner requested and agreed upon?”

Dulcy looked to Marie, the session’s judge, hopefully.

“Answer the question, Ms. Ferris.”

Dulcy gaped at her. Marie never sided with Jena. “Okay, then…yes. Yes, the lie I told to Brad had to do with you two.”

She didn’t realize the weight of the question and corresponding answer until silence settled on the table. She blinked to stare at her empty shot glass, avoiding her friends’ curious looks.

Jena had warned her last month during a cocktail party at the Wheeler estate that Brad would try to break up their friendship after he placed the old rock and ring on her finger. Dulcy had laughed at her, thinking the prospect ridiculous…until Brad had asked her earlier today why only Jena and Marie were involved in her bachelorette party. And why his mother Beatrix—who looked remarkably like Betty White on steroids—wasn’t included, as she wanted to be. During the drive into town, she, herself, had begun to wonder whether or not Jena’s warning held any water. If Brad did disapprove of her friends now, what would happen after they were married? Would he begin by suggesting they leave one or the other of them off the list of dinner invites in deference to one of his friends or family members? Would he suggest they go to his family’s for the holidays, essentially banning her from spending time with Jena and Marie?

She’d snapped her mouth open to make it clear to Brad that her friendship with Jena and Marie wasn’t up for debate. But there weren’t enough words in existence to convey the special bond that had developed among the three of them when they were kids. A tragic incident with Jena’s parents had inspired in each of them an interest in law, and that interest had taken them through the bar exam and eventually to their recently formed law practice in partnership with Barry Lomax. Then she’d decided that she wasn’t going to be placed in the position of defending her friendship with Jena and Marie. It was a fact he’d just have to accept.

Concerning her mother-in-law to be, she’d told Brad that bachelorette parties were traditionally for the bride’s peers. Besides, Beatrix scared the living hell out of her.

As for the lie…she’d told Brad the three of them were going to dinner and a movie, then staying at Jena’s afterward.

“Let’s dance.”

Startled, Dulcy looked up to find Jena getting up from the booth. “What? Without—”

“Men? Absolutely.” Jena tugged on Marie’s hand; Marie in turn grabbed Dulcy’s.

Giving a protest yip, she found herself stumbling down the aisle toward the dance floor set up in front of the band. They were playing Seger’s “Old Time Rock ’n’ Roll” and the decibel level was ear splitting up this close.

Jena easily found her groove, shimmying and shaking in that spontaneous way Dulcy had always secretly admired. Marie began clapping her hands, not nearly as graceful and slightly out of step, but having a good time.

Dulcy shrugged. Why not? She could do this. After all, it was her last real night as a single woman. Surely even she deserved to cut loose and have a bit of fun with her best friends.

With that, she threw her hands up in the air and began shaking her hips in a way she hoped wasn’t too ludicrous.

GREAT. HIS FIRST NIGHT OUT in three months and he had to pick a gay bar.

Quinn Landis leaned against the highly polished bar and eyed three men standing nearby. They looked like models from a Gap commercial—as did every other male in the place—and they didn’t seem to mind that there was nary a female in sight. He frowned, then asked the bartender for a beer. When he was handed an ice-cold bottle, he leaned across the bar. “What’s going on tonight?”

“Sir?”

Quinn gestured with the neck of his bottle toward the guys.

The tender grinned. “Hockey team staying in the hotel.”

“Oh.” He paid the man, including a generous tip. “Thanks.”

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

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

Married.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He grinned.

Bingo.