Roped In

“You’ve taken over?”

“I suppose I have.”

He sounded amused by the turn of events, but something in his tone also hinted of a darker reason for his return to Pine Junction.

But before she could ask about that, he’d already gone back to being that outlaw, one thumb hooked through a belt loop, his gaze lowered as he moved to speak in her ear again.

“Rumor has it that you’re looking to do business with an out-of-towner.”

Something took a nosedive in her chest. This didn’t sound like flirting any more.

“A neighbor’s business is always my business,” he said, “especially if it concerns the introduction of dudes.”

Definitely not flirting.

So much for fantasy. Shane Carter had come across the room to merely talk business to his next-door neighbor.

And you know what? It made Nicki bristle, because she knew that, in his eyes, she still had to be the little-sister type to him, the girl in pigtails he’d protected from his father’s anger once upon a time.

That wasn’t her anymore, especially tonight of all nights.

“Do you think city people are going to pollute Pine Junction?” she asked. “Is that what you’re afraid of, Carter?”

“I have my concerns, seeing as your land borders my family’s. Do you have any idea how selling out to a dude operation is going to change the tenor of the town?”

Selling out. That stung, mostly because she had thought good and hard about it. But, the truth was, plenty of Pine Junction’s citizens were just as hard up for money as she was. In fact, she was in competition with some of the other ranches for the investment firm’s favor, and their representative would be making visits to some of their spreads, too.

“Is that why you came back?” she asked, leveling her tone. “To make sure a dude resort won’t cheapen Pine Junction with spas and four-star restaurants?”

“That’s one among many reasons.”

His jaw had gone tight. Her heartbeat punched up, and hyperactive butterflies flew through her belly.

Then he ran another long gaze down Nicki, as if taking a different view of her.

Her skin flamed as his slow gaze turned into something much more, roaming right back up her body, leaving a trail of tingling, addictive shivers in his wake.

Nicki’s sex clenched, priming itself for something it hadn’t had in a long time.

The tingles blazed upward, sending prickles of heat through her—like flames eating their way out from under her skin. Beneath her bodice, her nipples went sensitive, peaking, and she wanted to be touched as thoroughly as she’d been looked at.

Then Shane raised an eyebrow, as if she’d totally misinterpreted his glance, and her reverie shattered into a thousand heartbreaking pieces.

This wasn’t a fantasy at all, and that’s what she’d always been afraid of with Shane.

2

AS NICKI WADE WALKED away from Shane, he almost stopped her.

Almost.

When Shane had first seen her across the room, he hadn’t actually recognized her. His body had only reacted to a punch of lust straight to the gut at the sight of a slender, toned woman in a sexy dress, her curls swept up into a bohemian mass, one corkscrew escaping to tickle a long, seductive neck.

He hadn’t been able to glance away, his groin thudding with every kick of his pulse.

Then…

Then he’d seen little Nicki Wade under the surface.

Nicki, who used to wear that crazy hair of hers in pigtails…until one day.

Shane remembered something now—a time just before he’d left Pine Junction. A day when he’d done a double take at her.

She’d been with her friends at the annual spring rodeo, and it’d been the first time he’d seen her with her hair down. A glimpse of who she’d be one day set off a burst of attraction in him that he’d quickly tamped down. After all, she was Nicki Wade and she was fifteen, way too young for a guy on the edge of graduation—a guy who spent too much time being watched by the sheriff because of drag racing and hell raising.

A guy too fast for a sweet girl like her.

He’d forgotten all about that until now. But it didn’t matter so much. Shane would be damned if he didn’t tell her what he thought about getting too cozy with that skunk of a business that had contacted him just this morning about his own family ranch, the Slanted C.

Shane had laughed off the representative, a man named Russell Alexander. What made Alexander think that the Carters would be interested in converting their spread into a dude resort? The businessman hadn’t come right out and said it, but Shane had the feeling the guy knew that the Slanted C was in just as much trouble as the Square W+W.

And here Shane had thought he’d been doing so well in hiding that fact. No one in town realized just how far Tommy and his idiotic get-rich-quick investments had put the ranch in jeopardy. To make matters worse, the recession had taken every penny Shane had in savings, and his family was already in loans up to their necks—not that he’d ever let anyone know. If there was one thing Shane had always been, it was proud, and he knew he could be more of a man than his dad or Tommy; he would be the one to get the Slanted C turned around. But he would also do it for his mom’s sake, since the ranch had come from her side of the family and he was bound and determined to make sure she had the home she’d grown up in and loved for the rest of her life.

And he wasn’t about to go dude to accomplish any of that.

He could almost hear his father browbeating him because, somehow, he would’ve found a way to blame Shane for this entire mess: Didn’t I teach you any business sense, you moron? Don’t you have one lick of smarts in that head of yours?

Tommy’s part in it wouldn’t have mattered: Shane was the one whom his dad expected to help out on the ranch, like any good son. And Barry Carter would’ve probably even ignored how Shane’s older brother had left Pine Junction with his tail between his legs, retreating to his wife’s family for some support.

Maybe Shane was just meant to take the brunt of everything, as he’d done whenever Dad let his anger get the better of him with Mom. Taking the brunt back then had been instinctive, a protective urge that he’d hidden well from most everyone except his family.

It hadn’t been anyone’s business but the Carters’, anyway, yet taking the brunt had forged him into a man early.

Very early.

His gaze was still on Nicki as she wove through a crowd of cowboys, away from him.

Yeah, he was sorry, so then why couldn’t he just come out and say that he’d projected his disappointment in himself onto her? Why couldn’t he admit that he hated that he’d actually been entertaining the thought of accepting Russell Alexander’s interest in the Slanted C, even though it made him feel beaten?

Because Shane couldn’t admit that he was down before the fight had even begun, couldn’t allow everyone to already see him for the failure his father had always accused him of being.

The band had paused in their song list, and the lead singer apologized, saying they had a broken guitar string. He chattered to the crowd about all the costumes he saw in the room while they waited for a replacement guitar.

Shane knew it was now or never with Nicki. Damn it, she was his neighbor, and he couldn’t let things stand as they were, so he caught up to her at the side of the band’s stage.

“Nicki…”

It was obvious that she’d been stewing on their conversation, and she launched into another question right away.

“Just why are you back in Pine Junction, Carter?”

Her light green eyes were filled with anger, and somehow, he was responding to that passion, a thrust of need bolting straight to his cock.

But this was Nicki Wade. What did his cock have to do with it?

A girl like her wouldn’t like it temporary and wild, and that was just how he always wanted it—without strings or commitment. You couldn’t get freedom in a relationship, and he’d never been the type for one of those, anyway. Not after what he’d seen his mom go through with his dad.

Nicki kept at him. “You can’t come back into town and start passing judgment on those of us who’ve gone through the ups and downs of living here.”

“You’re right.”

He didn’t tell her why he’d left, though. There was no reason for him to explain the reasons he’d run off, because that last day with his father had been the point of no return. He’d finally hit the man back while defending his mom, and she’d had no choice but to ask Shane to leave.

“He’s much easier to live with when you’re not here,” she’d said, brokenhearted at the choice she’d been forced to make.

And Shane had gone, just as broken, himself.

“I apologize, Nicki.” He paused, then added, “And I’m sorry about your parents, too—the car accident. They were good people.”

He’d admired her family and how they were so loving that they even embraced their employees as their own. Shane had never had that. Not even close.

She looked just like he did most mornings in the mirror: at the end of her rope, having gone through every possible idea to keep the family legacy running strong.

As she took in his apology, she nodded stiffly.

It was beyond him to go away with her in such a state. “I just keep seeing the little girl on the W+W riding around on her first pony near our property lines. And I don’t want her to get hurt by a huge corporation like the one that’s coming into our midst tomorrow.”

Even under her tanned skin, she seemed to blanch. Somehow he’d offended her again.

“You think I can’t handle some businessman? You still believe I’m some little girl who…?”

“Hey, I didn’t mean to say—”

Her voice took on some steel. “You really don’t know much about me at all, do you?”

With that, she turned around, leaving him near the stage.

He watched her walk away. Hips. Skin. Heat on a hot autumn night.

And Shane kept watching her until he had to shake himself out of it. He shouldn’t be thinking about Nicki Wade.

He shouldn’t be thinking about anything other than every woman in the room who might like to spend some time with an outlaw tonight in a hideaway, where he could forget just about everything else for a few precious hours.

HOW COULD SHANE CARTER just amble back into town and rile her up like this?

God, all Nicki wanted to do was show him he was wrong…and to make him see her.

Every bit of the woman she had become while he’d been away.

She watched how the girls in the room—brides, dark seductresses, even a slave Princess Leia—gravitated toward Shane now. It was just as it’d always been with him—he moved toward the edges of the dance floor but stayed off of it altogether, as if outlaws never danced.

Whatever the case, she didn’t want to stand around until he inevitably changed his mind and scooped a girl into his arms, making his choice for the night. Even picturing him with another woman turned her stomach.

Why, though? What was he to her?

Nicki made her way across the room, to where her ride, Manny, was raiding the buffet table, stacking biscuits, cornbread and cookies into a network of large paper napkins.

“Hey, Manny.”

Her thirtysomething ranch foreman turned around, offering a gap-toothed smile. It complemented his “costume,” which consisted of him sticking some straw into his beat-up Stetson and calling himself a “scarecrow.”

Nicki glanced at his overloaded napkins. “I’m ready to go home whenever you are.”

“Any time,” he said, grabbing another stack of corn bread and piling it on the rest. “Just came here for the grub, anyway.”

“Thanks, Manny.” She would leave a message on Candace’s cell phone to tell her she’d left. Candace had planned to stop drinking after one champagne and drive their pickup home, anyway, so it wasn’t as if Nicki was stranding her.

She could tell that Manny was trying not to check out her costume, but he sure had a bit of a brotherly frown on his face. Any employee on the ranch would probably be doing the same if they saw her, and Nicki just wanted to get out of sight before too many got the opportunity.

Manny fetched a couple of beers from an ice-filled aluminum tub for good measure and stuck them under his armpits before they left the ballroom, going out of the Grand Hotel’s Old West lobby, with its scarred cherry wood furnishings and oil portraits of the town’s founding fathers.

After finding his blue pickup, which featured cloudy areas where the paint had faded, they hopped in. Nicki left that message with Candace on her voice mail, telling her that she would be waiting up with the company of a good book in her room if there was anything exciting to talk about.

Soon enough, she and Manny were at her two-level colonial ranch house that had seen much better days, its white facade in need of paint just as much as Manny’s truck.

Nicki hugged him good-night then got out. The porch protested under her footsteps as he drove away toward the employee cabins.

She went to her second-floor room, realizing that she was tired—too tired to even read or wait up for Candace. Not bothering to turn on the lights before taking off her ankle-high saloon girl boots, she fell forward onto the bed.

Resting her forehead on her arms, she started to chide herself for leaving the party. What she should’ve done was stayed, showing Shane Carter that a mild confrontation with him wouldn’t ruin her night, even if it had.

Damn it—she and those books. She and those dreams. What was it about Shane that had the power to resurrect them tonight? Books were supposed to let her escape, not bring everything into crummy focus.

Her mind couldn’t stop meandering back to Shane in that outlaw outfit, though. To make matters worse, her anger at him boiled her blood even now, heating her up in a way she didn’t want.

Even so, she ached, deep in her belly. She felt the needled pressure of desire between her legs, just from picturing him as that long, tall shadow in the saloon doors, pausing there as he saw his saloon girl waiting by the bar.

Wrong. So wrong to think about him like this.

But the wrongness made her want to do it all the more, and she remembered how he’d looked at her across the room, the first time he’d seen her tonight. How she’d sworn that he’d been stripping off her dress with his gaze, piece by piece.

And then he’d looked again after they’d been talking; slowly, with a languid visual caress that had felt as good as anything physical.

Scorched by the thought, Nicki rolled to her back and raised her arms over her head, holding to the memory of those long glances, feeling them stroke her.

Shane had wanted her, if only for a moment. And in that fleeting time, she hadn’t been that cowgirl next door. She’d been someone entirely different—more powerful, holding the reins.

Nicki stared toward the ceiling; she could see the white expanse of it in the darkness. She should’ve tested Shane, should’ve found out if he would’ve responded to an overture from her. But in her mind…

Well, in her mind she could make sure that he did want her, couldn’t she? In her mind, she could have it any way she wanted it.

Outside, the wind flirted with the shutters and hushed through the half-opened window. She closed her eyes, picturing the outlaw in her head, and her body hummed. As she breathed, her dress whisked against the covers, a soft, sensual sound.

Shane…

No one would know if she touched herself right now, pretending it was him. She was here, alone.

No one would ever know.

She ran one hand down her neck, over a breast, which felt round and ripe under her palm. Sexy under the satin. Tracing the outline of it, she thought of him.

I’m sorry for what I said back at the party, he would tell her if he was here now.

But she would quiet him right up, arching under his hand, just as she was doing now. She would urge him to undo her corset.

Nicki pulled on one of the lacings, trying not to think about the reality, the chances she would be taking by opening herself up and letting an actual man do this.

As she opened the corset, fantasy enveloped her, the air breathing over her exposed skin.

What would he say if he saw her like this?

What would he do?

She pictured Shane’s face with the bandanna covering the lower half of it.

The outlaw. The bad boy who had a chance for redemption…

Feeling free, she slid her hand lower, pushing up her dress and pressing against her sex, pretending it was his hand. She rocked her hips slightly, pressing harder, circling her fingers over her clit.

He was the one stroking her, his face hidden by that bandanna as well as the night that swallowed her room.

Give me everything, he would say in an almost unrecognizable voice.

Nicki pressed harder, faster. Her panties were getting damp now, wetter and wetter as the outlaw made the sexual steam rise inside her, pulsing. Throbbing.

She groaned. “What do you want?”

Her money? Her life?

In her fantasy, he pushed a finger into her, and she bucked. Higher and higher, darker and darker as her fantasy swirled, sucking her in.

I just want you, he would say and, this time, it was Shane’s voice.

Higher, harder…

Nicki came with an inner bang, like a gunshot that echoed and echoed through her, her breathing choppy as she opened her eyes back to the present.

The quiet of the house.

The disturbed covers on her bed.

The moon-shaded corners of her room.

It was a while before she rolled to her stomach again and fell asleep, but when she did, she went back to dreaming of the outlaw and what he would do to her next.

BACK AT THE PARTY, Candace had been shaking her booty on the dance floor, yippy-yo-kay-yaying with every cowboy who was game.

But she hadn’t been so into her fun that she’d completely forgotten about Nicki—especially when her cousin had left the ballroom with Manny the foreman.

Now, as Candace stood in the hallway of the hotel, her cell phone to her ear, she listened to the voice mail.

“Don’t kill me,” Nicki said, “but I’m exhausted, Candy. I had a great time while I was there, but I’m going home. I’ll be waiting up for you in my room with one of those ‘adventurous books’ so you can tell me about your big night. That is, if you even come home. Anyway, we’ll do this again soon—I promise. It’s just that…”

Nicki hadn’t needed to mention the big day tomorrow, because Candace had already guessed that it would be the supposed reason Nicki had left.

But Candace had another theory.

She tucked the phone into a holster that hung from one hip and sauntered to the door of the party, where the band was winding up a Garth Brooks song. As they dove into the last notes and then announced another break, Candace found Shane Carter, standing at a table, the focal point of three giggling women.

The Don Juan of Pine Junction.

Easy guys didn’t interest her, and that’s how most of the men here seemed. Way too easy. So when Candace narrowed her gaze at Shane, it wasn’t because she was zooming in on him for herself.

Earlier, Nicki had been engaged in quite the discussion with him, and it looked as if it hadn’t been a good, flirty chat, either. Nicki had deserted the talk with a crushed look on her face, and it had torn at Candace just as strongly.

All women knew what it was like to be crushed by a crush, and Nicki was more sensitive than most. Beneath all the straight-talk and confidence in her work, Nicki was still finding herself, and it hadn’t been easy while being sheltered by that ranch all these years. Candace had always taken great pleasure in getting Nicki out and about, even as a kid, and she’d seen Nicki blossom when she wasn’t acting like a girl who’d taken on so much responsibility with the ranch much too early.

It broke Candace’s heart to think that Nicki might never get the joy that was to be taken out of life. Even Candace, who’d had her share of hard times lately, knew that there was still fun to be had, even during the worst of it.

Besides, hadn’t Nicki said that she’d be in to using that saloon girl costume?

Candace went to the quiet lobby, asked a desk clerk for a pen and paper, then scribbled.

If you’re up to it, how about coming over at about 10:00 tonight? I’m in my room, on my bed, waiting to see if you’ll be here. Waiting for an outlaw to break out of his cell and be with me, his woman, the saloon girl with the fishnet stockings and garters.

Had she overdone it? It sounded like something from Nicki’s books—novels that Candace had also become addicted to over the years.

Okay, maybe it was over the top, but if a known playboy like Shane was to be lured to Nicki, an invitation would have to have some spice. Sure, Nicki would be in bed reading, as she’d said on her phone message, but if Shane showed up, she could always tell him to get out. Or she could tell him to stay. And, from the way Candace had seen Shane devouring Nicki with his gaze earlier, she had no doubts that he would agree to whatever Nicki decided.

She ended the note by adding the address of the Wade house, mentioning that his saloon girl would be in the first bedroom on the second floor.

Nicki’s room.

One last niggle made Candace hesitate, but she told herself that all Nicki needed was opportunity. Hadn’t she admitted earlier that if the chance came along, she’d hop on it?

Yes, she had. Besides, Nicki needed this—confidence and, more important, some darned fun.

Candace went back to the ballroom, waiting until Shane ambled over to the bar for a drink, then marched right up to him before any other women could waylay him.

“Hi, Shane,” she said, friendly as any old fairy godmother. Or madam.

When he turned around, he didn’t greet her with any kind of playboy’s “how do you do,” as she expected he might. No, at the sight of her, he might’ve even been a little…wary.

“Candace,” he said, offering his hand for a shake. “Nicki’s cousin, right? Haven’t seen you for a good while.”

“I’m on an extended visit.” The circumstances of the visit—getting fired, having trouble getting rehired anywhere—stayed buried in her, deep and low, where embarrassment covered them.

He leaned back against the bar, and she couldn’t help but notice that he was checking out the room.

“Looking for Nicki?” she asked.

“Nope.”

“Well, that’s good, because she left already. I think you ruffled her feathers.”

He frowned. “I didn’t mean to. We had a few words about that corporate guy coming out to her ranch tomorrow, and…Hell, the conversation just didn’t end the way I hoped it would.”

So Candace had been right about them having some sort of tiff.

As he lifted his beer to take a drink, she went for it, tucking the note she’d written into a pocket in his vest.

“If you want to make amends with Nicki, this is how to do it.” She got a little bolder, praying that the end would justify the means. “Nicki’s a pretty shy person. You know that, right?”

“She wasn’t shy while she was putting me in my place.”

“That’s true. When Nicki’s wound up, Nicki’s wound up.” Candace took a breath. Here it went. “Before she left, she was still on fire, and I suggested she put that to good use. That’s when she wrote this.”

He glanced at the paper peeking out of his vest. “Wrote what, exactly?”

He said it as if he were definitely interested. This was totally going to work.

“You’ve got to read it to see,” Candace said, lifting an eyebrow, knowing that she’d done what she could to hook Shane Carter’s attention and make Nicki’s night.

And maybe even her decade.

Candace sauntered away, hoping Shane would read that note soon, then show up at Nicki’s bedroom tonight, giving her the best apology ever.