Tina Leonard - Tex Times Ten

“Is that why you’re here?”

He frowned at her. There was a real reason he was there—to deliver the cake as Hannah had requested. And then there was the real-real, albeit inadmissible, reason he was there—to see Cissy. But neither of those reasons could be what Cissy had in mind. “What?”

“Because of your intimacy problem.”

“Why would I come here for that? Just saying I had one, which I don’t.”

“Because this salon is the place men like to come to lose their intimacy problems. And a whole host of other problems.”

His jaw sagged. “You’re suggesting that I—”

“Not suggesting. Asking, cowboy. Asking.”

No. The answer was no.

And yet, he had to admit he was pulled to Cissy in a sort of strange, like-what-I-see-but-can’t-touch it way. It was a sexual paradox of sorts.

Which would play into his brothers’ theory.

“I’ve always espoused the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy of life,” he said.

“And yet you’ve asked plenty of questions about my life. My family.”

“Yeah. That’s when I thought you were my kind of girl.”

She stared at him. “And now you think I’m…?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “I guess you’re a good girl. A good girl with issues, but I definitely see why Hannah likes you.”

“And so that crosses me off your short list.”

“I don’t have a list,” he replied.

“But if I were a wild woman, I’d be on it.”

“Well, that, and if you wore interesting lingerie.

I’m going to develop a fetish for interesting lingerie.”

She sighed. “Tex, I think you have an intimacy problem.”

He sighed, too, and laid back across the bed horizontally. She lay next to him, and they both stared lackadaisically at the ceiling, their legs hanging off the bed. “Not if I have a fetish.”

“You don’t, cowboy. You said you’re going to develop one. Like, maybe when you’re forty? Not that any of this matters, since I’m not your kind of girl or anything.”

“And thank heavens for that,” he said. “I do not want to end up like my brothers. Even though they’re happy,” he said expansively, “that is no reason to emulate them.”

“Back to the raffle,” she reminded him. “I think you should do it.”

“Why?”

“It would prove to your brothers that you don’t have any issues,” she pointed out. “You would also prove it to yourself, because on a subconscious level, you could be in denial.” She beamed at her attempt at psychoanalysis. “And it’s for a good cause.”

They turned their heads to look at each other. It was, Tex realized at that moment, too close for comfort. “You may not be a trashy girl,” he said, “but you didn’t slap me when I said you had a great ass.”

“That’s because I felt sorry for you,” she said softly, staring into his eyes. “I knew there had to be a reason you were trying so hard to be something you weren’t.”

He could practically feel his eyes bug from their sockets. “Now comes the enlightenment. What am I not?”

“A badass cowboy.”

“So you’re figuring I’m a pansy.”

“You’re neither. Just right down the middle. A nice guy.”

Just what he’d always wanted. “Maybe you’re not as smart as you think you are.”

She shrugged, a little icily for his taste, especially since she was lying on her back and shouldn’t have been able to get that much movement into a shrug.

“Okay. Let me ask you something. If I was a trashy girl—your favorite kind—would you have tried to hit on me by now? I mean, you’re holding back for some reason. In fact, you’re almost a hypocrite. You tease about kissing me and having sex and say I’ve got a great behind, and it’s clear you like what you see, but then you treat me like a sister.”

“I don’t have sex on the first date,” he said gruffly.

“You did,” she reminded him. “If meeting me in a barn can be called a date.”

“It can’t,” he argued. “That was a first meeting, and I’d definitely never done that before.” He moved his head back to stare at the ceiling. “There are moral imperatives involved.”

She rolled up on her elbow and looked at him quizzically. “Are you quoting someone?”

“No,” he said, not about to admit that some of his brother Bandera’s philosophical ditherings and their father’s teachings had soaked into his skull. “I’m only trying to illustrate that I’m not a loser or an intimacy-phobe. I don’t have to mate like a gorilla.”

“Now that you’ve decided that I’m not a trashy girl.”

Truly, the woman had superior insight. He couldn’t have had sex with her if he wanted to now. Really. She was no different than Annabelle, Katy or Hannah—and look where those girls had led his unsuspecting brothers! “I don’t have to prove anything to my brothers. Or myself. I’ll do the raffle because charity is a good thing.”

“I see.”

Tex’s brows rose. He heard the snarkiness in her tone. Okay, maybe disbelief was more the word. “All right,” he said. “That’s it. Even a gentleman can only take so much—and I’m not even a gentleman. So I’m way past my limit, lady.”

And then he pinned her beneath him.

Cissy held her breath as the cowboy on top of her lay still. They stared into each other’s eyes as if they had never seen each other before. Cissy’s heart beat slowly, yet very hard, in her throat. “Well, cowboy,” she said, “as you said, this is it.”

“Now or never.”

“Do or die,” she said, loving the feel of Tex’s weight on her. “Here we are, again.”

And yet he remained frozen.

“I promise I don’t bite on the first real kiss,” she teased.

“I do,” Tex said, touching his lips briefly to hers.

“You taste like un-wedding cake.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“It’s maybe the best cake I ever had,” he said, lowering his head so that he could kiss her, and taste her more deeply. She moaned, arching, wanting to be tighter against him as she ran her hands up over his back.

Before she knew what was happening, he pulled away. Her heart plummeted as he got off the bed. “What happened?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said. Everything.

“Did your escape hatch fly open?” she demanded, sitting up on the bed to glare at him.

Tex didn’t like the sound of that. “Meaning?”

“No man leaps away from a woman like his pants are on fire, when a moment before he was sucking at her lips like a drowning man sucks air. Maybe your intimacy issue returned full force.”

He bit the inside of his jaw. His pants were definitely on fire, but he shifted so she couldn’t notice. “I’m trying to be a gentleman. I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

“Oh, please. You think that if you kiss me and like it too much—maybe even make love to me again—you’ll end up at the altar like your brothers. You don’t want to fall in love. Which is perfect as far as I’m concerned, because I’m the last girl who wants to see a wedding ring.”

There went that unattractive prescient side of her. “I could kiss you all day and not fall in love,” he lied, his pride in full force. “Heck, I could kiss twenty girls and not fall in love! Marriage is not a good way for men to live. All that devotion and fidelity stuff is hard on a guy.”

“Guess you won’t have any trouble with that raffle, after all,” Cissy said.

He didn’t like the gleeful smile on her face. “Sounds like the most fun I’ll have all year.”

“I’ll have to come watch.”

That hadn’t entered his thoughts, and he wasn’t certain he was entirely comfortable with Cissy watching women bid on him. “Uh—”