Jane Sullivan - One Hot Texan

“Yeah. Right after they strip-search you.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Strip-search?”

“Don’t worry. If they get too carried away, you can always sue. You have a good lawyer, don’t you?”

She squeezed her eyes closed and slumped with resignation. “What about my car? If you take me home, it’ll still be here in the morning.”

“That’s your problem.” Cole put a firm hand against her shoulder and turned her toward the door. “I’ll get you home in one piece. Past that, you’re on your own.”

Shelly’s, Tiffany’s and Tonya’s eyes flew open with disbelief as he passed by their table, his arm wrapped around Virginia’s shoulders, dragging her along. He took her to his car, unlocked the passenger door, then shook a finger at her. “Don’t you dare throw up in my car.”

“I won’t.”

Her words said she wouldn’t, but her sickly expression said it was a distinct possibility. That would be the last straw, of course. If she messed up his car, he wouldn’t think twice about tossing her out on the side of the road and letting the buzzards have at her.

He opened the door. She collapsed on the seat, but that’s as far as she got. He picked her legs up, stuffed them into the car and slammed the door.

He slid behind the wheel and jammed the key into the ignition. He was saving her from driving drunk. That was a good deed. Good deeds were supposed to make a person feel wonderful.

Yeah. Right.

He checked his watch. He had only a few hours left. He didn’t need someone throwing a wrench in the works, and he had a feeling Virginia White had a whole toolbox in her hip pocket. He intended to dump her at home, turn around and head back to the bar.

Twenty minutes later he pulled up to 714 Oakdale, a tiny white clapboard house on a tree-shaded street. It was one of those houses that had been born ugly, with a flat elevation, an aluminum storm door and casement windows. Still, it was well-kept, with a neat St. Augustine lawn, a bed of pink petunias and a wreath beside the front door. At least somebody was trying.

Virginia had fallen asleep about two minutes after getting into his car, and she still slept, breathing gently, her hands clutching her purse, her lips parted. A stray strand of hair lay across her cheek. She looked peaceful. Innocent. Helpless. The kind of woman he vowed he’d never go near again.

No lights shone in any of the windows. She lived alone, he guessed, or she’d have called someone to come pick her up. He slipped her keys out of her hand and unlocked the front door. He came around the car and pulled her out. He tried walking her toward the porch without much success, then gave up and picked her up. He climbed the porch steps with her in his arms, nudged the storm door open with his foot and flipped on the living-room light with his shoulder. He carried her into the first bedroom he came to, those goofy boots of hers banging against the door frame. He dumped her on the bed, then yanked her boots off.

A quilt lay folded at the end of the bed, and he pulled it over her. She turned on her side, squirmed around for a minute, then hugged the pillow and played dead. And dead was just how she was going to feel in the morning.

Cole went into the living room. The house was stuck in a time warp. Green shag carpet, heavy gold drapes, brown plaid furniture. But even though it was probably the dreariest decor he’d ever seen, the inside of the house was as clean and well-kept as the outside had been.

He decided he’d lock up behind him and stick her keys in the mailbox. He found a magnetic notepad stuck to the refrigerator and wrote her a message to that effect. He put it on the kitchen table and started to walk away when he noticed several envelopes and their contents scattered on the table. He saw utility bills, pay stubs, several credit card bills and a letter. He picked up the letter. It was from her landlord. She was a month behind.

He retrieved her purse from her bedroom, pulled out her checkbook and flipped it open to see a balance of sixty-two dollars and seventeen cents.

He went to the kitchen and looked through the rest of the mail. A bill from a funeral home. A whopper. Fishing through a few more papers on the table, he found a program from the funeral of Margaret White, age sixty-two, who’d gone to meet her maker about three months ago. And judging from what he’d seen so far, she didn’t have a father, either.

Growing nosier by the minute, he dug deeper and found a college catalog from the University of Texas at Austin. Several banking and finance courses were circled, but looking at her checkbook, she hadn’t paid a dime for tuition for next semester. The course bulletin was a dream book, nothing more.

As he put the pieces of her life together, he started having second thoughts about her suitability as a wife. With her abysmal financial condition, would she really be so horrified at the prospect of a temporary marriage if he made it worth her while?

She might be the kind of woman who met her soul mate in the church choir, but after Cole divorced her in six months she’d still have the opportunity to find Mr. Right wherever she wanted to look. Daddy didn’t appear to be around, so he wouldn’t have to worry about turning a corner and finding himself looking down the barrel of a shotgun. She was a little on the plain side, which distressed him a bit, but kissing her hadn’t been half bad. Maybe a woman who wasn’t obsessed with her looks would be a pleasant change. For his own sanity he needed a halfway intelligent woman, and her college aspirations said she probably fit that description. And as far as college tuition was concerned, she’d probably jump at the twenty-five thousand dollars he was willing to give her for taking six months out of her life to become Mrs. Cole McCallum. And best of all, she was naive and innocent, which meant he’d be able to control the situation and call the shots. It just might work.

Cole smiled. It looked as if the good deed he’d done tonight had paid off, after all.

VIRGINIA BLINKED her eyes open and was met with early-morning sunlight filtering through her bedroom curtains. She lay motionless, a little disoriented. A few seconds later her senses woke up, and she let out a low, agonized groan.

A bass drum was playing inside her head, boom-boom-booming in sync with the rhythm of her heart. She tried to move, but every muscle ached, and when she swallowed her mouth was dry as parchment.

Then she felt something. A gentle tap on her shoulder. A pause. A harder tap.

A man’s voice.

“Virginia. Time to get up.”

Her eyes sprang open. She flipped over like a hotcake on a griddle and found herself staring directly into the eyes of Cole McCallum.

With a strangled scream, she pushed herself to a sitting position and backed against the headboard. She almost screamed again as she realized he was wearing nothing but a towel draped around his hips. His dark hair was damp and slicked back, and droplets of water clung to his shoulders.

“Wh-what are you doing?” Virginia sputtered.

“Thought I’d catch a quick shower. But don’t worry. I left you plenty of hot water.”

She couldn’t think. She couldn’t even breathe. But her eyes were in fine working order, roaming over Cole’s body like those of a hungry diner checking out a smorgasbord. Her gaze traveled from his strong, sculpted shoulders, to his broad chest tapering down to a narrow waist, to a sharply defined set of abdominal muscles that made her think of a statue she’d once seen in an art-history book. She stared in awe at every inch of tanned skin, every ripple of muscle, every sexy bit of him that showed beyond the towel. For a split second her mind wandered to what lay beneath the towel and she wondered if it was perfection, too, then chastised herself for even thinking it.