Cathleen Galitz - Only Skin Deep

Just because he’d always had the power to turn her insides to mush whenever she looked at him didn’t mean she couldn’t separate rational thought from foolish fantasy. For one thing, he carried too much baggage from an apparently painful past relationship. For another, he was too handsome and sure of himself for his own good. Still insecure about her own appearance, Lauren didn’t like the thought of having to compete with the rest of womankind for a man’s attention. She liked even less the possibility of marrying someone who might very well cheat on her the minute someone prettier threw herself in his way. Lastly, a real cowboy like Travis would probably care more for his livestock than he did for any woman.

That settled in her mind, she turned to him as a confidant.

“Would you mind telling me where the best place in town is to pick up single men?”

Travis swerved to miss a jackrabbit.

“You mean other than church or the local Laundromat?” he asked.

Lauren rolled her eyes.

“I mean like a bar.”

From his reaction, one would think she was inquiring about a male escort service. Lauren refused to look away. If anyone would know the answer to that question surely it was the most eligible single man in these parts. After that jab about turning his grandpa’s cabin into the playgirl mansion, she saw no reason why he shouldn’t be completely forthright with her.

“The Alibi,” he said grudgingly. “If all you’re looking for is a one-night stand, that is.”

She wasn’t, but since Lauren was long past the age of having a coming out party, she could think of no better way to announce her intentions to the world than circulating in the most happening spots. In a small community, when one got stereotyped as a stick in the mud as far back as high school, drastic measures were required. And just because she might let a friendly guy buy her a drink certainly didn’t mean she had to go to bed with him. Marriage, not gratuitous sex, was her ultimate goal—although she sincerely hoped a good deal of the latter was thrown in with the former.

“There’s a church social scheduled for this weekend if you’re interested,” Travis suggested.

Lauren’s pulse leaped at the thought that he might actually be asking her to accompany him, but his overly nonchalant tone convinced her that she was mistaken. An unexpected wave of disappointment washed over her. Having allowed him to step all over her pride since before he’d even known she existed, she vowed not to let it happen. Besides, she’d been to enough staid church socials to know that the only eligible men in attendance were either horny teenagers or widowers collecting Social Security. Determined to shed her heavy cloak of invisibility once and for all, she tipped her chin defiantly up.

“I’m really not.”

A more experienced woman might have been better able to read the frustration in Travis’s face. As it was, Lauren simply tuned him out by turning her head to stare out the window and proceeded to shade her eyes against a future so bright it threatened to burn her if she wasn’t careful.

Travis was duly impressed with his tenant’s industriousness. Lauren took him up on his offer to take a load of old furniture that she didn’t want to the dump. By the time he returned she was in the process of polishing the old hardwood floors until they gleamed. With a gingham kerchief holding her hair away from her face, she looked the picture of domestic industry. On her hands and knees, she presented an enticing view that put the most indecent thoughts into his head. He struggled to find his voice.

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