Tex Times Ten. Tina Leonard
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.
Chapter Three
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—”
“I could be a mole bidder and drive up your price,” she offered.
Did he hear revenge in her tone? “A mole bidder?”
“You know, every time someone bids, I outbid them, so that they have to bid again. Of course, I have no intention of buying you.”
Trying to ignore her obvious disinterest in him—where was the jealousy, for heaven’s sake?—Tex puffed out his chest. “How much do you figure I’m worth?”
“Ten, twenty bucks?”
His brows shot to his hairline. “Oh, come on. Be real. I’ve still got all my teeth!”
“Well, that does count for something,” she said reluctantly. “How’s your continence?”
“My what?”
“You know. Your…you know.” She gestured to his jeans.
“Oh, my continence!” he exclaimed. “I can go all night.”
“You don’t say.” Her gaze swept his jeans and then lingered a moment more. “And you’ve got a full head of hair,” she said. “I think you’ll fetch about fifty bucks. I’d bid on you,” she said with a sigh, “but I’m financially embarrassed these days, and Lord only knows I wouldn’t know what to do with you if I won you. I suppose I could put you to work in the rose garden out back. I know how much roses appeal to you, those secretive buds of romance.”
Though he knew she was tweaking him, it was getting on his nerves. He’d just kissed her. Darn it, she should be acting more…more, well, appreciative. And interested. After all, he didn’t go around kissing just any girl. In fact, he hadn’t kissed anybody in a long time. Nobody since her.
Maybe that was his problem. He was out of practice. He was taking it all too seriously. “I need a trashy girl to purchase me,” he said.
“Oh, yes, the only type for you.”
“Well, there’re reasons for that.”
She frowned at him. “Thanks for bringing me the cake, Tex. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go to sleep now. I’ve got to work tomorrow.”
He nodded, noting the distance in her tone. “All right, Cissy. I’ll tell Hannah you’re doing fine.”
“You do that,” she said absently, turning away.
And darn it, she didn’t even seem to notice when he raised the window. Glancing at her, he realized her thoughts were somewhere else. She’d pulled some pictures from a drawer in her nightstand, but he couldn’t see what they were. Caught between bravado and bragging, he decided there was no other way to get her attention back on him.
He jumped.
Then he waited for her to look out to make certain he was in good health, his head crooked around so that he could see her expression.
She closed the window. The lace drapes fell together.
“Damn,” he said to himself, limping toward his truck. “Even superheroes get a little applause for exiting out of windows!”
But Cissy hadn’t seemed to care, much like she hadn’t seemed impressed when he’d ridden that bull to victory, twice. Only this time, he’d kissed her for real. And pulled away fast. He hadn’t been prepared for how much he wanted to have her. The feel of her beneath him all slick and compliant in that silk had made his brain pulsate with fire! He’d had to stop himself from…
He frowned. She hadn’t seemed as rocked as he had.
So then he dove out a window. “Damn,” he said again.
She was supposed to notice.
CISSY FORCED HERSELF not to fly to the window and peer out to see if Tex was okay. That lunatic! But what could a woman expect from a man well versed in the daredevil sport of bullriding?
“You are so not father material,” she muttered, swiftly flipping off the bedside lamp and going to the window to surreptitiously peek through the lace drapes. He was limping, the creep! “That’s what you get for being so desperate to avoid my kiss,” she told his retreating form. “Now you’re only worth forty bucks.”
And he wasn’t husband material, for sure—not that she was looking to mine the fields of bachelors. But Tex had proved that she’d never be able to count on him. The man broke into her bedroom and then leaped out her window.
“I can’t trust you,” she said as he drove off. “And