that many women who want to live in the back of beyond with a lot of cows.”
“Exactly what are you looking for?” she asked him. “What do you want a wife to do?”
Marty hesitated. Then he shrugged. “No point in sugar-coating it,” he said. “I work long hours, mostly outdoors. I need someone to keep my house clean and in good shape, wash and mend clothes, make meals and take care of my daughter. Maybe plant a garden in the summer and help with the stock sometimes.”
Her eyes widened. “I’m willing to work and I like to cook but you might have to teach me a few things about gardening and animals.”
So she was a city girl, just as he’d suspected. “I could do that.”
“How old is your daughter?”
“She’ll be five next June. Her mother passed away two years ago and—” The expected pang of grief and guilt clutched at his heart as it always did, and he suppressed the flood of emotion that threatened. “—and she really needs a woman’s hand,” he finished quietly.
Juliette nodded, her face serious and sympathetic.
Marty shrugged his shoulders, wishing he were another man in another time, meeting this woman without all the baggage that came with his life. Then he immediately was overwhelmed by guilt. How could he even be thinking stuff like that when he’d once promised to love Lora forever? Until death. He wanted to squeeze his skull between his palms until all the contrary notions settled down. “It doesn’t sound very attractive, I know—”
“It does to me,” she said.
He stared at her. “It does?”
“I think I’d like being a housewife.” She smiled. “That is what you mean, right?”
“Yes. Although I think the politically correct term today is ‘domestic engineer.”’
She laughed. “I like the sound of that.” Then she glanced at her watch again. “I’d better be getting back to work.”
“Afraid you’ll get fired?”
She smiled serenely. “No. I’m a good sales-woman.”
“Do you like it?”
She shrugged. “It’s a job. One of life’s necessary evils.”
“Unless you marry me.” Spoken straight out like that, it sounded so…intimate. His mind shot right to dark nights in a warm bed.
She raised her gaze to his, and for the longest moment he forgot everything around him and just let himself wallow in those eyes. Was she thinking what he was thinking?
“I really have to go,” she said softly, rising.
As she started out of the food court, he grabbed his hat and followed, taking her elbow when they reached the central walkway that led back to the rest of the mall. After the crowded café area, it seemed positively spacious.
He could feel the fragile bones of her arm beneath his fingers and the warmth of her skin. She seemed tiny walking beside him, and he acknowledged the attraction knotting his gut, making his body stir in response. His heart still belonged to Lora, but his body knew she’d been gone for two years. No question about it. “I’ll walk you back to work,” he said.
“All right.” She smiled up at him. “It’s just down this way.”
They strolled down the mall, passing specialty shops that sold jewelry from the Black Hills, apparel for women in the family way, sunglasses and leather goods.
Her feet slowed as another store on the far corner of the square into which they walked came in sight, and she paused just outside the entrance. “This is it.”
He looked from her to the displays in the windows, and into the quietly elegant shop behind her. “This is where you work?”
“This is it,” she said primly.
He felt a slow flush begin at his neck as the stirring in his jeans became a potential embarrassment. The sign proclaimed, “Hidden Pleasures,” and he could see why they wanted to keep it hidden. Juliette worked in a store that sold women’s underwear! And not just any women’s underwear. Filmy, see-through stuff, edged with ruffles and lace, cut into amazingly brief garments, trimmed in satin and velvet—underwear that made a man dream of a woman wearing it. Or not wearing it.
“Marty?” Juliette was smiling that smile that wiped out all his brain cells.
He looked down at her, feeling sheepish and embarrassed. “Sorry,” he said. “I was just a little surprised.”
She put out her hand. “Will I hear from you again?”
Would she hear from him again? Did the earth rotate around the sun? He needed to spend a little more time with her before he was sure, but he already could imagine Juliette in his home.
“How about a drink after you get off work?” he asked. “We could get to know each other a little more.”
Her smiled faded and anxiety carved a little crease in her brow. Then it cleared. “Well, maybe just one short one,” she said. “I have some things to take care of at home.”
“All right,” he said. “See you at—what time?”
“Seven. I’ll meet you right here.” She turned to enter the store, then peeked at him over her shoulder and raised her fingers to wave before she walked away.
And he was damned glad her back was turned because there was no way he could control the way his body reacted to that little smile. Hastily he swung away and headed down the mall, willing himself to think of anything, everything, except women and bedrooms.
And his upcoming date with Juliette Duchenay, manager of a sexy underwear store and his potential wife.
He reappeared at twenty minutes before seven.
Juliette caught sight of Marty through the windows of the store as she rang up a purchase and bagged items for a customer. He had settled his large frame on one of the benches in an arrangement of fake trees in the center of the wide walk-through, and as she watched, he opened the bag he carried and pulled out a book.
She didn’t know what she’d expected from a man who would advertise for a wife, but Marty surely was the last man she’d ever have imagined would need to do such a thing. He was incredibly handsome. Unlike her own straight, nearly cornsilk tresses, his hair was a chestnut-colored halo with wayward curls tipped by shining gold, the color probably enhanced by the hours he spent outside on his ranch. His hat lay on the bench beside him, and there was the suggestion of a hat ring crimped into his hair.
His eyes were the purest sky-blue she’d ever seen, made even bluer by the tan that made his skin glow. He wore a heavy leather jacket, but beneath the practical jeans and Western-style workshirt his body was broad-shouldered, slim-hipped and long-legged; in short, incredibly sexy.
She’d looked over her shoulder one last time after she’d waved at him earlier and caught his back view moving off down the mall. His jeans molded his butt and encased his muscular
