if he sensed her attention, he lifted his head. He tilted the brim of his hat back just a hair and his gaze locked with hers. An undercurrent of heat rushed between them. Awareness rippled along her spine and her senses came alive.
The scent of smoke and leather and beer teased her nostrils. The slow, seductive twang of a Kenny Chesney song filtered from the overhead speakers and slid into her ears. The sweet taste of Dr. Pepper lingered in her mouth and she flicked her tongue along the plump fullness of her bottom lip. Her breaths came quicker and she became acutely aware of the tight lace of her bra against her suddenly ripe nipples.
He grinned, just a slow, lazy tilt to his lips, but it was enough to make her mouth go dry. A burst of heat washed from her head to her toes, and left every inch in between panting for more. Her skin grew itchy and tight.
Forget measuring up. He’d already surpassed her expectations, and with nothing more than a glance. Understandable. He wasn’t just a face on a movie screen or a red-hot image spicing up her thoughts. He was flesh and blood, and he wanted her back.
Interest gleamed in his gaze, as vivid as the blue neon Bud Lite sign that hung just to his right. He was intrigued, all right. And turned on. And he definitely seemed as if he wanted her.
As much as she wanted him.
She took a long drink of her Dr. Pepper and tried to get a grip on the fierce lust raging inside of her. An emotion the likes of which she’d never felt before.
Then again, it only seemed fitting that what she felt right now would be different from anything in her past.
She’d expected different.
She’d anticipated it.
Because today was a new beginning for Holly Farraday.
It was her first official day in Romeo, Texas.
Up until last week, she’d been running her home-based gourmet dessert business, Sweet & Sinful, out of a sizable apartment in Houston’s Galleria area. She’d been right in the middle of lamenting her lack of oven space—she desperately needed a third commercial oven to accommodate her growing customer base—when she’d received the phone call informing her that her grandmother had passed away.
Her grandmother. As in a flesh and blood relative. A family that went beyond her own mother who’d died in a car accident when Holly had been eight years old.
Holly’s heart paused and disbelief rushed through her yet again. Her mother, while loving and caring, had been very closemouthed when it came to family. Jeanine Farraday had been a runaway, determined to break away from her own mother and her small-town past. She’d never spoken of either, despite her daughter’s endless questions.
And so Holly had always wondered. Why had her mother run away? Why had she kept running?
Holly had longed for answers. Even more, she’d yearned for even the smallest connection to anyone beyond her mother. Now she had one. Her ancestors had lived right here in Romeo for the past three generations after immigrating from Ireland.
A tradition that Holly intended to continue thanks to Red Rose Farraday who’d left her a small spread on the outskirts of town.
Excitement rushed through her and her heart pounded faster. A real home. A first for Holly who’d been on the run with her mother for the first eight years of her life, and in and out of the foster care system thereafter until she’d turned eighteen. She’d been on her own ever since. She’d worked her way through college and struggled to make something of herself.
It had taken her eight years and a lot of hard work, but she’d finally graduated from the University of Houston with a business degree. She’d spent the next two years working as a pastry chef and trying to save enough money to start her own business. She’d come up short, but with the help of a grant—she’d applied for so many loans and grants that she still couldn’t remember the source—she’d been able to buy her equipment and bank six months of living expenses. She’d quit her job and launched Sweet & Sinful. She’d started with five basic aphrodisiac desserts—Ultimate Milk Chocolate Orgasm, Warm Fudge Foreplay, Strawberry Sinsation, Cherry Body Bon Bons and Ooey Gooey Ecstasy—a simple, but tasteful Web site, and a desperate prayer for success. One that had been answered. In three years, she’d managed to add to her dessert list, expand her Web site and actually net a very substantial profit.
While Holly had made something of herself and come a long way from the days when she’d been cold and hungry and penniless, one thing hadn’t changed. The isolation she’d felt since her mother—her last living relative, or so she’d thought—had died. The loneliness. The strange feeling that something was still missing from her life.
Until now.
She’d spent the past five years building her business and now it was time to build herself a real home. She wanted to settle down, plant her roots and make some real friends for once in her life.
And so she hadn’t even considered the offer made by a nearby neighbor to purchase her grandmother’s place. Instead, she’d signed all of the appropriate papers just that afternoon and was now the official owner of the Farraday Inn, an ancient farmhouse that stood just outside of town on fifty acres of rich, green pastureland.
She’d learned from the lawyer that the house had sat empty for the past ten years—since her grandmother had checked herself into a nursing home because of the heart condition that had eventually claimed her life. But no amount of dust or cobwebs could dissuade Holly from taking up residence. She might be a big-city girl with an addiction to shopping, but she could forego easy access to Neiman Marcus and Saks in the name of home and hearth. She’d watched The Simple Life. Country living had its own charm and so she’d mapped out a viable plan for relocating her business and her life.
She intended to use the second story as her personal living quarters. She would operate her business from the first level, using the downstairs bedrooms for storage, packaging and shipping rooms. The cooking itself would be done in the monstrous kitchen that would be more than big enough to accommodate the extra commercial oven Holly intended to purchase just as soon as she set up shop.
A real home.
Definitely cause for celebration.
She’d meant to have herself a big piece of chocolate cake or maybe an extremely fattening hot-fudge sundae to celebrate. But the local diner had already closed and the only thing open in Romeo on a Friday night was The Buckin’Bronco Dance Hall, a crowded honky-tonk just this side of the railroad tracks, and the Dusty Saddle Saloon—a tin barn with a hay-strewn floor, a dozen mismatched tables and chairs, a big-screen television, a pool table, a juke box and an ancient-looking bar. She’d opted for the smaller, more intimate setting of the saloon and a soda.
She hadn’t counted on the cowboy or the need that blindsided her and turned her upside down and inside out.
She wanted him.
Twenty-four hours ago she would have acted on the feeling. Before Holly had washed her hands of temporary relationships. She’d had too many people come and go in her lifetime and she wasn’t about to add one more to the list.
But man-o-man… He was hot.
“Now there’s a hottie if I ever saw one,” a voice echoed as if reading Holly’s thoughts.
Holly’s
