special about it on the Discovery Health Channel. Said the threat of aging makes a man do crazy things.”
“Don’t you have to be middle-aged to have a midlife crisis?” Meg had asked the old woman. “Dillon’s only thirty.”
“Maybe it’s one of them there near-death experiences. They did a 20/20 special about them last week. Said folks do all sorts of bizarre things when they almost meet their maker. Or maybe he’s having a coming-out-of-the-closet moment and he’s fighting it by trying to prove his manhood. Saw just such a thing on one of them cable channels last month. It was all about how this fella actually slept with three dozen women and fathered twenty-two young ‘uns just so’s he could prove to himself that he wasn’t buttering his bread on the wrong side. What do you think?”
“I think you spend too much time watching television. Maybe it wasn’t even Dillon over at the saloon. Maybe it was just someone who looked like him.”
“It was him, all right. Heard it straight from Evangeline Dupree, who heard it from her granddaughter, who heard it from her boyfriend who was there having his bachelor party. He swore it was Dillon.”
But Meg wasn’t so sure. Dillon at a saloon? Getting comfy with a bunch of women?
Not the Dillon she knew.
While they didn’t spend a lot of time together now—he was busy at his shop and she was busy with her customers, so they only managed the occasional lunch—she still saw enough of him to know that he was every bit as awkward around the opposite sex as he’d been back in high school.
Up until two months ago, that is.
That’s when things had changed.
When he’d changed.
Not that she’d seen the transformation firsthand. No, he’d been avoiding her, canceling their lunches, dodging her phone calls. She’d stopped by his shop to see him and put an end to all the nonsense that was flying around—there had to be a logical explanation, right?—but the place had been locked up tight. Ditto for his house. She’d even called his parents, but they’d been as confused as she was, and even more determined to hunt him down and find out the truth.
They’d been camping out in his yard for the past two weeks, trying to corner him and save him from himself.
Meg wasn’t one-hundred-percent convinced that the sex object running around town was really him and so she’d taken a less radical approach—she’d left tons of messages on his cell. But he hadn’t called her back.
Because he really was busy with his new social life?
Or because he’d left town for yet another computer seminar?
Everyone had a twin somewhere. More than likely Dillon’s had moved to the next town and his midlife crisis/near-death-experience/ coming-out-of-the-closet was simply a case of mistaken identity. One which he couldn’t disprove because he was off learning how to tweak motherboards or dissect USB switches or something.
And the picture staring back at her?
Dillon’s twin.
Maybe. Probably.
Sure, it would be great if he really had managed such a change. Then he could give her some pointers on how to nail irresistible and make it onto Tilly’s Hot Chicks list. But Meg wasn’t getting her hopes up. She knew the hazards of living in a small town. Last year Diana Trucker had been spotted buying a pregnancy test at the local pharmacy. By the time Meg had heard the news from Corny, the woman had been six months pregnant with quintuplets.
People had a way of exaggerating everything.
Which meant, until she saw actual proof of Dillon’s newfound sex appeal, she wasn’t buying one word of Corny’s gossip.
She had her own sex appeal—or lack of—to worry over.
She’d just finished an online How to Sex Up Your Image seminar in addition to several self-help classes at the local junior college—Dressing for Sexcess and How to Lick Your Lips Like You Mean It. If that wasn’t enough, she was now taking carnal Classes being offered in the lobby of the Skull Creek Inn.
At least that’s what she told herself as she showered and dressed. She didn’t want to be late for tonight’s class.
SHE HAD TO BE SEEING things.
Meg sat in the motel parking lot near the corner of the building and stared across the dimly lit walkway that ran the length of the first floor. She stared through the windshield of her Mustang and her gaze zeroed in on the profile of the man who stood in front of the doorway to room four.
He wore snug, faded jeans, a fitted black T-shirt and a pair of black cowboy boots. A black Resistol tipped low on his forehead and cast a shadow across the top half of his face. Dark blond hair curled from beneath the hat brim and brushed the collar of his shirt. He was tall and muscular and…Dillon.
She blinked, but he didn’t disappear. And neither did the beautiful woman pressed up against his back, her arms locked around his waist as she waited for him to slide the key into the lock and open the door.
A heartbeat later, the door opened and he pried the woman loose long enough to step aside and motion her into the room. She slid by him, her hands brushing his crotch before she disappeared inside.
He quickly followed and Meg was left to wonder if Corny had been right and she’d just witnessed the transformation of a lifetime. That couldn’t have been Dillon Cash.
Yes. No. Hell, no.
The next few minutes were spent debating between the three as she gathered up her purse and Pleasure Manual, climbed from the front seat and headed for the hotel lobby.
She didn’t mean to slow down, but she couldn’t help herself. She paused briefly at the door to room four, but the only sound she heard was the frantic beating of her own heart.
2
“LET’S DO IT RIGHT NOW,” the soft, breathless voice slid into his ears and sent a burst of yeah, right straight to his brain. “Please.”
Dillon Cash stared at the woman who’d preceded him into the motel room, her eyes gleaming with a mix of passion and desperation. He barely resisted the urge to pinch himself.
No way was this happening.
This was Susie Wilcox, a former Homecoming Queen and now the hottest divorcée in Skull Creek, according to the local paper and Tilly Townsend who’d given the sexy blonde the number one spot on last year’s Hot Chicks list.
Rumor had it Susie was a shoe-in for this year’s list, as well.
She had long, silky hair. Legs up to here. Breasts out to there. Her tiny waist begged for his hands and her heart-shaped ass made his mouth go dry. She’d been the star of his wettest dreams back in high school, and a few dozen erotic fantasies in the twelve-plus years since.
She was everything he’d ever wanted in a woman and she was here.
