style="font-size:15px;"> He leaned closer to her. “What?”
“I—I said I don’t know how to dance.”
Great. Now he was a dance instructor.
He thought about excusing himself and heading to the bar for another beer, but then the catcalls would only get louder and she’d probably end up crying, and he figured nobody ought to have to go through that. She stared at him, her liquid brown eyes making her look like a baby doe who’d wandered into a cougar’s den.
“There’s nothing to it,” he told her, stepping closer. “Just put your arms around my neck.”
When she didn’t move, he took her hands and draped them over his shoulders. She circled them around his collar, her touch featherlight. He slipped his arms around her waist, and she inched closer to him. He started to move a little, letting her get the feel of it, but she was as stiff as a fence post. It was like dancing with a two-by-four.
“Loosen up, sweetheart.” He flattened his palm against the small of her back and moved it in slow circles. He worked his hand up and down her back, rubbing the tension away, at the same time easing her closer.
“Good. That’s good. Now all you have to do is follow me. Just listen to the music and move along with it.”
Slowly she started to get the hang of it. As inept as she was, he had to admit it was a welcome relief from Shelly and Tiffany. To them, dancing was nothing more than vertical foreplay. They moved their silicone-amplified figures all over him as if they expected him to drop to the floor and have sex with them on the spot.
Not this one. She was soft and round and warm as toast, and he had the feeling that if he squeezed her too hard she just might break. She had hair the color of a paper sack, but it was the color God gave her and full of shine, and when he brushed his fingers over it, it felt as soft as dandelion fuzz.
“Am I doing it right?” she asked, staring at his chest.
“You’re doing just fine.”
“I don’t want to step on your feet.”
There wasn’t much of her, so he probably wouldn’t know it even if she did. “You won’t step on my feet. In fact, I can’t even tell this is your first time dancing.”
To his surprise, she inched closer and rested her cheek against his shoulder. Her head fit perfectly into the crook of his neck. As they moved to the music, he dipped his head a little and caught the scent of peach shampoo instead of being assaulted by a wave of cheap perfume. She sighed gently, and the last of her tension seemed to drain right out of her, leaving her warm and pliant in his arms. He ran his hands along her spine, down to the stretchy waistband of those oddball jeans of hers, then up to her neck, and she shifted beneath his hands and melted into him. It had been a long time since he’d danced with a woman who wasn’t auditioning for a roll in the hay, and it felt…nice.
Nice enough to be married to her for six months?
The thought came into his head in a flash, and just as quickly he sent it packing. She’d be horrified at the very thought of a temporary marriage. Women like this one met their soul mates in the church choir, dated for five years, then planned a wedding complete with doves, rice bags and a silver punch bowl. They did not sign a prenup, get married at the Elvis Memorial Wedding Chapel in Vegas, then spend their six-month anniversary getting a divorce.
After a couple of minutes the song wound down. She looked at him, blinking as if she’d just awakened from a very pleasant dream. He had the fleeting thought that he might be wearing the same expression.
He started to move away from her, thinking maybe he ought to suggest that this wasn’t the place for a woman like her, when suddenly she took a double handful of his shirt and pulled him against her. She closed her eyes. “Kiss me.”
“Excuse me?”
“Kiss me.” A note of desperation crept into her voice. “Please?”
Cole stared at her, dumbfounded. But after the initial shock wore off, he realized that the thought of fulfilling that request wasn’t entirely without appeal, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why. His taste in women ran toward the experienced type, women who gave a lot but didn’t take too much and knew how to say goodbye before breakfast.
So why wasn’t he pushing her away?
A pink flush rose on her cheeks, and her chest heaved gently as she looked at him with pleading eyes. She wanted this badly. He was no stranger to women’s desires, but something told him there was more involved here than a little elemental lust.
“Look, sweetheart, maybe you’d better—”
“Would you do it for a hundred dollars?”
“What?”
“I—I hear you’re worth it.”
He almost laughed, but she sounded so serious that he caught it before it came out. “So you know who I am?”
She nodded.
Cole sighed. More proof that his legend lived on.
He took her by the shoulders and looked at her as platonically as he knew how. “Now, look. I’m not arguing the value of my services, and I don’t remember a time in my life when I turned down easy money—”
“So you’ll do it?”
“No!”
She sighed, then circled her gaze around the room. “That’s okay, I guess. There’s bound to be somebody else here—”
Cole clamped his hand onto her forearm and hauled her off the dance floor, pulling her toward the opposite side of the room. When he reached a secluded spot next to the bar, he backed her up against the wall beneath a neon beer advertisement.
“Now, listen up! It’s not a good idea to go flashing a bunch of cash in a bar full of drunk cowboys, offering to pay them to do something that’s liable to turn into something else!”
“Something else?”
Good God. How had this woman survived life so far? He stared at her pointedly.
She looked away. “Oh. That.”
“Yes, that, maybe whether you want it or not. You don’t want to tangle with some of these guys, especially the closer it gets to closing time.”
Closing time. It was a little after eight now. He’d better get a move on if he expected to make a decision on a fiancée, or it was going to be a really short engagement.
“Maybe it would be best if you headed on home,” he said. “The later it gets around here, the rowdier it gets. It’s not a good place for a nice girl—”
“Don’t say that!”
Cole stepped back, startled. Those soft brown eyes were suddenly shooting fire.
“I’m not a nice girl! I mean, I am, but I don’t want to be!” She glanced at the bartender, a six-foot-three, two-hundred-pound
