smile teased his lips as he gestured wide with his arm and helped her in. He touched her arm as she settled herself in, unaware that his touch marked her with greater power than any branding iron could have done.
As he walked around the car she looked at her left arm expecting to see the imprint of his fingers.
What was it about Clint Marshall that reduced her to a quivering mass of want? As Clint got in the car she pulled herself together—she’d spent enough evenings wasting her time thinking about Clint. She needed to establish a professional working relationship with him, that was all. But she was curious about him.
He started the sports car and pulled out into traffic. Laura settled Sweetums on her lap and readjusted the bow, choosing her words. If she was going to spend the next four days with him, she didn’t want to offend him, but she wanted to understand him—for purely professional reasons, she told herself. She and Clint would be a team for the next number of days. “With some people the good old boy accent is so thick I can barely make sense of what you’re saying through all the y’alls and cow metaphors. But when you’re with people you like, the whole routine disappears.”
She waited. Unlike how he behaved with most of their fellow officers, Clint always turned on the Texas routine when he spoke to her.
“Darlin’, I just give the people what they want. They see a Stetson and a pair of cowboy boots and have certain expectations—especially in a big established city like this.”
She certainly understood his reasoning and she’d heard the other women gossiping often enough about the handsome cowboy. One of the very young and gorgeous female cops on the force had stated that she couldn’t imagine anything sexier than a cowboy in her bed. Unfortunately that image had stuck in Laura’s mind and she’d spent too much time fantasying about his Stetson on her pillow.
She realized that she and Clint shared a common trait: she, too, gave people exactly what they expected.
Clint passed a car and then looked at her. “Why did you bring that dog with you? Hotels have rules about not allowing pets.”
Sweetums settled herself more comfortably on Laura’s lap, drooled, sighed and closed her eyes. Luckily Laura was familiar with this routine and had her handkerchief ready to wipe away the drool before it landed on her silk suit or the soft leather of the car seat. Most Lhasa apsos didn’t drool, but after the trauma of losing her first owner the dog had stopped barking and started slobbering. She ran a hand along the calfskin. “Nice car,” she said, avoiding his question.
“The department loaned it to me. Garrow must have some kind of pull—or else his bosses are giving him a last chance. They figured a red sports car would suit our image as wealthy newlyweds.”
“It’s lovely.” Her mother’s third husband, Larry, had loved cars and spent a lot of money filling a seven car garage. Laura had liked the vintage roadsters, and was quite sad when Larry and her mother had divorced and Larry had taken all the cars in the settlement. Laura missed the cars more than she’d missed Larry. As her mother was already in love with husband number four, she wasn’t sure if her mother had noticed the absence of either.
Clint thumped the driving wheel of the red sports car. “Maybe you’re used to a useless expensive car like this but back home this car wouldn’t make it through the first pothole. You couldn’t transport anything with it.”
“Some things are designed to look good and go fast. Period. Not to haul around outhouses or maneuver around giant potholes. Maybe you should fix the roads back in Three Mule Station,” she snapped and realized she’d lost her temper, deliberately making fun of Clint’s hometown. She never, ever, lost her temper. But then again she never behaved like herself when she was around the cowboy.
“It’s Two Horse Junction,” Clint said without any heat. “I guess I prefer the practical to the purely decorative.”
She knew he meant her, but she chose to ignore his comment. The knowledge that Clint Marshall didn’t like her would not bother her. She ruffled Sweetums’s bow, schooled her face not to reveal any emotion and pretended she didn’t understand his real meaning. “Sweetums is a completely useful dog.”
“Ha! She probably couldn’t bark loud enough to call for help if someone was trying to break into your apartment.”
“I have a doorman for that,” she replied, but in truth she had been trying to teach Sweetums to bark for the past three months, ever since her neighbor, Mrs. Novak, had passed away. Laura had been the first person to enter Mrs. Novak’s apartment, alerted by Sweetums’s whining and scratching to find the elderly woman in her bed. The coroner had diagnosed heart failure. As Mrs. Novak hadn’t had any relatives, or even many friends, Laura had handled the funeral arrangements. And, unable to turn the dog over to the city pound and an uncertain future, she had taken Sweetums home to live with her.
Laura had never had a dog, or a desire to saddle herself with a fluffy white useless creature that didn’t even bark, but neither could she abandon the defenseless creature. So Laura took Sweetums home and tried to make her feel safe.
But after a month of silence, a month of the only sound of Sweetums making being an occasional pathetic whimper along with the excess drooling, Laura had taken the pooch to an animal psychologist. The therapist, after several expensive sessions, assured her that Sweetums just needed time to grieve for the loss of her mistress and to adjust to Laura. Sweetums would bark again, the doggie therapist had assured her and offered further counseling.
Laura declined and hired one of the kids in her building as a dog walker. Sometimes she worried that her long and erratic hours weren’t fair to the dog, but Sweetums was delighted every time she came home.
Laura had to admit she rather liked having Sweetums to come home to. Never before in her life had anyone ever been excited to see her come home. In fact, Sweetums made her apartment feel much more like a home.
The dog was all the company she needed. Once she got over her inexplicable lust for the cowboy her life could return to normal. She pushed away the thought that she and Clint would be sharing a hotel room for the next four nights. What if he slept in the nude? No, she wasn’t going to let her ice-princess façade chip one millimeter. Clint would never know how much time she had spent wondering what it would be like to kiss him…or anything else!
She continued playing with her dog’s bow as she snuck covert looks at the cowboy. Mrs. Novak had liked to dress up the small dog and Sweetums seemed to enjoy it, so Laura occasionally tied a ribbon on her, or dressed her in one of the many sweaters Mrs. Novak had lovingly knit for her pet. Laura had brought along Sweetums’s entire wardrobe for this assignment.
She shifted slightly in her car seat and stole another look at Clint Marshall. My, but he was a fine specimen of manhood, as Mrs. Novak would have said. And as Mrs. Schwarz had appreciated him when he had held open the door for her. Laura and all the little old ladies of Mortimer Manor would agree that Clint Marshall was the sexiest man they had ever seen.
Part of her wished that Clint found her attractive, that she could seduce him and have a passionate wild weekend. Wild, sweaty, hot sex. She would taste every inch of his broad chest that strained against his shirt, run her fingers through his dark hair, while his strong hands would caress her breasts and…she licked her dry lips.
Clint Marshall wasn’t attracted to her.
She peeked another look at Clint. How she wished she was the kind of woman who could sleep with him just once, or twice or even half a dozen times and let that be it!
Instead
