that she’d been saved from the biggest mistake of her life when her friend dumped Mitch at the altar. She’d used loyalty as her reason to turn down all of Reece’s advances after that. Not that there’d been too many. A few weeks of phone calls, one or two in-person date requests. Then poof, he went away. Just like she’d wanted.
A shame, really. He was so delicious to look at. His white Stetson cast a shadow over wavy black hair, midnight-blue eyes and a chiseled jaw. All-masculine hotness.
Their gazes met. In his eyes she saw both desire and assessment. The unspoken message was that he wanted her like hell, but he didn’t like it.
Sierra’s shoulders stiffened at the judgment. But that didn’t stop her body from going into instant lust mode. For one second, she wished the picture of her face pasted on the woman using the sex swing could be real if Reece was the guy she’d be swinging with.
Then he opened his mouth and, as usual, ruined everything.
“I hear you’re doing a little modeling on the side,” he teased in his slow, easy drawl.
Telling herself it was fury and not embarrassment she was feeling, Sierra swung around on the stool to glare at Belle. Unrepentant, her friend just shrugged and topped off her half-full margarita. “I thought we could ask Reece what he thought. You know, get a little advice. Maybe some help.”
“I don’t need help,” Sierra claimed, gritting her teeth as she stretched her mouth into a fake smile.
“If you need the police, you need help,” Reece said easily.
“I didn’t need the police,” Sierra returned precisely. She hated that whenever she was around Reece, she felt the need to argue. And win. The need to win was almost overwhelming. But their verbal sparring was like an addictive foreplay. Every time they went up against each other, she got turned on, insanely hot for him. No. Not smart. She needed to stay away from the arguing.
“If you wanted to do a sex pictorial you should have given me a call,” Reece said, patting her shoulder to let her know he was teasing. Sierra’s first reaction was to pull back so she couldn’t feel the heat of his hand on her bare skin. But she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction. Even if the look in his eyes told her he knew.
“There is the one shot with a goat,” she returned, determined to hold her own. “It did remind me of you.”
“Horny?”
Sierra gave a wicked smile. “Knock-kneed.”
Belle gasped, then slapped her hand over her mouth when Sierra glared at her. Mitch, ever the gentleman, mumbled something about checking the barbecue and left.
Reece, though, didn’t bother to hide his amusement. His laugh bounced off the walls, his white teeth flashing.
God, did nothing get to the guy? It didn’t seem to matter what she said or did, he just came back flirting.
She wanted him to act indifferent. She could handle that. She hated his flirting. It ignited a deep, desperate need inside her to flirt back. But, no. He had to do the one thing that was hardest for her to resist. He was the most frustratingly sexy, irritatingly tempting man she’d ever known.
He worried her even more than the creepy stalker pictures.
“Cops wrote up a report?” He said it as if it were a question, but they all knew it was a statement. Reece was Mr. Security. He’d spent ten years in the army, and while Sierra would rather actually do that goat than admit it, the idea of him in his sexy Green Beret uniform had fueled more than one bunny-bout, a term she’d coined in honor of her rabbit-eared vibrator. Now he ran his own security firm.
So he obviously knew his stuff. Which was fine, except Sierra didn’t want him mixing his stuff with hers. But—she shot a quick glance at Belle’s concerned expression as she scooped black beans into a bowl—she might not get a choice. At least not if she didn’t want to worry her best friend.
Caught by the bonds of friendship, Sierra just shrugged and gave Reece a breezy look. “Sure, the police wrote a report. But that was just for form, you know? Poor taste and tacky sex fetishes aren’t a crime, as I’m sure you know.”
His blue eyes sparkled in wicked delight at her dig. Sierra’s lips twitched, but she kept her expression smooth. No point letting him know she was tickled that he’d understood her humor.
“They asked you for a list of suspects?”
“Of course.” At his pointed look she rolled her eyes and shrugged. “I have no suspects. If I had a clue who was doing this, I’d go beat them over the head with their own computer.”
“Ex-boyfriends, old lovers, new lovers. Guys you’ve jilted, guys you’ve scorned, guys you’ve shot down?”
“Oh yeah, the list was pages long,” Sierra said with a wideeyed expression as she pursed her lips in a way she knew would get his attention. “I was with four different guys last week, but since the Galaxy soccer team is on the road, they figured it wasn’t them.”
Mitch, who’d just returned, gave a snort of laughter. Reece just shot her a long, considering look. There was something latently violent and predatory in his eyes that made her breath catch. She refused to squirm, though.
Sierra shrugged at Belle’s hiss. So what if it was all bullshit. She wasn’t going to discuss her sex life with Reece. Duh. She obviously wasn’t doing a soccer team. And she wasn’t about to admit she hadn’t had sex or anything approaching a relationship since she’d slipped up and given in to lust two months ago. Belle had been handling the grand opening of Mitch’s resort—their biggest job to date. It had quickly gone from a standard event to a sexfest of planning fun, with a little twist of sabotage. Nobody could say Eventfully Yours didn’t go all-out for their clients. In her attempt to distract Reece from discovering Belle sneaking around Mitch’s office, Sierra had lost control of her argument with him and they’d ended up doing the nasty.
Just another reason to stay away from him. She never triumphed in their little verbal skirmishes. Even when she won.
The memory of their against-the-wall encounter made her squirm, her silk panties growing uncomfortably warm. Needing to cool off, she grabbed her margarita and drained the deliciously icy concoction in one gulp.
Letting the sugar-laden tequila calm her, she met Reece’s eyes with a raised-brow look of her own.
No. He didn’t need any encouragement. After all, she knew firsthand how little stroking his…ego required to expand to mammoth proportions.
REECE’S FINGERS gripped the neck of his beer bottle so hard it should have shattered. Even though he knew she was giving him a bad time, the idea of any guy’s hands on Sierra’s body made him crazy. Any guy but himself, of course.
Although from the way the sexy little brunette was glaring daggers at him, he didn’t figure he’d be putting his hands on her anytime soon.
He’d never met a woman who challenged him like Sierra did. What baffled him was that she was totally not his type. Reece liked his ladies sweet and biddable. Before ending his disastrous eighteen-month marriage three years ago, he’d pictured himself settling down someday with a sexy little gal who wanted nothing more than to make his life easy, his bed hot and his future kids well-behaved.
