She quickly lowered her gaze to her own beer. She cupped her hands around the frosty mug and lifted it to her lips, making a face when she tasted it.
She looked over at Gene. They came from different worlds. He wouldn’t understand her hang-ups any more than she could understand his lack of scruples with women. She’d told a lie and now it was catching up with her. Despite the fact that he’d opened up to her, that they were getting along well together, she was still afraid to tell him the truth about herself. But would it matter—if he were gentle? She flushed.
Her eyes searched his stern expression. There was a different man that he kept hidden from the world. She caught glimpses of him from time to time, behind the sarcasm and tough facade. She wanted a glimpse of the lonely, wounded man he was hiding.
A sudden cry split the noise of people and music, and suddenly everything around them abruptly stopped.
“What is it?” Allison asked, frowning as she looked toward the bar.
He turned in his seat and stood. “Oh, boy,” he murmured. “Somebody broke a beer bottle and cut his hand half off. Dale’s new beau, Ben, no less.”
Allison got up without a word and went to the hurt man. She smiled at Dale and then at the cowboy, who was holding his hand and shivering with pain while Dale tried ineffectually to stem the flow of blood.
“Let me,” she said gently, taking the cloth from Dale’s shaking hands. “I know what to do.”
She did, too. Gene watched her with fascination, remembering how efficiently she’d patched him up. He wondered where and why she’d gotten her first-aid training. She was good at it, calm and collected and quietly reassuring. Even Dale relaxed, color coming back into her white face.
“That should do it,” she said after a few minutes of applied pressure. “Fortunately it was a vein and not an artery. But it will need stitches,” she added gently, cleaning her hands with a basin and cloth the bartender had provided after she’d put a temporary bandage over the cut. “Can you drive him to the hospital?”
“Yes,” Dale said. She hesitated. “Thanks.”
“That goes double for me,” the cowboy said with a quiet smile of his own, although he was still in a lot of pain. “I could have bled to death.”
“Not likely, but you’re welcome. Good night.”
They left, and Allison noticed that Dale gave Gene a long, hurting look even as she went out the door with her wounded cowboy. Poor thing, she thought miserably. Maybe she’d look like that one day, when Gene didn’t want her anymore.
Without sparing her a glance, Gene led Allison out onto the dance floor. “Full of surprises, aren’t you?” he mused. “Where did you learn so much about first aid?”
“I had a good teacher,” she said noncommittally, smiling up at him.
He scowled down at her. “I can’t dig anything out of you, can I?” he asked quietly. “You’re very mysterious, cupcake.”
“There’s nothing out of the ordinary about me,” she laughed. “I’m just a working girl.”
“When are you leaving the Manleys’?” he asked suddenly.
She lowered her eyes to his broad chest. “Next week. I don’t want to, but I need to,” she said. “I’ve got a lot to do.”
“Where?”
“In Arizona,” she said.
“Is that where you work?”
She hesitated. “I guess it’s where I’ll be working now,” she replied. She didn’t want to think about it. Life was suddenly very complicated, and the worst of it was going to be leaving here and not seeing Gene Nelson again.
He sighed half angrily. One lean arm pulled her closer and he turned her sharply to the music, so that his powerful leg insinuated itself intimately close to hers.
She stiffened a little and he slowed, pausing to look down at her.
“Don’t fight it,” he said huskily. “Life’s too short as it is, and what we’ve got together is magic.” And with that, he caught both her arms and eased them under his and around him while his circled her, bringing her totally against him.
“Gene,” she protested weakly.
“This is the way everyone else is doing it, if you want to look around us. Put your cheek on my chest and give in.”
She knew it was suicide, but she couldn’t help her own weakness. She moved close to him with a long sigh and laid her cheek against his hard chest. Under his blue shirt she could feel the warmth of his body and the rough beat of his heart. He smelled of soap and cologne and starch, and the slow caress of his hands on her back was drugging.
They moved lazily around the floor as the lights dimmed and the music became sultry. Everyone was relaxed now, a little high from the beer and revelry, and when Gene’s hands slid down to her lower spine and pulled her intimately to him, she didn’t protest.
His lean, fit body began to react to that closeness almost at once. He felt himself going rigid against her, but he didn’t try to shield her from it. It was too late, anyway.
He lifted his head and looked down into her eyes while they danced. She looked a little nervous and uncertain, but she wasn’t protesting.
His eyes fell to her breasts, lingering on them. With a low murmur, he drew his hands up her back to her rib cage and slowly, torturously moved her toward him so that her breasts brushed sensuously against his hard chest, making the tips suddenly hard and swollen. He could feel them even through the fabric, and when she trembled, he felt that, too.
His eyes lifted to hers, and held them as his hands moved again, down, down, until they reached her hips. He lifted her gently and her
