“How do you know I don’t have a spare set?” she retorted.
He gazed directly into her eyes, a look he’d perfected in the courtroom. It commanded total honesty. “Do you?”
She hesitated, then sighed. “No. And just for the record, I resent like crazy the fact that you manipulated those keys out of my possession.”
He grinned. “I didn’t wrestle you for them, Gina. You handed them over so I could drive.”
“Right, after you gave me some very sincere hogwash about how you’d been just dying to test-drive a car like my mother’s.”
“You bought it, didn’t you?”
“Long enough for you to get behind the wheel,” she agreed. “Then I remembered that my mother’s car is a very nondescript Chevy with eighty thousand miles on it.”
“And what I told you was the absolute truth,” Rafe insisted. “I’ve never driven anything like it.”
Gina rolled her eyes. “Yes, that I can believe.”
He chuckled. “Do you want something to drink or not?”
“A soda,” she said finally, fanning herself with the program. “Orange, if they have it.”
The action only drew attention to the perspiration beaded on her chest. Rafe’s gaze seemed to be riveted to the exposed skin. He swallowed hard and resisted the urge to nab that program and use it to cool off his own overheated flesh.
“Lots of ice,” she added. “I’m sweltering out here.”
“Want to come with me?” he asked, forgetting all about his intention to give himself a break from her nonstop assault on his senses. “Maybe we can find some shade somewhere and cool off.”
She seemed to debate that, then finally nodded. “Let’s go.”
Rafe let her lead the way to the refreshment stand, ordered large sodas for both of them, then glanced around until he spotted a spreading cottonwood tree with a patch of shade beneath.
“Over there okay?” he asked.
“Perfect,” Gina agreed.
Seemingly oblivious to the fact that the ground was more dirt than grass, she sank down, accepted her drink, then sighed. “This is heaven,” she murmured. She snagged an ice cube from the drink, held it at the base of her throat and let it slowly melt. The water trickled across her flushed skin, then ran between her breasts.
As he watched her, Rafe’s throat went dry as a parched desert. Not even a long, slow swallow of his drink had a cooling effect. He was beginning to regret inviting Gina to leave the stands with him. Hell, he regretted accompanying her to the rodeo in the first place. It was testing him to his limits to keep his hands to himself.
He could have been in a nice, air-conditioned motel room, a beer in his hand, and all those damning Café Tuscany figures right in front of him. That’s where he ought to be, not out here on the verge of sunstroke and filled with more lust than he’d felt in the past twelve months combined, all directed at a woman who was totally untrustworthy, perhaps even more so than his own mother.
“Something wrong?” she inquired.
Her expression was all innocence as she let another ice cube melt, holding it a little lower, a little more provocatively this time. She’d stripped off her blouse when they’d first arrived, giving him a bad moment or two before he’d realized that she was wearing a tank top beneath. Between her deliberately provocative actions with that ice and the perspiration, the already revealing tank top was damp and clinging in a way that left very little to Rafe’s overheated imagination.
“Not a thing,” he claimed. “Why?”
“You look a little flushed.”
“Is that so surprising? It must be ninety-five degrees out here.”
“But it’s a dry heat,” she countered.
“Heat is heat.”
Pure mischief lit her eyes. “I could help you cool off,” she offered.
Before he could respond or guess what she intended, she upended her drink over his head. Fortunately, it was mostly water and melting ice by now, but the splash of frigid liquid against his burning skin was a shock.
Gina was already up and dancing away by the time he caught his breath. Rafe was on his feet in a heartbeat, fighting indignation and—to his own surprise—laughter.
“You are in such trouble,” he said.
“Mighty tough words from a man who’s dripping wet,” she taunted. “I did you a favor. Try to keep that in mind.”
“Oh, I have no intention of forgetting what you did,” he said, regarding her with a deceptively lazy look as he halted his pursuit.
He waited until she stopped backing nervously away, gave her time to grow complacent, then moved so quickly she didn’t have time to react. He snagged her wrist and hauled her into his arms.
He captured her gasp with his first kiss, then settled in to discover exactly how she tasted, exactly how her lips felt beneath his. There was a lingering sweet taste of orange soda to her mouth, a willing pliancy to her lush lips.
Her body fit against his as if they’d been made for each other. Between the dousing his clothes had taken, the dampness of hers and the skyrocketing heat of that kiss, he was surprised they weren’t enveloped in steam.
It took a very long time—too long, by his own rigid standard of ethics—for him to discover everything he’d wanted to know about the taste and texture of her mouth. He released her suddenly and with tremendous reluctance, muttering a curse under his breath.
Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, she stared at him for a full minute and then the heat rose in her cheeks right along with a flash of temper in her eyes.
“You had no right to do that,” she snapped.
“No,” he said mildly. “You’re right. I didn’t. I’m sorry. It was a mistake.”
His admission and his apology seemed to throw her off stride.
“If you think that’s good enough to make me forget what just happened here, you’re crazy.”
Despite himself, he chuckled at that.
