“Did what?” she asked.
“Killed me.”
She tweaked a hair on his chest, drawing a sharp response. “Nope,” she said happily. “Still alive.”
“How reassuring,” he said wryly. “You must be awfully satisfied with yourself, coming over here tonight and having your way with me.”
She regarded him with an innocent expression that she managed to make look surprisingly sincere. “Is that how you think it happened?”
“I know it is.”
“Are you complaining?”
“Even if I had any breath to spare, I wouldn’t complain,” he assured her. “You were everything I imagined and then some.”
“Does that mean we can keep doing this?”
Try to stop it, he thought. “I don’t see why not,” he said, careful as he tried to gauge her mood. It seemed a little edgy, a little unpredictable.
“Now?” she inquired.
Wade feigned a moan.
“Are you turning me down?” she asked, wiggling against him.
He laughed as his body responded. “Guess not.”
Satisfied with a job very well done, Lauren showered and scooted down to the barn before dawn. She was coaxing Midnight out into the corral by the time Wade sauntered down a half hour later with a mug of coffee in hand.
“You were up early,” he noted as he handed her the coffee.
“I figured if I didn’t get out of there before you woke up, there was a very good chance neither one of us would get to work today.”
“Grady does owe me a few days off,” he said, giving her a deliberately suggestive once-over. “Today could have been one of them.”
“I would love to have heard that call,” she teased him, feeling amazingly comfortable with their newfound intimacy.
“There’s still time. I can make it now and we can be back in bed in five minutes.”
Lauren shook her head. “Afraid not. I have a date with another male.” When Wade’s expression immediately darkened, she gestured toward Midnight. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous of a horse.”
He shrugged ruefully. “Could be,” he said. “Don’t test me.”
She patted his cheek. “You’ll get over it, once you realize I’m all yours.”
There was an unmistakable flicker of alarm in his eyes. Determined not to let it linger, she quickly added, “As long as all you’re after is a quick romp in the hay.”
His gaze narrowed. “Is that all you really want, Lauren?”
She forced out the words she knew he wanted to hear. “It’s all I really want.” For now, she amended silently.
Wade still wasn’t sure how he’d let Lauren talk him into going to this party with her. What the hell business did he have socializing with a megabucks computer genius like Cole Davis? Unfortunately, his protests had fallen on deaf ears. One thing he was learning about Lauren was that once she got a notion into her head, there was no talking her out of it. And she wanted to go to this barbecue, seemingly every bit as badly as she’d wanted to finesse her way into his bed the other night.
“Why are you resisting?” she had demanded finally. “Don’t you want to be seen with me in public?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Wade had snapped.
“Then it must be because the party is at Cole’s,” she’d guessed, hitting the nail on the head on the first real try. “Have you even met him?”
“No, we’re not likely to travel in the same circles,” he’d said wryly.
She’d given him a pitying look. “Is that so? Who serves you dinner at Stella’s more often than not?”
He’d stared at her blankly. “Are you talking about Cassie?”
She’d nodded. “Cassie Davis, Cole’s wife.”
Wade had been stunned. “Cassie is married to Cole Davis and she’s waiting tables in a diner? You have to be kidding me. What kind of man—”
Lauren had cut him off, grinning. “Don’t even go there. It drives Cole crazy, but Cassie loves her job. She pretty much told him he could complain from now till doomsday, but she wasn’t giving it up,” she said proudly, then studied him with a penetrating look. “Still think you won’t fit in at this party? Grady and Karen will be there, too.”
“Okay, fine,” he’d grumbled, defeated.
Now, as he turned his truck into the long driveway that led up to a sprawling new ranch house, his second thoughts came flooding back. The house had soaring panels of glass and the kind of custom details that could be spotted even from a distance. The home he’d grown up in would have fit in one tiny alcove of this place. Even Grady’s spacious house was small by comparison.
Before Wade could get all of his defenses firmly in place, Lauren was tugging him into the middle of a throng of people, introducing him to a group of women she referred to as the Calamity Janes, her best friends from high school. He already knew Cassie and Karen. To his surprise, Gina Petrillo from Tony’s Italian restaurant was another of them. And that attorney he’d met at the Blackhawks’ one morning, Emma Hamilton, was the fifth.
He realized Lauren was regarding him with amusement. “What?” he asked.
“Feeling better? You already know half the crowd. They’re not that scary, are they? Now, let’s go for broke and I’ll introduce you to the men.”
Wade studied the cluster of males around the barbecue with surprise. Looking at them, it was impossible to tell which ones had money and which did not. They were all wearing faded jeans and T-shirts and well-worn boots. If he’d had to hazard a guess, he would have said they were all in the same income bracket he was. All except one, anyway. His jeans actually looked as if they’d been pressed at the dry cleaners and though his shirt was western in style, it was as starched as any dress shirt hanging in Wade’s closet. He pegged him right off as the wealthy Cole Davis.
To his astonishment, he was flat-out wrong. Davis was in the same well-worn cowboy attire as the rest of them. The man in the fancier duds was Rafe O’Donnell, Gina’s
