Wes Stryker's Wrangled Wife. Sandra Steffen

he asked, joining her at the bar.

      “Whoever that musician is, I’m a huge fan.”

      He slid onto the stool with the ease of a man who was accustomed to spending time in bars. “This guy’s been dead for twenty years, but I’m a fan of the yodel, myself. You really are a woman after my own heart.”

      Through the mirror behind the bar, she assessed the other patrons sitting at various tables throughout the room. It didn’t take long to size them up as lonely hearts, not troublemakers. The man sitting next to her wasn’t quite so easy to categorize. She lifted the bottle to her mouth and took a small swallow. Licking the taste of foam and barley from her lips, she said, “I’m not after your heart, cowboy. I’m not after anything, not from you, not from anyone.”

      Wes took a moment to digest the information, then slowly extended his right hand. “You can call me cowboy if you want to, but my name’s Wes Stryker.”

      “I know.”

      “You know?”

      She took another drink, shrugged. “Cletus McCully pointed you out to me at Burke and Louetta’s wedding earlier. You owe the man a dollar for all the praises he sang. Unfortunately he wasted his breath. Oh, my name’s Jayne Kincaid.”

      “I know.”

      She watched him closely, then slowly shook her head. “Cletus McCully?”

      Wes rested his forearms along the bar’s smooth surface, swirling the beer in his glass while thoughts swirled in his head. Leaning closer, he whispered, “It seems he sang a few of your praises to me, too. He mentioned that you like men with blue eyes. Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but mine are blue.”

      Jayne would have liked to be able to dismiss the whole topic with a quick, unaffected glance at his face. But his wasn’t the kind of face that allowed easy dismissals or quick glances. His four-shades-of-brown hair was brushed straight back. There were two long lines in his forehead, from concentrating or scowling, she couldn’t tell. His eyebrows were thick and had been bleached nearly blond. And he was right. His eyes were blue, and it just so happened that they were the kind of eyes a woman could lose herself in if she wasn’t careful. From now on Jayne planned to be very careful.

      “Look,” she said. “You seem like a nice enough guy, but you’re wasting your time. I was partial to blue eyes . once. My ex-husband has blue eyes.”

      Jayne watched for a sign that he’d accepted the fact that she just plain wasn’t interested. He appeared to be studying the warm beer in his glass. After a long stretch of silence, he cupped his chin in his hand and turned to look at her. Touching his glass to her bottle of beer, he said, “To blue eyes, yours and mine, and to Christmas Eve.”

      “Christmas Eve,” she said with a shudder. “The longest night of the year.”

      Wes saw a spark of some indefinable emotion in Jayne’s eyes. It hinted of battle scars and kindred spirits, and it made him even more curious. “You don’t have much in the way of family, either?” he asked. Why else would she be spending Christmas Eve in a hole-in-the-wall bar with a garish Christmas tree in one corner and a mechanical bull strung with white lights in another?

      To his surprise she said, “Oh, I have tons of family. Besides my brother, Burke, and my brand-new sister-in-law, Louetta, and little Alex, I have one half brother, two half sisters, oodles of stepbrothers and stepsisters, two parents, several sets of stepparents, one—” she cocked her head at him “—blue-eyed ex-husband and a partridge in a pear tree.”

      She lifted her beer to her lips again, shrugging as if her brand of humor wasn’t unusual. In actuality, there was nothing ordinary about her. Her hair looked thick, the tendrils surrounding her face blunt-edged, the rest unruly. The style shouldn’t have looked so damned pretty, when pretty was the last word he would use to describe her Exotic, gorgeous, sexy. Now those were words that were synonymous with Jayne Kincaid. He noticed that her hands were soft and smooth looking, and he wondered what she did for a living. She knew her way around a bar, but she was no barfly. And no matter how much family she claimed to have, she didn’t have any better place to be on Christmas Eve than he did.

      “Do you want to get out of here?” he said. “Maybe go for a drive?”

      Or back to my place? went unsaid between them.

      Jayne came out of her double take shaking her head. She was thirty-two years old, and she’d been away from the game for a long time. She was rusty, and she planned to stay that way. “Look,” she said, “I don’t mean to sound cold or impersonal, but I’m not looking for a relationship. I’m not even looking for a fling. I’m finished with men.”

      “You’re going to let one loser taint your view of all men?” he asked.

      “First of all, my husband wasn’t a loser. And secondly, my view of men isn’t tainted.” Jayne nearly bristled. She hadn’t meant to sound as if she wasn’t completely over Sherman. Maybe she wasn’t, but she didn’t want anybody’s pity.

      “Then you don’t really dislike us?” he asked with a half smile.

      Good grief. She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. All she’d wanted to do was get out of the house for a little while. Oh, Burke and Louetta. had both assured her that she was welcome to spend the evening with them, but this was their wedding night, and there were just some things that sisters, particularly newly divorced sisters, were better off not witnessing or hearing or imagining.

      “Look,” she futally said, “I dislike a few, but no, I don’t dislike all men. I’m just not going to get attached to any more of you, that’s all.”

      “You’re not?”

      “No, I’m not.” Raising one hand, she began listing on her fingers all the benefits to remaining single. “No more wondering if a man is really attending a business meeting at 1:00 a.m. No more picking up heavy suits from the dry cleaners. No more rushing home from work to spend time with a man who’s made other plans for the evening. No more trying to appease an unappeasable man, or understand an irrational one, or try to plan a meal around a picky man’s tastes. I can eat chicken seven days a week if I want to. I can sleep in the middle of the bed, and there are no whiskers in my sinks. I don’t need a man to define me, and I can open my own jars, thank you very much. And perhaps best of all, the toilet seats are always down.”

      Jayne almost felt smug. Festive, that’s what she felt. Buoyant. She’d never put it into words before, and it sounded good. It felt good. She truly didn’t dislike men. At least not most of them. She loved her brother, her half brother and stepbrothers and nephew, and her father, and stepfathers, although she had issues with a few of them. Men had interesting voices and broad shoulders and comical habits. But she didn’t need a man to define her. She didn’t need a man for anything.

      “Jayne?”

      She turned her head at the sound of her name. While she’d been lost in thought, Wes had inched closer. She could see the tiny lines feathering his eyes, the crease lining one lean cheek, the light brown whisker stubble on his cheeks and jaw. His eyes held her spellbound, his gaze dipping to her mouth and back again as he said, “What about sex?”

      The song on the jukebox ended, causing the entire room to become so quiet a person could have heard a pin drop. All Jayne could hear was the pounding in her ears, and the catch in her voice as she asked, “What about it?”

      He leaned in, slow and easy. “Are you planning to do without that for the rest of your life, too?”

      The deep timbre of his voice reminded her of a guitar string stretched tight and slowly strummed. She had no doubt the man could sweet-talk with the best of them. She should know. She’d been sweet-talked by pros. She’d also been lied to and cheated on and tossed aside, and not only by her ex-husband.

      In the background, coins jangled into the jukebox. Within seconds the first strains of “Blue Christmas” started all over again.

      She