Roped In. Crystal Green

the thought of accepting Russell Alexander’s interest in the Slanted C, even though it made him feel beaten?

      Because Shane couldn’t admit that he was down before the fight had even begun, couldn’t allow everyone to already see him for the failure his father had always accused him of being.

      The band had paused in their song list, and the lead singer apologized, saying they had a broken guitar string. He chattered to the crowd about all the costumes he saw in the room while they waited for a replacement guitar.

      Shane knew it was now or never with Nicki. Damn it, she was his neighbor, and he couldn’t let things stand as they were, so he caught up to her at the side of the band’s stage.

      “Nicki…”

      It was obvious that she’d been stewing on their conversation, and she launched into another question right away.

      “Just why are you back in Pine Junction, Carter?”

      Her light green eyes were filled with anger, and somehow, he was responding to that passion, a thrust of need bolting straight to his cock.

      But this was Nicki Wade. What did his cock have to do with it?

      A girl like her wouldn’t like it temporary and wild, and that was just how he always wanted it—without strings or commitment. You couldn’t get freedom in a relationship, and he’d never been the type for one of those, anyway. Not after what he’d seen his mom go through with his dad.

      Nicki kept at him. “You can’t come back into town and start passing judgment on those of us who’ve gone through the ups and downs of living here.”

      “You’re right.”

      He didn’t tell her why he’d left, though. There was no reason for him to explain the reasons he’d run off, because that last day with his father had been the point of no return. He’d finally hit the man back while defending his mom, and she’d had no choice but to ask Shane to leave.

      “He’s much easier to live with when you’re not here,” she’d said, brokenhearted at the choice she’d been forced to make.

      And Shane had gone, just as broken, himself.

      “I apologize, Nicki.” He paused, then added, “And I’m sorry about your parents, too—the car accident. They were good people.”

      He’d admired her family and how they were so loving that they even embraced their employees as their own. Shane had never had that. Not even close.

      She looked just like he did most mornings in the mirror: at the end of her rope, having gone through every possible idea to keep the family legacy running strong.

      As she took in his apology, she nodded stiffly.

      It was beyond him to go away with her in such a state. “I just keep seeing the little girl on the W+W riding around on her first pony near our property lines. And I don’t want her to get hurt by a huge corporation like the one that’s coming into our midst tomorrow.”

      Even under her tanned skin, she seemed to blanch. Somehow he’d offended her again.

      “You think I can’t handle some businessman? You still believe I’m some little girl who…?”

      “Hey, I didn’t mean to say—”

      Her voice took on some steel. “You really don’t know much about me at all, do you?”

      With that, she turned around, leaving him near the stage.

      He watched her walk away. Hips. Skin. Heat on a hot autumn night.

      And Shane kept watching her until he had to shake himself out of it. He shouldn’t be thinking about Nicki Wade.

      He shouldn’t be thinking about anything other than every woman in the room who might like to spend some time with an outlaw tonight in a hideaway, where he could forget just about everything else for a few precious hours.

      HOW COULD SHANE CARTER just amble back into town and rile her up like this?

      God, all Nicki wanted to do was show him he was wrong…and to make him see her.

      Every bit of the woman she had become while he’d been away.

      She watched how the girls in the room—brides, dark seductresses, even a slave Princess Leia—gravitated toward Shane now. It was just as it’d always been with him—he moved toward the edges of the dance floor but stayed off of it altogether, as if outlaws never danced.

      Whatever the case, she didn’t want to stand around until he inevitably changed his mind and scooped a girl into his arms, making his choice for the night. Even picturing him with another woman turned her stomach.

      Why, though? What was he to her?

      Nicki made her way across the room, to where her ride, Manny, was raiding the buffet table, stacking biscuits, cornbread and cookies into a network of large paper napkins.

      “Hey, Manny.”

      Her thirtysomething ranch foreman turned around, offering a gap-toothed smile. It complemented his “costume,” which consisted of him sticking some straw into his beat-up Stetson and calling himself a “scarecrow.”

      Nicki glanced at his overloaded napkins. “I’m ready to go home whenever you are.”

      “Any time,” he said, grabbing another stack of corn bread and piling it on the rest. “Just came here for the grub, anyway.”

      “Thanks, Manny.” She would leave a message on Candace’s cell phone to tell her she’d left. Candace had planned to stop drinking after one champagne and drive their pickup home, anyway, so it wasn’t as if Nicki was stranding her.

      She could tell that Manny was trying not to check out her costume, but he sure had a bit of a brotherly frown on his face. Any employee on the ranch would probably be doing the same if they saw her, and Nicki just wanted to get out of sight before too many got the opportunity.

      Manny fetched a couple of beers from an ice-filled aluminum tub for good measure and stuck them under his armpits before they left the ballroom, going out of the Grand Hotel’s Old West lobby, with its scarred cherry wood furnishings and oil portraits of the town’s founding fathers.

      After finding his blue pickup, which featured cloudy areas where the paint had faded, they hopped in. Nicki left that message with Candace on her voice mail, telling her that she would be waiting up with the company of a good book in her room if there was anything exciting to talk about.

      Soon enough, she and Manny were at her two-level colonial ranch house that had seen much better days, its white facade in need of paint just as much as Manny’s truck.

      Nicki hugged him good-night then got out. The porch protested under her footsteps as he drove away toward the employee cabins.

      She went to her second-floor room, realizing that she was tired—too tired to even read or wait up for Candace. Not bothering to turn on the lights before taking off her ankle-high saloon girl boots, she fell forward onto the bed.

      Resting her forehead on her arms, she started to chide herself for leaving the party. What she should’ve done was stayed, showing Shane Carter that a mild confrontation with him wouldn’t ruin her night, even if it had.

      Damn it—she and those books. She and those dreams. What was it about Shane that had the power to resurrect them tonight? Books were supposed to let her escape, not bring everything into crummy focus.

      Her mind couldn’t stop meandering back to Shane in that outlaw outfit, though. To make matters worse, her anger at him boiled her blood even now, heating her up in a way she didn’t want.

      Even so, she ached, deep in her belly. She felt the needled pressure of desire between her legs, just from picturing him as that long, tall shadow in the saloon doors, pausing there as he saw his saloon girl waiting by the bar.

      Wrong.