The Cowboy's Hidden Agenda. Kathleen Creighton

“Are you nuts? It’s August. This is Arizona.”

      He didn’t argue with her. He’d find something for her to wear. She was going to learn soon enough how chilly a summer monsoon could be at seven-thousand-feet elevation.

      Instead, he opened the door and held it for her with mocking gallantry, which she acknowledged with a look that for once he couldn’t quite figure out.

      “I should never have danced with you,” she muttered bitterly as she passed him.

      To that, Bronco could only add a fervent, if silent, Amen.

      He wasn’t quite sure why he was doing it; he did know for sure it wasn’t going to make his bosses happy. But hell, he was Johnny Bronco, and if he didn’t try to hit on the prettiest girl in the place at least once tonight, people were going to think something was wrong with him.

      He placed the fourth beer bottle, now empty, on the table, lining it up precisely with the three already there, then pushed back his chair. He wove through the noisy crowd, rocking his body slightly in time to the heavy country beat, aware of the glances and smiles that followed him on his way. But his step was steady, a self-confident swagger; if he kept to his usual timetable, the effects of the alcohol weren’t due to kick in until beer number six. That was still a good two hours off. This was party time.

      McCullough saw him coming and waved him over, relaxed and jovial. Lauren turned to see who was moving up behind her, and when she did, her hair rippled across her shoulder blades like a sea of long grass when the wind touches it. Bronco saw the flare of recognition in her eyes, heard the sharp hiss of her breath. Then she was facing forward again while he traded greetings and shot the usual masculine bull with Gil.

      But he’d marked the subtle changes in her body—the stillness, the tension, a certain awkwardness that hadn’t been there before—that let him know she was aware of him in ways she hadn’t been aware of Gil McCullough. Like a mare when she senses the stallion’s presence. He felt a similar current go through his own body, like a charge of electricity—unnerving in itself, but more so because it wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t part of the charade.

      Nor could he have pretended his accelerated heartbeat when he braced his hands on the back of her chair and leaned close to her to make himself heard above the crowd noise. It was an angle calculated to give him a nice view of her breasts and the sweet valley between them, a view he’d availed himself of with more women than he’d ever care to account for. He tried to recall whether it had ever caused his pulse to quicken and his temperature to rise the way it was doing now.

      “Would you like to dance?” he growled with his lips close to her ear.

      She leaned away and turned her head to look up at him. “Do you dance as well as you ride?” She said it lightly, and both the comment and the body language were meant to be flirtatious. But somehow to Bronco they didn’t look or sound true, as if she hadn’t had much practice at it.

      Which wasn’t something anybody would have said about him. “You’ll have to judge that for yourself,” he drawled, dropping his eyelids to half-mast. He straightened, moved back a step and held out his hand.

      For a moment that seemed a lot longer she looked into his eyes, while his heart hammered against his breastbone and his knowledge of the trouble he was walking her into pulsed like a strobe light in his mind.

      Lady, can’t you tell when the wolves are gathering? Get the hell outta Dodge while you still can! Forget about that horse you want so badly. Just get in your truck and drive on back to Texas. Can’t you sense the danger you’re in?

      Then again, he thought, maybe she did sense it, just didn’t have enough experience with that sort of thing to know what it was that was making her feel so tense and edgy.

      She opened her mouth in indecision, then threw a questioning look at McCullough, who waved her on with an overdone joviality that rang as sour as her flirting did.

      “Ah hell, honey, you can go ahead. I’m an old married man.” But the look he sent Bronco carried another message: Screw this up for us, boy, and I’ll kill you myself.

      Bronco stretched his lips in a smile. “I don’t bite.”

      “Oh, well, then forget it,” she joked, giving her head an airy little flip. Her hair swept forward across her shoulder, and Bronco caught a whiff of green apples.

      She said something to him as they were making their way toward the dance floor, something he couldn’t quite hear with all the noise. He said, “Beg pardon?” and moved in close behind her, putting his hands on her bare arms. He felt her flesh twitch beneath his fingers, like the hide of a nervous horse.

      She nodded her head toward the dance floor, where the band was doing its best to organize a crowd already too boozed up for coordination into something resembling a line. “I’ve never done this before—line dancing.”

      He gave her arms a squeeze that was meant to encourage, nothing more. But he felt her heat warm him as if somebody’d turned the sun on and hit him full in the chest with it.

      “It’s easy,” he said, and even he was startled at the growl in his voice. “Just keep your eyes on the person in front of you and do whatever they do.”

      The song had started, and the wooden dance floor vibrated to the more-or-less synchronized stomping of several dozen pairs of boots. Holding Lauren lightly by her upper arms, Bronco guided her into one of the swaying, dipping, turning lines.

      “Give it a couple beats to get the rhythm,” he rasped with his lips close to her hair, and knew a moment’s light-headedness from the scent.

      She nodded and he let go of her. She fixed her eyes on the overstuffed backsides of the couple in front of her—tourists in fancy Western clothes all duded up with embroidery and fringe, and just as obviously lost as she was. After a few bars of trying her best to follow their giggling and stumbling, she looked over at Bronco, lips wry and eyes shining with laughter, and lifted her hands in a hopeless shrug.

      Without missing a beat, Bronco stepped over in front of her, at the same time guiding her into position behind him. He placed her hands on his hips, covered them with his own and held them firmly in place there as he moved through the sequence of steps, hip waggles, leg kicks and all. It took only a few beats before she was moving with him as naturally as breathing.

      Though his own breathing could hardly be described as natural. Having her there behind him, knowing she was so close, her body almost but not quite touching him, made his skin shiver and his spine contract and the fine hairs on the back of his neck lift with awareness. And that wasn’t the only thing that was lifting. The stirrings elsewhere in his body were downright uncomfortable, given the tightness of his jeans.

      His only regret was that he couldn’t see her. And yet…he could see her. With his eyes closed he watched her slender body pick up the rhythm, move with innate grace and in perfect harmony with his, her laughter like sunbeams, illuminating the pictures in his mind. Except that, in those pictures, she was naked in his embrace, and around them all was warmth and light and peace, a world in perfect harmony…

      …until the dance steps called for a pivot, and he turned but she didn’t, and he found himself face-to-face, chest to chest with her, with her hands still clamped on his belt. Her little “Oh!” of dismay was like a thunderclap. A wakeup call.

      While he stood staring at her with his fingers wrapped around her elbows and his senses in dangerous disarray, the crowd around them began to clap and whoop and holler. The line dance had ended. The band segued into a slow country standard, and after a moment’s hesitation she moved—just a little, but it was enough. Enough to bring her right into his arms.

      What could he do? He hadn’t meant to take it any further than that, but against his better judgment he went ahead and danced with her again—not only that one, but the next. But the perfect harmony he’d felt with her before was gone. He’d handled live explosives with less constraint. All the while he was holding her body close to his he kept telling himself, What in the hell were