Some Like It Sizzling. Jamie Sobrato

      “I’ll take that as a no.”

      “Hmm?”

      “Never mind.” He shook his head, smiling in spite of himself.

      She must have finished the box, because a few moments later Judd heard it hit the floor with a soft thud.

      “You know, chocolate, I think, is like sex for a woman, only better.”

      Judd raised an eyebrow. “This from a woman who claims never to eat chocolate?”

      “Hey, I just ate a whole box of the stuff, didn’t I? Besides, I have friends who eat it all the time, and I see what it does for them.”

      “And what is that, exactly?”

      She emitted an inexplicable gush of giggles. Once she recovered, she said, “It’s pure pleasure without the frustration. Like getting an orgasm every time. No worry about whether he’s going to be too fast, or too distracted, or too self-absorbed…”

      “I think you’ve had a little too much to drink. And you’ve definitely been meeting the wrong kind of guys.”

      She succumbed to another giggling fit, and Judd took note of her laughter. It sounded…nice. Not at all the throaty seductress laugh he’d imagine her having.

      “I have, haven’t I?”

      He decided not to ask if she was agreeing to one of his statements or both.

      “I bet you get a lot of crazy drunks at the ranch.” She pushed herself up in her seat and deposited an empty champagne flute in the nearest cup holder. “That must make your job more interesting—or difficult.”

      Judd had heard his brother’s stories of the guests’ antics, some of which were legendary. “Well, there was the time a woman somehow managed to get her head stuck between the legs of the cowboy statue in the cactus garden. She was, um, not wearing any clothes at the time.”

      “Not even underwear?”

      “Not even a smile.”

      “Wow.”

      “Yeah, that’s what the firemen said when they got there. And that’s how the cowboy statue came to be known as One-Legged Joe.”

      They rode in a silence occasionally broken by Lucy’s drunken giggles as Judd turned off the highway and drove along the road that led to the resort. But around the last bend they were forced to stop in the middle of the road to accommodate a pair of lovers who’d sprawled themselves across it in a sort of From Here to Eternity scene, minus the beach.

      “What the—” Lucy muttered.

      Judd wasn’t sure if she’d want to know that such occurrences were quite common, so he tapped the horn lightly and waited for the lovers to vacate the road. Instead, they kept kissing as if they hadn’t heard the blare of the horn. Judd tried again. No reaction.

      He put the vehicle in park and stepped out, approaching the couple warily in case they mistook him for a willing third party.

      “Excuse me.”

      They stopped kissing and looked at him as if he’d appeared out of nowhere.

      “I need to get past, and I’m sure you’d be more comfortable on one of the ranch’s many king-size beds,” he said with a cheesy, customer-service smile, repeating the response Mason had taught him for any situation in which a couple was getting out of hand in public.

      Without responding, the couple looked at one another and giggled, then crawled up off the road and wandered hand in hand toward the desert.

      Judd climbed back into the Suburban and gave Lucy an apologetic grin. “I think they’re about to give the coyotes an X-rated show.”

      Lucy’s eyes widened for a moment. “Does this sort of thing happen often here?”

      The wonder in her voice caught him off guard. “It isn’t called Fantasy Ranch for nothing.”

      Before Judd could put the Suburban back into drive, he heard a nervous giggle only a few inches from his ear. He turned to find Lucy leaning toward him, her face next to his, and her bleary gaze focused on his mouth. She let out a little hiccup and Judd caught the scent of champagne and chocolate on her breath.

      Her sudden nearness set his nerve endings on alert.

      “So I guess with all the crazy stuff that goes on here, you wouldn’t be surprised if I did this.”

      And that was when she kissed him.