CHAPTER NINE
Jamie
I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Not the barn version of him, though God knew that lived in my head with startling clarity.
The creek version. The one who’d sat beside me in the shade of a dozen pine trees with his hat on his knee and told me about the years of group homes and foster care like a man who wasn’t looking for sympathy.
I’d told him the truth about my last relationship. He had not been a nice man. He’d let me know in very subtle ways that I wasn’t exactly how he wanted me to be. I’d let it go on longer than I should have, looking for something. For someone, if I were honest with myself.
Maybe that was what resonated so deeply in me with Slade. We both wanted that something we’ve never had. I felt like I’d seen something real—something he didn’t hand out freely and had handed to me anyway, there by the creek, without making a production of it.
I’d never felt anything like what I’d felt with Slade Everett’s hand between my thighs and his mouth on mine. I caught myself smiling at my own reflection.
Stop.
My reflection did not stop.
I was dressed in a short-skirted dress that flowed past my curves like a Texas breeze, light and barely there.
It dipped low enough in the front to show off the swell of my breasts, and the skirt hit mid-thigh, leaving my legs completely bare.
I’d almost left it at home, but Paige had insisted.
Just as she’d insisted I needed the pretty pink boots, which totally went with the dress.
She’d also insisted I big girl up and let the cowboy have his way with me.
His full, uncensored, way with me.
Tonight, I had put on a little more makeup and washed and curled my hair. Something I rarely did anymore. I twirled around in front of the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, and smiled as my dress billowed around me.
I hadn’t felt this nervous in a very long time. Certainly not since I’d learned to keep my expectations sensible and my wanting quiet and my heart in a place where it wouldn’t get broken.
Anything that gets you in my arms, City Girl.
Those words had replaced Paige’s annoying voice.
He’d ridden out this morning with a group for a cattle branding demonstration and I’d stood on the porch with my coffee and watched him go, feeling his absence like a physical ache. I’d never felt that before about someone.
Paige was going to be so insufferable about all of this. But she was right, a woman only turned thirty once. It was time to let go of all the expectations I might or might not have. It was time to see what dancing in a cowboy’s arms felt like.
It was time to see what it felt like to be in a cowboy’s bed.
The knock came exactly on time.
Slade stood on the other side of the door, took one look at me, and went completely still.
No cocky grin from the first day. No satisfied smile from the day of the barn.
Not even the easy confidence he wore like a second skin.
Just—still, for one unguarded moment, looking at me.
He took in the dress, the hair loose around my shoulders, and my pretty pink boots, all clean and shiny.
His eyes tracked a slow, searing path from my bare legs to my neckline with an expression that did more for me in three seconds than any look I’d ever received from a man.
The nerves evaporated, replaced by a rush of liquid heat.
I looked back. I allowed myself to take it all in—the fit of his jeans, the Western-cut black shirt that had no right to define his shoulders the way it did, the broad chest and the arms. The arms that were going to be around me tonight.
“You look—” His voice dropped low and my body responded as it always did. My nipples hardened and I probably needed to excuse myself to go change my panties.
“—beautiful,” he finished.
felt that from my head to my toes.
“You clean up nice, yourself.”
The smile came then, wicked and promising. Oh, so promising. “High praise.”
“Don’t push it.”
He offered his arm. I took it, the solid muscle bunching beneath my fingertips, and we walked to the dance.
The space was perfect. A wide, open pavilion strung with fairy lights. A four-piece band was setting up on a flatbed trailer, and food tables laden with something for everyone.
Carl and Lucinda saw us coming, pleased expressions on their faces.
“You look beautiful.” Lucinda took my hands, giving them a squeeze.
“Thank you. This looks beautiful. Did you do this all by yourself?”
“Heavens, no. I work smarter, not harder. I pay someone to make it look this way.”
Carl shook Slade’s hand and said something low that I didn’t catch, and Slade said something back that made Carl smile. Slade led me straight to the dance floor and took me in his arms.
“I’ve been thinking about holding you like this all day, City Girl.”
He pulled me in, not leaving a centimeter of space between us, and we started to move as one.
Of course, he was a good dancer. How could he not be with all that athletic grace? He led with the quiet confidence he brought to everything, one arm heavy and warm against my back, his hand wrapped around mine, holding it against his chest. It was nice. This barn dance in Texas.
Or maybe it was just him holding me in his arms.
“The giraffe situation seems under control,” he said near my ear, his warm breath sending a shiver down my neck.
“Don’t jinx it.” I leaned my head against his chest, inhaling the scent of him, and let him lead me wherever he wanted to take me.
His chest moved with a low laugh. The music shifted, a lively, faster beat, and before I could protest, he moved his arm, and with one smooth, explosive movement, he twirled me out.
I gasped, the skirt of my dress billowing, the lights of the pavilion blurring around me.
Before I could even think about stumbling in my pretty pink boots, he pulled me back to him.
I was breathless at the unexpected move and before I could catch my breath, he did it again.
“Slade,” I exclaimed as he tucked me against him.
We danced through one song, and into the next and I thought about Paige telling me I only turned thirty once and what she’d meant underneath it. Which was to stop being sensible. Stop making careful choices.
She wasn’t wrong.
The band shifted into something slower, and Slade’s hand moved from my waist to the dip of my back.
His hand was large and possessive, his thumb stroking me through the fabric of my dress.
He pressed one big thigh between mine ,and I groaned as he subtly moved me against his leg.
The thick, iron ridge of his arousal pressed against my stomach.
“You feel what you’re doing to me, Jamie? ”
I stood on my tiptoes, in my pretty pink boots, and whispered against his neck. “Do you want to feel what you’re doing to me?”
He stopped. The other dancers continued to move around us, but neither of us cared.
He stared down at me, his jaw clenched. “Are you sure? Because once I get you behind closed doors, you’re not leaving. And I won’t be gentle about this. You understand?”
I kissed the edge of his mouth. “I don’t want gentle. I want you.”
He looked at me for one more moment, checking, making certain, because that was the man he was. He took my hand, and we walked to cabin nine, and I didn’t look back.