Slow Dancing With a Texan
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She was mad again just thinking about it. How stupid could one supposedly smart woman be?
Her shakes started once more. She felt them move up her wobbly legs and spread across her body. Good grief.
Was her body betraying her need for Sloan? She prayed that her reaction to him was just some weird kind of delayed stress related to her crazy predicament.
Desperately wanting to regain the control and determination she’d become famous for, Lainie fought her own emotions. She was always in charge of every situation and this one should be no different. The danger was over. It was time to start thinking instead of feeling.
And all she could think of was the arousal in Sloan’s chestnut-colored eyes as he’d headed out the door? Oh dear Lord, help her. The stress must be driving her totally insane.
Lainie wasn’t the kind of woman who was normally disgusted by the thought of good healthy sex. Far from it. She’d had a couple of great experiences with that very thing in her checkered youth. But that was long ago. Besides that, she simply did not jump into bed with total strangers—not even ones who’d just saved her life.
Struggling to even out her ragged breathing, she ordered herself to stop all this idiotic emotional stuff and to start thinking. Just close her eyes, clear her mind and rationally consider her options.
When she finally managed to close her eyes for a few seconds, they popped right back open as the shaking began again. Instead of waiting for the trembling to stop this time, she focused on her surroundings, and the reality of the room hit her with a sickening rush. It stopped the shakes but gave her a headache instead. What a truly awful place to pick to hide.
Using her vivid imagination, she could tell that forty or fifty years ago these furnishings might’ve been someone’s idea of fashionable. The avocado walls, gold carpeting and dreadful flower-print bedspread looked as if they’d seen much better days.
A cheap chair, a metal rack with two wire hangers and a TV set with an old-fashioned rabbit-ears antenna were the only items besides the bed in this cramped room. The place smelled of stale cigarettes. And the heavy rubber-backed drapes over the one lone window contributed to a depressing atmosphere.
Lainie checked the bathroom and found two plastic cups wrapped in little paper jackets, a green-glass ashtray and the smallest bar of soap she’d ever seen. All of it had been crammed onto the edge of a single cracked sink.
Two yellowed towels sat folded on the back of the toilet, while the plastic shower curtain hung crookedly off its metal rings. Boy oh boy. The lap of luxury.
As much as she hated the thought of stripping down in this joint, she hated the idea of having glass slivers embedded in her skin even more. With a careful sigh, Lainie grabbed a towel and fitted it over her hair. The tiny thing wasn’t big enough to cover her head, but it would have to do while she took off her clothes and stepped into the shower.
Sloan balanced the two soda cans in one hand while he pulled the motel room key from his pocket with the other. He carefully inserted the key in the lock and waited for either the chain to stop him or for a heavy object to come flying at his head. Neither thing happened, so he pushed the door open and walked into the room.
He’d given her a full half hour, hoping that she’d use the time to calm down and take a shower. Actually, the idea of a cold shower had sounded pretty good to him when he’d last walked out of here.
The bathroom door stood ajar and he could hear the water running. Guess she’d decided a long, cold shower was just what she’d needed, too.
“Lainie! It’s me,” he called out, hoping not to frighten her.
“Wait. Hold on.”
After a few seconds the water stopped. She appeared in the bathroom doorway. And suddenly he couldn’t have moved if his life depended upon it.
Her hair had darkened with wetness and hung down to her shoulders, dripping water over her bare skin—all of that totally naked, glistening skin.
She’d apparently just stepped out of the shower, because she stood there looking up at him with an exasperated look on her face. And nothing to cover her nakedness except a postage-stamp-size towel that she was trying to spread out over her important parts.
He let his gaze shoot down her body to the long, slender legs and nearly bit his tongue. Dang, but he’d surely love to be able to touch all that soft skin. It was everything he could do just to drag his eyes back up to meet hers.
“Uh…” he stuttered. “Sorry. I thought you’d be out of the shower long ago. I can go away and come back in later.” That was…if he could force his legs to propel him out the door.
Lainie shook her head. “It won’t help. My clothes had so many specks of glass that I decided to rinse them out in the tub.” The edge of the towel slipped as she talked and she was forced to hang on with both hands. “But I’ve just realized that it’ll be tomorrow before they’re dry enough to put back on. What am I going to do?”
He could think of about a half-dozen things that she could do while she waited. And every single one of them involved him—and most of them involved the bed.
But she looked so forlorn, so annoyed with herself, that he felt a grin coming on. Sloan opened his mouth to make a smart remark but the irritated look in her eyes pulled him up short. She was the subject of his mission, not the object of his desire. And he’d better start treating her that way.
“Did you try wrapping up in the bedspread?”