e stuck out his arm like he was used to rescuing women, and she threaded her hand between his elbow and ribs. Heat seeped through her palm and warmed her pulse. “It was nice to meet you, ladies.”

“A pleasure, Vince.”

“Thanks for coming.”

“He’s as big as Texas!”

Together the two of them moved down the hall to the ballroom, and Sadie said, “My aunts are a little crazy.”

“I know a little something about crazy aunts.”

Yes. He did. “Well, thank you for coming tonight. I appreciate it.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I haven’t danced in so long, I’m not sure I remember how it’s done.”

“We certainly don’t have to dance.” She looked down at her cleavage, then back up into his profile. With his chiseled jaw and swarthy skin and dark hair, what struck her most about Vince was that he was all man. A ridiculously good-looking man. “In fact, I’m afraid to raise my arms.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to fall out of my dress.”

He smiled and glanced down at her out of the corners of his eyes. “I promise to catch anything that falls out.”

She laughed as his arm bumped hers, the brush of cotton and heat against her skin. “You’d rescue me twice in the same night?”

“It’d be tough, but I’d manage somehow.” They moved into the ballroom and walked into the middle of the crowded dance floor. Beneath the glittering prisms of the crystal chandeliers, he took one of her hands in his and placed his big palm in the curve of her waist. The band played a slow song by Brad Paisley about little memories, and she slowly slid her other hand up his chest, over the hard planes and ridges, to his shoulder. Everything in her dress stayed inside, and he pulled her close, close enough that she felt the heat of his big chest, but not so close that they touched.

“But if you have to rescue me twice in one night, we won’t be square,” she said just above the music, and his gaze slid to her lips. “I’d owe you before I leave town.”

“I’m sure you can think of something.”

How? She didn’t know anything about him. Other than his aunt was crazy Luraleen Jinks, he was from Washington, and he drove a big Ford. “I’m not going to wash your truck.”

He chuckled. “We could probably figure out something more fun for you to wash than my truck.”

She’d set herself up for that one, but hadn’t her mind been running down the same track since the first or second time she’d seen him? On the side of the highway? Her window framing his package? She purposely changed the subject. “How do you like Lovett so far?”

“I haven’t seen that much in the daylight.” He smelled like cool night air and crisp cotton, and his breath brushed the left side of her temple when he spoke. “So it’s hard to say. It seems nice at night.”

“Have you been going out?” There was little to do in Lovett at night but hit the town bars.

“I run at night.”

“On purpose?” She pulled back and looked into his face. “No one is chasing you?”

“Not these days.” His soft laughter touched her forehead. Prisms of sharp, colored light slid across his cheeks and into his mouth when he spoke. “Jogging at night relaxes me.”

She preferred a glass of wine and the entire Housewives franchise to relax her, so who was she to judge? “Before you got stranded on the side of the road Friday, what were you doing with yourself?”

“Traveling.” He looked over the top of her head. “Visiting some buddies.”

There were those in town who assumed she had a trust fund. She did not. Her daddy had wealth. She didn’t. How much wealth, she didn’t know, but she had a fairly good idea. “Are you a trust fund baby?” He didn’t look like a man who lived off a trust fund, but traveling in a big gas-guzzling truck wasn’t free, and looks got a person only so far in life. Even him.

“Pardon?” He returned his gaze to her face and watched her mouth as she spoke, which, she had to admit, she found kind of sexy. When she repeated her question, he laughed. “No. Before I left Seattle a few months ago, I worked as a security consultant at the port of Seattle. Part of my job was to identify holes and weakness in the system and report them to Homeland Security.” His thumb brushed her waist through the smooth silk. “Which meant that I dressed like regular security guards or maintenance workers or truck drivers and looked for security breaches in the container terminals.”

Knowing that someone was looking out for America’s ports made her feel safer, and she told him so.

One corner of his mouth lifted. “Just because I filled out some paperwork doesn’t mean anyone paid attention or anything changed.”

Great.

“Working for the government is a lesson in frustration.” He brushed her waist again, back and forth as if he was testing the smooth fabric against the print of his thumb. “Doesn’t matter the branch. Same shit. Different wrapper.” He folded her hand against his chest and slid his free palm to the small of her back. While the band dug into another slow song by Trace Adkins about every light in the house turned on, the unexpected pleasure of Vince’s touch spread a tingling warmth up and down Sadie’s spine. He brought her a little closer and asked, “When you’re not dressed in a Bubble Yum dress like a prom queen, what do you do for a living?” His warm breath touched the shell of her right ear, and the crease of his khakis brushed her bare thigh.

Maybe it was the wine, or maybe the exhaustion of the day, but she settled into his chest. “Real estate.” She’d had only a few glasses of merlot, so it probably wasn’t the wine. “I’m an agent.” And she wasn’t all that tired. Certainly not tired enough to have to rest against a hard, muscular chest. She should probably take a step back. Yeah, probably, but it felt good to be held in a pair of big arms against a big chest. His hand slid up her zipper, then back down, spreading all the tingling heat across her skin.

He turned his face into her hair. “You smell good, Sadie Jo.”

So did he, and she breathed him in like a tingly drug. “The only people who call me Sadie Jo have Texas accents.” She liked the way he smelled and felt against her and the way he made her heart pound in her chest, making her feel young and alive. With just a touch on her back, he did things to her body that she hadn’t felt in a long time. Things she shouldn’t be feeling for a stranger. “Everyone else on the planet just calls me Sadie.” She slid a hand to the back of his neck and brushed his collar with her fingers.

“Is Sadie Jo short for something?”

“Mercedes Johanna.” The tips of her fingers slipped across the top of his collar and touched his neck. His skin was hot, warming up the tips of his fingers. “No one has called me that since my mama died.”

“How long ago did she die?”

“Twenty-eight years.”

He was silent for a moment. “Long time. How’d she die?”

So long she hardly remembered her. “Heart attack. I don’t remember a lot about it. Just my daddy calling her name and the sound of the ambulance and a white sheet.”

“My mother died almost seven years ago.”

“I’m sorry.” Her knee bumped his. “Your memories are fresher than mine.”

He was quiet for several more heartbeats, then added, “I was in Fallujah at the time. My sister was with her when she died.”

Her fingers on his collar stilled. It had been a while, but she remembered the nightly news reports and pictures of the fighting in Fallujah. “You were a soldier?”

“Sailor,” he corrected. “Navy SEAL.”

She guessed she’d been schooled. “How long did you serve?”

“Ten years.”

“I dated a Ranger once.” For about three weeks. “He was a little crazy. I think he had PTSD.”

“Happens to a lot of good guys.” She was nosy enough to want to ask if it had happened to him, but she was tactful enough not to.

Her fingers slid into the short dark hair at the base of his skull. There was just something about a strong, capable man. Something appealing about knowing that if a girl fell and broke her leg, he could throw her over his shoulder and run twenty miles to a hospital. Or hell, make a splint out of a little mud and sticks. “The Ranger guy said that SEALs are even more arrogant than Marine Recon.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” he said next to her ear, scattering those warm tingles down her neck and across her chest. “People confuse arrogance and the truth. When President Obama ordered a counterterrorism unit to take down bin Laden, he sent three SEAL teams because we’re the best.” He shrugged his big shoulders. “That’s not arrogance. It’s the truth.” The music stopped and he pulled back far enough to look down into her face.

“We should maybe get a drink.”

A drink would lead to other things and they both knew it. Knew it by the way his green eyes looked into hers and how her body responded. She didn’t know him. She wanted to know him, though. Wanted to know all the bad things that would feel so good. If just for a little while, but she had more sense and a lot to do in the morning. “I’ve got to go.”

Purple and blue chandelier light sliced across his nose and cheeks. “Where?”

“Home.” Where she was safe from good-looking strangers with too much charm and testosterone. “I’m leaving early in the morning and I need to spend a few hours with my daddy before I go.”

She half expected him to angrily point out that he’d barely arrived at the wedding as a favor to her, and now she was leaving. “I’ll walk you out.”

“Thank you again for coming to my cousin’s wedding,” Sadie said as she and Vince moved down the hall toward the bride’s room inside the Sweetheart Palace. “I feel bad that you got dressed up for so short a time.”

“I’m not all that dressed up, and I owed you,” he said, his deep voice filling the narrow passage toward the back of the facility.

Together they entered the bride’s room, and light from the hall spilled through the door and on the rows of salon chairs and empty garment bags. Within the rectangle of hall light, her coat and overnight bag sat in one of the chairs and she moved to it. “You didn’t owe me, Vince.” She picked up her coat and looked at him through the salon mirror. The light cut across her throat and his chest, leaving the rest of the room in variegated shadow.

He took her coat from her hands. “We square now?”

It seemed so important to him that she nodded, realized he probably couldn’t see, and said, “Yes. We’re square.”

He held her coat open behind her, and she threaded one arm and the other into the sleeves. The backs of his fingers brushed her bare arms and shoulders as he helped her with the coat.

Sadie pulled her hair from the collar and looked back across her shoulder at him. Her mouth just below his, she whispered, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” His breath brushed her lips. “Are you sure you want to go home?”

No. She wasn’t sure at all. She felt him bend down the second before his mouth covered hers, warm and completely male. So completely male it was like a straight shot burning its way down her chest to the pit of her stomach. The tingles he’d ignited on the dance floor flared, and she opened her mouth. His tongue swept inside, hot and wet and good. Her toes curled in her shoes and she melted back into the solid wall of him. His arms circled her waist and he held her against him. Held her tight even as he pushed her into the lush descent of pleasure. She didn’t know if she would have resisted. Didn’t really get the chance to think about it before he turned up the heat, giving her deep, wet kisses. She tried to catch his tongue, tried to draw him deep into her mouth as her body turned hot and liquid, wanting more. More than just his tongue deep inside.

Desire curled around her, squeezing her with so much pleasure that she didn’t resist when she felt his hands slide up her waist to cup her breasts. Through the thin taffeta his hot hands turned her nipples hard and she moaned deep in her throat. A shiver worked its way up her spine, and she turned to face him.

This was all happening so fast. Too fast, and her whole world narrowed and focused on his hot mouth and warm hands, touching her breasts and softly caressing the tips of her hard nipples. His mouth continued to devour hers in hot passion and greedy hunger, and she ran her hands all over his body. His shoulders and chest. The side of his neck and through his short hair.

She was in trouble, big trouble, but she didn’t care. His warm hands on her aching skin felt good. His mouth luscious, the big erection pressed into her pelvis, hard and powerful.

He moved one warm palm to the inside of her cool, bare thigh and slipped his fingers beneath the hem of her short dress. His mouth slid to the side of her neck. “You’re beautiful, Sadie.” His mouth opened on the side of her throat and his hand moved between her thighs.

She gasped as he cupped her crotch through the lace and silk of her panties. This wasn’t happening. This shouldn’t be happening. She shouldn’t let this happen. Not here. Not now.

“You’re wet,” he said against her throat.

Liquid heat, fiery and intense, poured through her veins, and her whole world was reduced to Vince’s hot mouth on her throat and his fingers pushing aside the tiny scrap of lace and silk.

She moaned and her head fell back.

“Do you like this?”

“Yes.” She had to stop him. Now, before there was no stopping. He parted her flesh and stroked where she was slick and wet inside and... “Oh God.”

“More?”

“Yes.”

“Wrap your legs around my waist.”

“What?” She was mindless. Mindless to anything but his pleasure-giving hand.

“Wrap your legs around my waist and I’ll fuck you against the door.”

“What?” She opened her mouth to tell him they couldn’t do anything against the door. He had to stop. Stop before—“Oh God,” she moaned as a rush of liquid fire grabbed ahold of her and burned her up from the inside out. “Don’t stop, Vince.” It started between her thighs and spread across her flesh. Her head spun and her ears rang as hot wave after hotter wave of intense orgasm slammed into her. “Please don’t stop.” She squeezed her thighs around his pleasure-giving hand. Her body pulsed with pure lust, over and over; it rushed across her skin until the last ounce of the hot pleasure flowed from the tips of her fingers and toes. Only then did she slowly become aware of where she was and what she’d just allowed to happen. “Stop!” She stepped away. “Stop!” She pushed at his hands and chest. What was she doing? What had she done? “What are you doing?”

“Exactly what you wanted me to do.”

She tugged her top up and the hem of her dress down. This was her cousin’s wedding. Anyone could have walked in. “No. I didn’t want that.” Thank God she couldn’t see his face and he couldn’t see hers.

“You just begged me not to stop.”

Had she? “Oh God.”

“You said that a couple of times, too.”

The burning in her cheeks spread to her ringing ears. She closed her coat over her dress and grabbed her overnight case. “Did anyone see us?”

“I don’t know. You didn’t seem too concerned about that a minute ago.”

“Oh God,” she said again, and raced from the room.

Sexual frustration pounded Vince’s head and groin. Was she really leaving? When he wasn’t finished? “Wait a minute!” he called out as the tails of her coat disappeared from sight. He stood in the bride’s room in some wedding place in Texas with a huge hard-on. What the hell had just happened? He’d hardly touched her, was just getting into touching her, and she’d gone off.

“Shit.” He let out a breath and looked down at himself, at the tent in the front of his pants. He’d known she’d be trouble. He just hadn’t figured her for a dick tease. Not after she’d shoved her body against his chest on the dance floor. Not after she’d looked up at him like she was thinking about sex. He’d been around enough women to know when they were thinking about getting naked, and she’d been thinking about it plenty.

He sat in a salon chair, adjusted himself to the right, and then leaned his head back into the darkness. He couldn’t leave. Not quite yet. Not until he wasn’t leading with a hard-on. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had his hand up a girl’s dress and she’d left him throbbing and alone. High school maybe.

Earlier, when he’d pulled her close so he could hear her over the band, she’d just melted into him, reminding him that he hadn’t had sex since he’d left Seattle. By the time they’d entered the room alone, he’d been half hard and he’d acted on it. He wouldn’t have kissed Sadie if he hadn’t looked into the mirror, into that slice of light cutting across her pretty mouth and incredible cleavage that had been riding his chest. So maybe it hadn’t been one of his finest ideas, but she hadn’t exactly objected, and he’d gone from half to fully stiff in less than a second.

He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. Through the darkness, he looked down at the toes of his loafers. She hadn’t owed him sex, but if she hadn’t wanted to go heels to Jesus, she should have stopped him before he slid his hands to her full breasts. She was old enough to know where kissing and having a man’s hand in her panties ended. She was old enough to know it ended in both people getting something out of it. And yeah, this probably wasn’t the best place to get naked, but there were hotels in town. He’d seen them. He would have let her take her pick, but instead she’d run off like her tail caught on fire. Leaving him with nothing but a hard-on. Nothing but frustration. Nothing. Not even a thank-you.

The light flipped on and Vince looked up as a girl in a Bubble Yum dress walked in. She had long tubes of blond hair pinned about her head. She stopped in her tracks and her eyes widened. One hand went to the top of her strapless dress and she gasped. “What are you doing in here?”

Good question. “Meeting someone.” Vince was used to thinking quick and coming up with plausible lies. He’d been trained to give up just enough information to pacify interrogators. “But I guess she must have left.” He also knew how to change the subject and pointed to her dress. “I see you’re in the wedding.”

“Yeah. My name’s Becca, what’s yours?”

“Vince.” He still didn’t want to risk standing and scaring young Becca.

“Who were you meetin’?”

“Sadie.” The dick tease.

“I just saw her leaving.” She sat in the chair next to his. “She stood you up.”

In ways he didn’t want Becca to know about, which was why he stayed seated.

“Love sucks,” she said, then, to Vince’s horror, burst into tears. She shook her head and her curls bobbed as she told him all about her boyfriend, that dirty no-good dog, Slade. She rambled about how long they’d dated and the plans she’d had for their future. “He ruined everything. He cheated on me with that slut Lexa Jane Johnson!” Becca reached for a Kleenex on the counter behind her. “Lexa Jane,” she sobbed. “She’s as dumb as a wad of hair and been rode more than a rented mule. Why do men go for women like that?”

Instantly Vince’s erection went soft and he was almost grateful for Becca and her hysteria. Almost, but he’d never been the kind of guy who could tolerate emotional females.

“Why?” she asked again.

He figured that had been a rhetorical question. Or at the very least obvious, but she was staring at him through watery eyes like she expected an answer. “Why do men go for easy women?” he asked, just to make sure they were on the same page.

“Yes. Why do guys mess around with sluts?”

He’d never liked the word “slut.” It was thrown around too much and implied that a woman was dirty because she liked sex. Which wasn’t always true.

“Why do guys want that?”

He might be a good liar, but no one had ever accused him of being tactful. “Because some women are a sure thing and don’t play games. You know what she wants, and it isn’t dinner and a movie.”

A frown puckered Becca’s forehead. “Isn’t that emotionally shallow for both people?”

“Yes.” He placed his hands on the arms of his chair and prepared to stand. “That’s exactly the point. Emotionally shallow sex. You get in, you get out, and no one gets hurt.” He rose halfway out of the chair, and Becca burst into hysterics again. Shit. “Well, a... It was nice to meet you, Becca.” This was Sadie’s fault, and it was a good thing she was leaving town in the morning and he’d never see her again. He’d sincerely love to wring her neck.

“That’s so immature and dis-disgusting, Vince.”

It was convenient and mutually beneficial, he could have argued, but he didn’t feel like a discussion on sex and morality with Becca, and he wondered how much longer he had to sit there. Thirty seconds? One minute? “Can I get you something before I go?”

“Don’t go.” She swallowed and shook her head. “I need someone to talk to.”

What? Did he look like a girl? Or even one of those guys who liked to chat about shit? “Why not find one of your girlfriends? I’ll go find one of them if you’d like.” Not that he would actually put much effort into it once he escaped out the door.

“They’ll just tell me to get over it because everyone knows Slade’s a dog.” She shook her head again and wiped her nose. Her red watery eyes narrowed. “I want both of them to catch the crabs and die in a fiery crash.”

Whoa. That was harsh and exactly why he steered a wide path around women who wanted relationships.

“I want them maimed and mangled and I have a hankering to run them over with my uncle Henry Joe’s Peterbilt!”

A pain settled in the back of Vince’s head and he suddenly had a hankering of his own. A hankering for the taste of gunmetal in his mouth.