Jan Hudson - One Ticket To Texas

Or so the secretary had said.

Her stomach growled. Lunchtime.

Had she made a wrong turn somewhere?

She had no alternative except to go back the way she’d come and find a phone. After several minutes of muttering and maneuvering, she turned the car in the narrow space and retraced her route to the highway. There wasn’t a single house in sight, only thickly wooded areas interspersed with grassy fields dotted with big machines that looked like giant black grasshoppers bobbing their heads up and down.

When she reached the highway intersection, Irish turned into the parking lot of a quaint log building. The sign over the front door proclaimed: Cherokee Pete’s Trading Post. In smaller letters it said: Grocery Store, Indian Museum, and Tourist Tepees, Pete Beamon, Prop.

To the left of the log building were four large, garishly painted tepees fashioned of something that looked like stucco or cement. Irish wrinkled her nose at the tacky structures, got out of the Benz and went inside the trading post.

Not a soul was in sight. If you didn’t count the wooden fellows in feathered headdresses.

“Yoo-hoo,” she called.

Silence.

She ventured a few steps into the dim interior filled with cluttered shelves of merchandise, a refrigerated case and a long wooden bar. Toward one end of the room two tables with chairs sat near a potbellied stove, and assorted merchandise—from saddles to shovels to souvenirs and bushel baskets of sweet potatoes—filled almost every available space. “Anybody here?”

More silence.

Spooky silence.

Then a rapid rattling like distant castanets whispered through the air.

Suddenly apprehensive, she backed out of the place and closed the door quietly.

Irish stood on the long porch, feeling frustrated and contemplating her next move, when a whining noise to her right captured her attention. The sound seemed to be something like a motorbike, and it came from a log shed a few yards away from the trading post.

She headed in that direction, carefully making her way over the soft ground, tiptoeing to preserve her boots from further destruction. When she rounded the corner and could see inside the shed, she went dead still.

Her eyes widened and her heart almost leapt out of her chest when she saw the man standing there.

But this wasn’t just any man. Dressed in only a white cowboy hat, boots and low-slung jeans, he was about six and a half feet of blatant male pulchritude. The sinewy muscles of his arms and shoulders bunched and rippled as he wielded a small chain saw.

Never had a man affected Irish so immediately or so viscerally as this one did. Seductive masculinity pulsated from his core and cast an aura around him like the glow of a sizzling neon sign. She could only stand there, openmouthed and mute, and stare at him. At bits of sawdust caught in his light chest hair and at beads of sweat glistening on his spectacular pecs, on his lean, muscled abdomen where the skin glistened golden tan. His jaw was as finely carved as the huge wooden bear he worked on with the chain saw. Unbelievably handsome, he had wonderful high cheekbones, a perfect nose.

And his eyes...his eyes took her breath away as their mind-blowing blue bored into hers.

He lopped off one of the bear’s ears.

“Damn!”

He killed the chain saw and laid it aside.

Mortified by the sudden amputation she’d caused, Irish said, “Oh God, I’m sorry I startled you. Now your thing is ruined.”

“My thing?” he asked in a deep, sexy voice that resonated inside her from gut to womb to toes.

She felt her face heat. If she hadn’t known better, Irish would have sworn that she blushed, but she hadn’t blushed since she was in puberty. She gestured toward the rough carving. “The bear.”

He flashed a blinding smile that, if she hadn’t already been awe-struck, would have laid her low. He removed his goggles, repositioned his hat over his damp blond hair and patted the bear’s head. “No problem. We’ll just rename him Vince.”

Mesmerized, she continued to gape at him as all sorts of switches were being thrown inside her body. “Vince?”

His smile broadened into a grin, and her heels slowly sank into the ground. Another few minutes of this man and not only would her boots be beyond repair, but she would be a mindless puddle in the sawdust.

“Vince,” he said, his eyes as busy over her as hers were over him. “Vincent. Vincent Van Gogh.”

Her brain didn’t register. “Vincent Van Gogh?” she asked blankly.

“You know, the artist who chopped off his ear.”

“Ohhh,” she said, feeling like a dolt. “That Vince.” Her gaze went to his chest again. His gaze must have mimicked hers for she felt her nipples suddenly pebble.

Stripping off his leather gloves, he grabbed a towel that hung on a nail and swiped it across his sweaty, bare skin. “What can I do for you?” he asked as he wiped away sawdust and a particularly intriguing rivulet of perspiration that she’d been watching as it trickled downward toward his navel.

“Do for me?” What a loaded question. As she noted his long, supple fingers, she could name at least a dozen things—all of them extremely intimate—that she would love for him to do for her.

He chuckled softly, and she felt that darned heat spread over her face. “You need some help?” he asked.

“Help? Oh, yes. Er...uh, are you Cherokee Pete?”

“Nope. Pete’s my grandfather. I’m Kyle.” He tossed the towel aside, grabbed his shirt and hurriedly donned it. “Kyle Rutledge.”

“I’m Irish. Irish Ellison.”

Kyle almost said, I know, but something stopped him. In his California practice, a dozen or more women had brought him her photograph from some magazine or another, wanting her nose or her cheekbones or that lush mouth of hers. Instead, he tipped his hat and said, “Pleased to meet you, Miss Ellison. How may I help you, ma’am?”

“Could you tell me if that’s the road to Crow’s Nest?” She gestured over her shoulder.

“Yes, ma’am. That’s it.”

“Oh, dear. I was afraid you were going to say that. I’m supposed to meet Jackson Crow, but the gate’s locked.”

Well, damn it all to hell! Here was one of the world’s most gorgeous women in the flesh, one who rang his bell and had him standing to attention, and be damned if his cousin hadn’t staked her out first. As usual, Jackson was the luckiest son-of a-gun walking. “Jackson’s gone.”

Her astonishing emerald green eyes widened in alarm. “Gone?”

“Gone.”

“But—but I have an appointment. I’m supposed to spend several days at the retreat working on an article. On him and the men in the young millionaire’s club.”

“You don’t know Jackson?”

She shook her head. “Never met him.”

Kyle relaxed. His smile returned. “He and that crazy bunch of his buddies decided to go to Dallas for the Cowboys game Sunday. They’ll be back Monday.”

“But this is Friday.”

“They started the party a little early. You must have just missed them.”

“Our appointment was for a couple of hours ago. My plane was late, and I had some problems at the car rental agency.”

Kyle watched her chew the inside of her cheek and look worried. He had a fleeting urge to go after Jackson with an ax handle for causing those furrows to form between her perfectly arched eyebrows. “I wouldn’t let it upset me. Jackson will be back Monday—if he’s sober enough to fly.”

“Sober enough—Does he drink a lot?”

He bit back a grin. There was no way that he was going to exalt Jackson in this lady’s eyes. His cousin had all the women he could handle now. Kyle had seen this one first. “Like a fish. The man’s a sot.” Sorry, cuz he said silently.

A shot rang out, and Kyle flinched, afraid for a moment that the powers-that-be were about to strike him dead for lying.

Startled, too, Irish jumped. “What was that?”

“That’s just Grandpa Pete. He’s in bed with a broken hip, and when he needs some help, he fires his pistol out the window.”

“Wouldn’t a bell be better?”

He grinned. “You don’t know my grandpa. Come on up to the store with me while I see what he needs, and then we’ll see what we can do to get your problem straightened out. It’s about time for lunch. You hungry?”

“Famished.”

“You like chili?”

“With beans?”

“Bite your tongue, woman. This is Texas. Only a Yankee would spoil a perfectly good pot of chili with beans. You a Yankee?” he drawled.

She laughed, and the throaty sound of it made him think of cool sheets and warm flesh. “I’m from Washington, D.C.,” she said. “At least that’s where I live now. I’m originally from Ohio, but I lived in New York for several years.”

“New York City?” he asked with an exaggerated drawl. “Did you like that place?”

She shrugged. “For a while.”

“That’s the way I felt about California. I found out the hard way that Texas is the only place for me.”

Inside the store, Kyle settled Irish at one of the tables. “Let me go check on Grandpa Pete, and I’ll be back in a few minutes with the chili.”

Irish watched his long-legged gait as he walked away and went up the stairs at the end of the bar. Wow, what a man. Handsome as buttered sin. She’d never met anyone in her life who oozed such sex appeal. And from the little that they had talked, she felt that he would probably be lots of fun to be with. He was as smooth as a river stone in putting her at ease.

She sighed. He probably had everything a woman could ask for. She looked around the dusty, junky store.

Except money.

Why is it, Mama, that if it’s just as easy to love a rich man as a poor one, that I’m always attracted to the ones who don’t have two nickels to rub together?

It was a crying shame that she was so captivated by Kyle Rutledge. Especially now.

She sighed again. She couldn’t afford to let herself get sidetracked. Her plans were made; her bank account was committed. She was out to snare a millionaire.

And if Jackson Crow had a problem or two, well... one couldn’t have everything.

Two

Sweat popped out on her upper lip. Irish ignored it and spooned another bite of chili into her mouth. After all, it was a free meal, and with less than twenty dollars left in her wallet, she couldn’t afford to be choosy.

“Too hot for you?” Kyle asked.

“It’s fine. Just fine.” She gulped half a glass of iced tea.

With her tongue and her esophagus cringing at what was coming, she forced another bite into her blistered mouth.

Tears came to her eyes. She gulped the other half glass of tea and shook out an ice cube to suck on.

She glanced up at Kyle. He was frowning. “You don’t have to be polite,” he said. “It is too hot for you. Sorry about that. Grandpa Pete likes his chili fiery enough to singe the pin feathers off a chicken, and I’ve gotten used to it. Let me fix you something else. How about a bologna sandwich? I make a mean bologna sandwich.”

Relieved that she wouldn’t have to finish the rest of the chili and too hungry to turn him down, she smiled. “I’m crazy about bologna sandwiches.”

“Mustard or mayonnaise?”

“Mustard.”

“Be right back.”

Irish watched him pick up a loaf of bread from the rack and a jar of mustard off a shelf, then walk back to the meat case. He took a big sausage from the case, and she heard the whine of an electric slicing machine. In a few minutes, he returned with a neat sandwich on a piece of butcher paper. An individual bag of chips sat atop the sandwich.