The Cowboy's Christmas Proposition Page 17

  To her credit, when she answered, she didn’t even blink.

  He did.

  Holy hell. How could he have forgotten what she did to him?

  Her sensuality leaped from her like a tidal wave, crashing over him until he scarcely knew which way was up, but he didn’t care because surfacing was the last thing on his mind. He gasped for air in the wake of so much sensation as she tucked a lock of dark hair behind her ear. She pursed those lush lips and surveyed him with cool amusement.

  “You don’t follow instructions well,” she fairly purred, leaning on the door, kicking one foot to the side and drawing attention to the sexy slice of leg peeking out from her long flowy skirt.

  “Your memory is faulty,” he returned easily, a smile sliding across his face in spite of the reason for his visit. “I recall being an instant slave to your instructions. ‘Faster, harder, take me from behind.’ I can’t think of a single thing you told me to do that I didn’t follow to the letter.”

  One dark brow rose. “Other than the one where I said Vegas was a onetime thing?” she reminded him with a wry twist of her lips. “That there were reasons we shouldn’t hook up at home and you agreed.”

  Hendrix waved that off with a grin. “Well, if you’re going to get into specifics. Sure. That was the only one, though.”

  “Then I guess the only thing left to do is ask to what do I owe the pleasure?” That’s when she blinked. “Perhaps I should rephrase the question since I have the distinct impression this is not a social call.”

  No point in dragging it out when they were both to blame for the scandal and they both had a vested interest in fixing the problem. But he did take a moment to appreciate how savvy she was. Contrary to what the majority of women in the Raleigh-Durham-Cary area would argue, Hendrix did notice when a woman had assets outside of the obvious ones.

  Roz’s brain turned him on. She saw things—layers—that normal people took at face value. It was captivating. He still wasn’t sure why it had taken a trip to Vegas for them to hook up when they’d known each other peripherally for years.

  “You saw the picture,” he said.

  “Along with half of the eastern seaboard. But it’s been circulating for a week.” She slid a once-over down his body, lingering along the way like she’d found something worth noting. “Not sure why that would suddenly cause you to seek me out now.”

  The region under her hot gaze woke up in a hurry, galvanized into action by the quick, sharp memories of this woman under his mouth as he’d kissed, licked and tasted his way over every inch of her luscious body.

  “We’re definitely going to have to do something about your defective memory,” he growled as he returned her heat with a pointed glance of his own. “If you can look at that photograph and not want to immediately repeat the experience.”

  She crossed her arms over her filmy top that did little to curb his appetite. “Nothing wrong with my memory and I have no problem admitting that your reputation is well-founded. What’s not going to happen is a repeat. Vegas was my last hurrah. I told you that.”

  Yeah, she had. Repeatedly. While they’d been naked in her bed. And maybe once in the shower. It had been an all-night romp that had nearly caused him to miss his friend Jonas’s wedding the next morning. But Hendrix had left behind his delectable companion and made it to the chapel on time, assuming he’d never see her again, as instructed.

  His mother, Helene Harris, presumptive future Governor of North Carolina, had reset his thinking. It had taken a week to work through the ramifications and about that long to get him on board with the idea of a wedding as the antidote. But he was all in at this point. And he needed Roz to be all in, too.

  “Here’s the thing. The picture never should have happened. But it did. So we need to mitigate the damage. My mother’s people think that’s best accomplished by the two of us getting married. Just until the election. Then her people have agreed that we can get a quiet divorce.”

  Roz laughed and the silky sound tightened all the places that she’d affected so easily by sheer virtue of standing there looking lush and gorgeous.

  “Your mom’s people, Hendrix? That’s so precious.”

  “Like your dad doesn’t have people?” Carpenter Furniture ranked as one of the top-grossing businesses in the world. Her father had been the CEO since its inception thirty years ago. He had people.

  The mirth left her face in a snap. “My dad’s people aren’t spewing nonsense like a marriage to fix a nonexistent problem. This conversation is boring me and I have things to do, so if you’ll excuse me.”

  “Not so fast.” Hendrix stuck a foot in the door before Roz could slam it in his face. Time to change tactics. “Let me buy you a drink so we can discuss this like rational adults.”

  “Yeah. You and alcohol creates a rational atmosphere.”

  Sarcasm dripped from her tone and it was so cute, he couldn’t help but grin.

  “Aww. That was very nearly an admission of how crazy I can make you.”

  “And I’m done with this.” She nearly took off his foot with the force of the door closing but he didn’t yank it free, despite the pinch in his arch.

  “Wait, Roz.” He dropped his tone into the you can’t resist me even if you try realm. “Please give me five minutes. Then you can sever my toes all you want.”

  “Is the word marriage going to come out of your mouth again?”

  He hesitated. Without that, there was no reason for him to be here. But he needed her more than she needed him. The trick was to make sure she never realized that.

  “Is it really so much of a stretch to contemplate a merger between our families that could benefit us all? Especially in light of the photograph.”

  Her face didn’t relax, but he could tell he had her attention. Pushing on their mutual attraction wasn’t the ticket, then. Noted. So he went with logic.

  “Can you honestly say you’ve had no fallout from our...liaison?” he asked. “Because I have or I wouldn’t be standing on your doorstep. I know we agreed no contact. I know the reasons why. Things changed.”

  But not the reasons why. The reasons for no contact were for pure self-preservation.

  He and Roz were like kindling dropped into a forest fire together. They’d gone up in flames and frankly, he’d done more dirty things in one night with Rosalind Carpenter than with the last ten women he’d dated. But by the time the sun rose, they were done. He had a strict one-time-only rule that he never broke and not just because of the pact he’d made his senior year at Duke. He’d vowed to never fall in love—because he’d been rejected enough in life and the best way to avoid all that noise was to avoid intimacy.

  Sex he liked. Sex worked for him. But intimacy was off the table. He guaranteed it with no repeats.

  Only at his mother’s insistence would he consider making Roz his onetime exception.

  “So this marriage idea. That’s supposed to fix the fallout? From where I’m sitting, you’re the reason for the scandal. Where’s the plus for me?”

  Like she hadn’t been the one to come on to him on the dance floor of the Calypso Room, with her smoky eyes undressing him, the conclusion of their evening foregone the second their bodies touched.

  At least she hadn’t denied that the photograph had caused her some difficulty. If she had, he’d remind her that somewhere around 2:00 a.m. that night, she’d confessed that she was looking to change her reputation as the scandalous Carpenter daughter. The photograph couldn’t have helped. A respectable marriage would.

  That fact was still part of his strategy. “Helene’s your plus. You’ll be the daughter-in-law of the next governor of North Carolina. I’m confused why you’re struggling with this.”

  “You would be.” She jerked her head toward him. “I’m morbidly curious. What’s in this for you?”

  Legitimacy. Something hard to come by in his world. His family’s chain of tobacco shops wasn’t a respected industry and he was the bastard son of a man who had never claimed him.<
br />
  But what he said was, “Sex.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re such a liar. The last thing you need to bargain for is a woman willing to get naked with you.”

  “That sounded like a compliment.” He waggled his brows to hide how his insides suddenly felt wobbly and precarious. How had she seen through that flippant answer?

  That was what he got with a smart woman, apparently.

  “It wasn’t. Seduction is less of an art when you’re already starting out with the deck stacked.”

  He had to laugh, though he wasn’t quite sure if he was supposed to say thank you for the backhanded nod to his skill set. “I’m not leaving here without an answer. Marry me and the scandal goes away.”

  She shook her head, a sly smile spreading over her face. “Over my dead body.”

  And with that, she pushed his foot from the gap and shut the door with a quiet click.

  Dumbfounded, Hendrix stared at the fine-grain wood. Rosalind Carpenter had just rejected his proposal. For deliberately not putting anything emotional on the line, the rejection sure stung.

  * * *

  Roz leaned on the shut door and closed her eyes.

  Marriage. To Hendrix Harris. If she hadn’t understood perfectly why he’d come up with such a ridiculous idea, she’d call the cops to come cart away the crazy man on her doorstep.

  But he wasn’t crazy. Just desperate to fix a problem.

  She was, too.

  The big difference was that her father wasn’t working with his “people” to help her. Instead, he was sitting up in his ivory tower continuing to be disappointed in her. Well, sometimes she screwed up. Vegas had been one of those times. Fixing it lay solely at her feet and she planned to. Just not by marrying the person who had caused the scandal in the first place.

  Like marriage was the solution to anything, especially marriage to Hendrix Harris, who indeed had a reputation when it came to his exploits with the opposite sex. Hell, half of her interest back on that wild night had been insatiable curiosity about whether he could be as much trouble as everyone said.

  She should have run the moment she recognized him. But no. She’d bought him a drink. She was nothing if not skilled at getting into trouble.

  And what trouble she’d found.

  He was of the hot, wicked and oh-so-sinful variety—the kind she had a weakness for, the kind she couldn’t resist. The real question was how she’d shut the door in his face a moment ago instead of inviting him in for a repeat.

  That would be a bad idea. Vegas had marked the end of an era for her.

  She’d jetted off with her friend Lora to let loose in a place famed for allowing such behavior without ramifications. One last hurrah, as Roz had informed him. Make it memorable, she’d insisted. Help me go out with a bang, had been her exact words. Upon her return to the real world, she’d planned to make her father proud for once.

  Instead, she’d found exactly the trouble she’d been looking for and then some.

  It was a problem she needed to fix. She’d needed to fix it before she’d ever let Hendrix put his beautiful, talented mouth on her. And now memories of his special brand of trouble put a slow burn in her core that she couldn’t shake. Even now, five minutes after telling him to shove off. Still burning. She cursed her weakness for gorgeous bad boys and went to change clothes so she could dig into her “make Dad proud” plan on her terms.

  Marriage. Rosalind Carpenter. These two things did not go together under any circumstances, especially not as a way to make her father proud of her.

  After watching her father cope with Roz’s mother’s extended bout with cancer, no thank you. That kind of pain didn’t appeal to her. Till death do you part wasn’t a joke, nor did she take a vow like that lightly. Best way to avoid testing it was to never make a vow like that in the first place.

  Roz shed the flirty, fun outfit she’d worn to brunch with Lora and donned a severe black pencil skirt coupled with a pale blue long-sleeved blouse that screamed “serious banker.” She twisted her long hair into a chignon, fought with the few escaped strands and finally left them because Hendrix had already put her behind for the day. Her afternoon was booked solid with the endless tasks associated with the new charity she’d founded.

  She arrived at the small storefront her father’s admin had helped her rent, evaluating the layout for the fourteenth time. There was no sign yet. That was one of the many details she needed to work through this week as she got Clown-Around off the ground. It was an endeavor of the heart. And maybe a form of therapy.

  Clowns still scared her, not that she’d admit to having formed a phobia during the long hours she’d sat at her mother’s hospital bedside, and honestly, she didn’t have to explain herself to anyone, so she didn’t. The curious only needed to know that Rosalind Carpenter had started a charity that trained clowns to work in children’s hospitals. Period.

  The desk she’d had delivered dwarfed her, but she’d taken a page from her father’s book and procured the largest piece she could find in the Carpenter warehouse near the airport. He’d always said to buy furniture for the circumstances you want, not the ones you have. Buy quality so it will last until you make your dreams a reality. It was a philosophy that had served Carpenter Furniture well and she liked the sentiment. So she’d bought a desk that made her feel like the head of a successful charity.

  She attacked the mountain of paperwork with gusto, cheerfully filling out forms and ordering supplies. There was an enormous amount of overhead that went along with running a charity and when you had zero income to use in hiring help, there was only one person to do the work—the founder.

  Before she’d barely dug into the task, the lady from the first hospital Roz had called her back.

  “Ms. Smith, so happy to speak with you,” Roz began smoothly. “I’d like to see what your requirements are for getting Clown-Around on the approved list of organizations available to work with the children at your hospital.”

  “I could have saved you some time, Ms. Carpenter,” the liaison replied and her tone could only be described as frosty. “We already have an approved group we work with. No need for any additional ones.”

  That threw Roz for a loop. “Oh. Well, we’d be happy to go on the backup list. You know, in case the other group cancels unexpectedly.”

  “That’s okay,” she cut in quickly. “That almost never happens and it’s not like we have scheduled times. The clowns come in on a pretty casual basis.”

  This was not a good conversation. Unease prickled at the back of Roz’s neck and she did not like the feeling. “I’m having a hard time believing that you can’t use extra cheer in the children’s ward. We’re talking about sick kids who don’t want to be in the hospital. Surely if your current clowns come and go at will, you can add some of mine to the rotation. A clown is a clown, right?”

  The long pause boded badly. Roz braced for the next part.

  “To be frank, Ms. Carpenter, the hospital board would not appreciate any association with a charity you helm,” Ms. Smith stated bluntly. “We are required to disclose any contact a patient has with outside parties, particularly when the patients are minors. The clowns must have accreditation and thorough vetting to ensure we’re not exposing patients to...unseemly influences.”

  Roz went hot and then cold as the woman’s meaning flashed through her. The reputation of the charity’s founder preceded her apparently. “I take it I qualify as an unseemly influence. Then may I be as frank and ask why you bothered to call me back?”

  “Strictly in deference to your father. One of his vice presidents is on the board, if you’re not aware,” she replied tightly. “If we’ve reached an understanding...”

  “We have. Thank you for your candor.” Roz stabbed the end call button and let her cell phone drop to the desk of a successful charity head. Too bad that wasn’t who was sitting at it.

  Wow. Her hands were shaking.

  And because her day hadn’t been crappy enough, the door sh
e’d forgotten to lock behind her opened to the street and Hendrix Harris walked into her nightmare.

  “What are you doing here?” she snapped, too off-kilter to find some manners when she’d already told him to step off once today. “This is private property. How did you find me?”

  Not one perfect brown hair out of place, the man waltzed right in and glanced around her bare-bones operation with unabashed curiosity. “I followed you, naturally. But I didn’t want to interrupt your phone call, so I waited.”

  “Bless your heart,” she shot back and snatched up her phone to call the cops. “You have two seconds to vacate or I’m going to lodge a trespassing complaint.”

  Instead of hightailing it out the door—which was what he should have done—Hendrix didn’t hesitate to round the desk, crowd into her space without even a cursory nod to boundaries and pluck the phone from her hand. “Now, why would you do a thing like that? We’re all friends here.”

  Something that felt perilously close to tears pricked beneath her lashes. “We’re not friends.”

  Tears. In front of Hendrix. It was inexcusable.

  “We could be friends,” he announced quietly, without an ounce of flirt. Somehow that was exactly the right tone to burn off the moisture. “Friends who help each other. You didn’t give me much of a chance to tell you how earlier.”

  Help. That was something she needed. Not that he needed to know that, or how grateful she was that he’d found a way to put her back on even footing. She didn’t for an instant believe he’d missed her brief flash of vulnerability and his deft handling of it made all the difference.

  The attitude of the hospital lady still chilled her. But she wasn’t in danger of falling apart any longer, thank God.

  “Because I have a zone of crazy around me.” She nodded to the floor, near his feet. “There’s the perimeter and you’re four feet over the line.”

  Problem being that she liked him where he was—one lean hip cocked against her desk and all his good stuff at eye level. Naked, the man rivaled mythical gods in the perfection department. She could stare at his bare body for hours and never get tired of finding new ways to appreciate his deliciousness.