Some Like It Sizzling. Jamie Sobrato

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      SHE WAS DOOMED before she even began. He tasted like manliness and fire and sin, and his lips—once he got past the initial shock of her planting one on him—were strong, the way she imagined a cowboy’s lips would be. She felt herself melting, spinning, falling, sinking in—and it wasn’t just the alcohol.

      His five o’clock shadow created a friction on her upper lip and chin, and she could imagine that she still smelled the dust of the trail on him as she inhaled. She was finally kissing a cowboy. It was the best kiss she’d ever had.

      Drunken bliss only lasted a few seconds, though.

      He may have responded with his mouth, but he didn’t touch her with his hands, and after a moment she got the vague feeling that she was behaving like a complete jerk. She pulled away. Averted her eyes. Stared intently at an air-conditioning vent. Her head swirled, but this time she feared it was the alcohol.

      A merciful darkness descended.

      When she came to, she had no idea how much time had elapsed, but it must not have been long because they’d only made it to the resort parking lot. And Judd must not have been too disturbed by her bad behavior because he was talking to her as if she were just another VIP guest. He was giving her an introductory tour, she guessed. She heard words like “facilities” and “Olympic-size pool” and “fifteen hot tubs,” but her brain was too foggy to follow it all, so she simply wobbled dutifully behind him as he carried her bag along a stone path through the gates of the resort.

      They passed cacti and other artfully arranged landscaping, faux rugged wood fences, low-slung Santa Fe-style stucco buildings. Here and there couples wandered through the warm desert night, and Lucy felt a pang of loneliness at being on vacation alone, tipsy from alcohol and having just made an inexcusable pass at her paid escort.

      Through the champagne haze, she had one painfully coherent thought—tomorrow was her birthday.

      JUDD SPRAWLED ACROSS the bed and eyeballed the cold beer just out of his reach on the nightstand. Nothing like handcuffing himself to a stranger’s bed and impersonating the local Don Juan all night to make him too tired to lift an arm.

      The recent memory of a certain champagne-induced kiss spurred him into action. He grabbed the beer and took a deep swig, trying hard not to think about how his body had responded so readily to Lucy’s come-on. Somehow he had to keep his mind on the investigation.

      Instead, memories of Lucy kept invading his head. Her lips coaxing him, her chocolate-flavored tongue tempting and teasing him…Damn it if he hadn’t wanted to take her right there in the front seat of the Fantasy Ranch VIP vehicle.

      And then there was her oddly awkward, utterly endearing reaction to the kiss. Her eyes the size of full moons, she’d sputtered and stammered an apology, expelled an hysterical string of giggles, and then passed out briefly. By the time Judd had gotten around to her side of the SUV to get her out, she was awake again, barely able to walk with him as he led her to her room. However much she looked like a party girl, she sure didn’t handle her liquor like one.

      The contrasts intrigued him. And her kiss had a tempting innocence about it that nearly drove him wild. Stop it! Stop thinking about her.

      Judd cursed and dragged himself up off the bed and to the table where he kept his laptop and the files on his investigation—or lack of one. All he had was one sexy-as-hell suspect and no evidence to suggest her guilt, other than her employment at the travel agency.

      He booted up the computer and opened the file entitled Sunny Horizons Employees. In it he’d listed all the agents who’d stayed at the Fantasy Ranch since the incidents of sabotage began. With the steep travel agent discounts they received, and the agency’s proximity to the ranch, it wasn’t necessarily unusual that five out of nine agents had visited there in the past three months.

      He’d listed each one in order of the dates of their stay at the ranch, along with the lengths of stay and the instances of sabotage that occurred while each was there. It could have been coincidence, because acts of sabotage had been going on pretty steadily, sometimes while Sunny Horizons employees were present and sometimes when they weren’t.

      What he had was no evidence. He muttered another curse and took another swig of beer.

      Only three of them, Frank Wiley, Rowena Kramer and Darren Ullrich, were there when more than one act of sabotage occurred. Maybe that meant something and maybe it didn’t.

      A hunch kept nagging at him. Mason’s theory that this was all tied to Natasha Kendrick, his ex-girlfriend, was beginning to make more and more sense. It was just too convenient that she happened to be the CEO of Sunset Enterprises, and Sunny Horizons Travel was a direct subsidiary of Sunset. Were Lucy and her coworkers acting as Natasha’s pawns? Were they getting paid to help ruin Mason’s business?

      Even that theory didn’t explain all the instances of sabotage, though. There was still a big hole in the investigation.

      He glared at the computer screen, willing it to produce some answers, willing himself not to think about one particularly cute suspect.

      LUCY PREFERRED to sleep in flannel pajamas. In fact, she had a nice pair of gray plaid ones at home СКАЧАТЬ