Dangerous Tease (7 page)

October 15, 1865

Mr. Franklin Layton paid a call today. He
owns a ranch nearby. I could tell from his eyes that he is a kind man. They are a green-brown color with gold flecks. He is not John, but a good man. I told him I would look forward to his next visit.

November 30, 1865

Franklin comes to court nearly every day now. Abigail wonders when he ever tends to his cattle with the amount of time he spends here. I wonder how I manage not to expire while
he is gone. I know when he approaches long before I see the dust his horse kicks up as he crosses the prairie. When we walk together I fear my heart will burst from my chest. My dearly departed John will always be a part of me, however I do believe Franklin is my future happiness. He is a man who is a part of this place. Strong and brave. He stands against the winds that never stop blowing and
challenges the elements to stop him. My heart weeps each time he leaves to return to his ranch.

December 23, 1865

So it is done. I have buried my past, forgotten the large house in St. Louis and tomorrow will become Mrs. Franklin Layton. The weather cleared today as if Providence smiled upon us. Though the air was quite cold, I walked along McPherson's Bluff, its limestone walls familiar to
me now. Here is where I said goodbye to all I was and greeted my new beginning. This shall be my final entry in this diary
.

Josie traced her finger across Rebecca's ornate script with its curves and curls. She could picture a small farmhouse out in the flat plain. Okay, her vision looked a lot like
Little House on the Prairie
, but she doubted she was that far off base. What a life Rebecca had
lived. The treasure Saul had spoken of had to be the emerald earrings and other jewelry she'd sewn into her garments. They must be worth a small fortune.

Her head sank farther down into the fluffy pillows. In the dark behind her eyelids, a face came to light; an all-too-familiar face with hazel eyes that reminded her of a tiger on the prowl. And he was after her. Heat pooled in her belly as the
man in her imagination stalked closer, naked from the waist up. Her nipples stiffened. His long fingers found the button of his jeans and flicked it open. In her mind, Josie urged him on, practically begging him to lower the denim from his lean hips. He hooked his thumb in his waistband and—

Damn it, Celestine was right. She needed to get the hell out of this cabin and force Sam out of her head.

Twenty minutes later, she pounded the fat pillow for the hundredth time, trying to mold the feathers and her lustful thoughts into submission. But she couldn't vanquish visions of Sam's burnt-sienna locks between her thighs as his tongue twisted a figure eight around her clit.

Might as well just go with what her body wanted.

Sliding her fingers under the waistband of her panties, her mind
replaced her fingers with Sam's. Slowly, she traced the path he'd taken, remembering the feel of his firm tongue on her most tender of spots. With all the foreplay her imagination had put her through, it didn't take long before vibrations started in her core and spread to her thighs. Almost before she was ready, her body tensed and her climax lifted her shoulders off the bed and arched her spine.

The thundering on her door evaporated her post-orgasm bliss. The clock read 1:13. Her heart rate sped up for a much less sexually satisfying reason. No good ever came from visitors at this hour. She yanked up her pants then sprinted to the door, unlocked it and whipped it open.

“'Bout damn time. It's colder than a witch's tit out here.” Celestine marched in and shoved a cordless phone toward
Josie. “You got a call.”

Her heart hiccupped in her chest. The black plastic rectangle transformed from a communication device into the harbinger of doom.

“What are you waiting for, me to hold it up to your ear? He said it was important.”

God, what if Snips had found Cy? Or their parents? Panic grabbed ahold of her throat and squeezed tight.
Stop being such a fucking chicken and take the stupid
phone.

Clamping down on the last bit of calm she had, Josie grabbed the phone and held its icy receiver to her ear. “Cy?”

“You wish, you little bitch.” Snips’ voice lashed her as cruelly as a whip. “That Saul sure is a chatty old guy, nearly talked my ear off tonight. How's Dry Creek, Nebraska?”

Her stomach sank but his words buoyed her spirits. If he was talking to her, that meant he hadn't
found Cy. “It was better five minutes ago.”

“That smart mouth is going to get you in trouble one of these days.”

“So I've been told.” Taking a deep breath, she steadied herself to sell the lie. “Look, I'll get you the money.”

“Can the bullshit, I heard all about your brother's secret visit to the diner. Not all of the waitresses there are as snooty as you.”

Josie bit her bottom lip in surprise
and every ounce of badass attitude deserted her. She stared at the knot in the oak doorframe and waited, breathless, for the other shoe to drop.

“We both know he doesn't owe me a dime. But now
you
do.”

The raw arrogance in Snips’ voice brought her spirit back to life. “What the hell for?”

“Getting in the way, bitch.”

“You're out of your mind.”

“Saul told me all about Rebecca's Bounty. I want
that treasure. All of it. You want to live. Fuck up, and I'll hand over you and Cy half dead to Callandriello so the big man can finish the job himself. It’ll be worth finding your asshole brother just for that. But first, I'd make a quick stop in Lake Havasu to pay a call on your parents. OH yes, your parents’ next door neighbors were quite chatty with the right motivation. Normally, that would
be Linc's job, but I think I'd really enjoy delivering the message to your mom and dad.”

“No.” Anxiety twisted her muscles into a pretzel. How had he found her parents’ hiding spot? It didn't matter. What mattered was protecting her parents. “I'll do it.”

“You have a week. Linc will be in touch.” He paused. “And don't go telling your brother or anyone else about this. If I even suspect you're
looking to double-cross me, I'll be at your parents' front door faster than greyhounds at the dog track. Got it?”

“Yeah,” she whispered, defeated.

“Good.”

The dial tone blared in her ear, but her brain was too overwhelmed to send the correct signal to her body to hand the phone back to Celestine.

“You okay there?” Concern crinkled the middle of the older woman's already wrinkled forehead
and she pried the phone from Josie's death grip.

“Fine,” she mumbled as she herded Celestine out the door. “Goodnight.”

As soon as the door shut, Josie swiped a paintbrush and twirled it between her fingers. She paced the small studio floor, dodging half-finished canvases and rags covered in oil paint. She didn't know how to get ahold of Cy. The emergency number he'd given her wasn't a direct
line, so she could only leave a message. Their parents couldn't protect themselves from Snips' fury. She had to find the treasure.

Stopping in front of a half-finished painting, she stared at the man who had haunted her subconscious since Vegas. Having the diary alone wouldn't be enough to find the treasure and save her parents. The map was the key—and Sam had the map.

A
bout a month ago, while driving down Main Street, Sam had caught a flash of white-blonde hair. He'd done such a fast double take he'd nearly broken his neck, but the woman had disappeared. Since then he couldn't shake Josie's ghost.

He scanned the mostly female students in front of him in Cather College's biggest lecture hall. There were dishwater blondes, bleached blondes, wheat
blondes and strawberry blondes, but no one with the right shade of platinum.

Heat flushed his cheeks as soon as he realized he was doing it again. Searching for her. He chewed the inside of his cheek, disgusted with his own flight of fancy, and glanced at his notes.

“So the author argues that Amelia Earhart served as a kind of tie between the post-suffrage time period and the modern feminism
movement of the 1960s.” Sam swiped down his touchscreen tablet on the lectern, scrolling for the appropriate citation, but the clang of a metal door drew his attention to the back of the lecture hall.

Josie stood by the door, one hip cocked. Her shock of white-blonde hair bounced around her face in curls that touched the collar of her black leather jacket. Black boots encased her long legs to
mid-thigh. His gaze traveled over the rest of her leather-covered curves, past her full red lips to her big gray eyes. She looked as if she'd just walked off a movie set and she was playing badass heroine number one, albeit with dusky shadows under her eyes.

Her steel gaze met his and she shrugged as if in apology for the noise.

“Adventure is worthwhile in itself.” The quote came out unbidden
and again he tasted the sweetness of her wrist where the words were tattooed.

She quirked an eyebrow and winked before sliding into an empty seat in the back row.

Everything became silent as the students, who had been clacking away on their laptops, stilled. His lecture escaped him. Something about Amelia Earhart, feminism and Midwestern women.

He should be more ticked off that Josie had
turned up out of the blue, disturbing his peace of mind and invading his lecture hall. Her appearance only confirmed that she was just another treasure hunter. Vegas had been a setup. All she wanted was to dig up Rebecca's Bounty. A flicker of annoyance burned in his gut, but he couldn't fan it into a full fury.

Even if it hadn't meant anything to her, that night had opened up a part of Sam
that he'd thought he'd lost years ago. Suddenly, the rigidity of his life chafed. He yearned to challenge Dry Creek's perception of him as the quiet Layton. The tragic Layton. Josie may not have gotten what she'd wanted out of him in Vegas, but he sure as hell had gotten a completely unexpected gift—a second chance of sorts. If he could break out of his comfort zone and go for it.

Then she licked
her pouty lips with that pink tongue of hers and all rational thought fled. All he could think about was the amber scent of her creamy skin and the way she'd swirled her hips when he'd buried himself deep inside her.

The memory forced him to shift uncomfortably. Suddenly he was very thankful the lectern stood tall enough to block the view of his stiffening cock. His mouth dried as if he'd eaten
six pounds of cotton. Seventy pairs of eyes stared, but only the laughing gray eyes in the back row held his interest. He fidgeted with his tablet, buying time to gather his thoughts and forget the woman who'd been dogging him in his dreams and fantasies.

Josie unzipped her jacket, revealing a low-cut emerald sweater that displayed mountains of cleavage.

What had been a vague sense of discomfort
morphed into an urgent need to touch her soft skin again.

“Dr. Layton?”

Sam glanced down at a student in the front row.

The girl's brow wrinkled with concern.

Pull it together, moron
. “Yes, sorry about that. My notes seem to have, uh, disappeared, so let's call it a day, everyone. See you on Wednesday.”

He stayed glued to his spot behind the lectern while the students filed out of the lecture
hall. Their chatter covered the tension stretching between him and Josie, but once they were gone there was nothing left to diffuse it. Need slammed into him even as he acknowledged she only wanted to use him because he had Rebecca's map. But unlike the bombshell goddess heading his way, who had probably never heard the word no, he knew the difference between needing, wanting and getting. She
was about to learn. Then she'd leave him alone and he would stop thinking of her at odd moments of the day. And all through the night.

“Long time no chat, Sam.” She strutted down the stairs. “How've you been?”

“I'm not going to help you.” He dropped his eyes to his briefcase and shoved everything inside, forgetting his natural orderly process in his haste to get away from Josie and the temptations
she offered.

Her Ferrari red lips curled and she paused at the bottom of the stairs. “Help with what?”

His fingers curled around the edge of the lectern and he tried to block out her warm scent taunting him. “Rebecca's Bounty.”

“What makes you think the treasure is why I'm here?” She closed the distance between them, stopping just out of his reach.

“Please, don't insult my intelligence.”

She shrugged. “Fine, it's true. But that's not the only reason why I'm here.”

“Oh yeah, is this where you tell me some cock-and-bull story about how you've been dreaming of me every night?”

She leaned forward, her breasts threatening to spill out of her sweater. “Sounds to me like you're projecting. Is there something keeping
you
up at night?”

Sam kept his mouth shut. He'd already said enough.

Josie reached inside her jacket and brought out a small leather book. “A peace offering.”

When he didn't say anything, she placed the book on the lectern, her fingers brushing his, sending an electric jolt of a reminder of just how much he wanted this confounding woman.

“It's Rebecca's diary. I thought it should be back with your family.”

That threw him for a loop. “What's the catch?”

She sidled up to him, her breathing shallow. “No catch, but the treasure is out there. I have a pretty good idea of the general location. If we work together, using your map, I know we'll find it.”

He chuckled. “Do you know how many people have searched for that treasure and for how long?” Including himself. “What makes you think you'll be the one to find it?” He locked his briefcase and moved
toward the door.

“Don't you ever go by faith, by gut feeling?”

He stilled at the challenge in her alto voice. Brash and defiant, she was an Amazon who couldn't be controlled. He was a college professor who ironed his T-shirts and micromanaged everything in his world. He shouldn't want her, but, dammit, he couldn't stop.

His stomach cramped at the idea of working with her and not succumbing
to his desire. “No.”