Kinkade, Lea - I Got a Feelin' [The Chisholms of Texas 2] (Siren Publishing Classic) (7 page)

* * * *

Ryan continued to join Samantha for lunch under their big oak tree in the park during the next week. Samantha was falling further and further under this potent man’s spell. She had to decide whether to totally cut him off or go with the flow and take what pleasure she could get while she could get it. She had been with rich and powerful men before and come away burned. She hadn’t realized what she was getting into with Brandon and J.T., though. Now, she totally understood her position and, if she wanted to, she could take the next step with Ryan and keep her heart safe from him. She could enjoy him for as long as this attraction lasted between them and move on unscathed. She could do that. Really. She could.

Their lunch dates in the park hadn’t gone unnoticed, however. Several women, both her age and older, had felt it necessary to stop by the shop and warn her away from Ryan. The worst thing any of them had to say about Ryan was that he didn’t date a woman longer than a few weeks before he moved on. None of the women that felt compelled to speak to her were women he had dated, but they felt the need to warn her off just the same. Samantha already knew Ryan was a player. It was obvious in his flirtatious manner and the sheer number of women that trailed after him. She didn’t really have a problem with that. What you saw was what you got with Ryan, and she definitely liked what she saw. She did her best to ignore the gossip and concentrated on how he made her feel when they were together.

Chapter 6

It was Friday night and Samantha had met the girls once again at Chaps & Spurs. She counted each woman as a friend. They invited her to do girl things like go shopping and have lunch during the week. They shared their lives with her and she reciprocated to a point. She was still holding part of herself back. Residual wariness from growing up in a bunch of different homes, she thought. She knew that Ryan was upstairs playing pool with his brothers. She still couldn’t get over how much all the Chisholm brothers looked alike. It was funny that out of all of them she was only attracted to Ryan. At lunch on Monday, she had accepted a date with him for tomorrow night. They were going to dinner and then to the club for some dancing.

While it was just Taylor, Jordan, Jessie, and herself at the table, she broached the subject of dating Ryan.

“I’m going out with Ryan tomorrow night,” she blurted out. “That’s not going to make any of you uncomfortable, is it?” asked Samantha as she watched them closely for their reaction.

“When did this happen?” asked Taylor curiously.

“Well, he’s been joining me for lunch every day at the park. He’s asked me to go out for dinner several times, but I just agreed to a date earlier this week. He sort of wore me down,” she said with a smile.

“That’s great, Samantha. Don’t take this wrong, but do you know Ryan’s reputation around Deseo?” asked Jordan as she continued to smile at her new friend.

“I’ve heard he doesn’t have very long relationships with women, if that’s what you mean.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Samantha. I love Ryan to death, but he does have a well-deserved reputation with the ladies. As the Chisholms would call it, he’s still sowing his wild oats. I don’t think he’s anywhere close to settling down yet. I wouldn’t want to see you hurt,” Jessie said earnestly.

“It’s just dinner. I’m not looking for long-term either. I’m just looking for a little fun. I wanted to let you know to see if it would weird you out if we started dating and then broke up. Would it ruin our friendship?”

“God, no.”

“Not at all.”

“We’re your friends, Samantha, that wouldn’t bother us a bit.” The women spoke simultaneously and then laughed at each other. Tension broken.

“Good. I wouldn’t want to take the chance of ruining our friendship for some fun and games.”

“Not to worry, Samantha. You’re our friend no matter what does or doesn’t happen between you and Ryan,” assured Jordan. “Now, let’s order a drink and have some fun.”

About 9:00 p.m. she felt a hand land gently on her shoulder. Knowing from the tingles shooting directly from her shoulder to her breasts and clit that it was Ryan, Samantha looked up into his handsome, smiling face. “Ready to dance, darlin’?”

Samantha took Ryan’s hand and they stepped out onto the dance floor. They danced about half an hour and then decided to take a break and get a drink. As they had danced together, Samantha noticed they received a lot of glances from women throughout the club. One buxom blonde in particular looked at her like she would like to tear Samantha’s hair out. Interesting. It figured that Ryan was one of those men that the women of the club thought of as theirs. She wondered how long this woman had dated Ryan and how long ago they had broken up. Samantha was sure, from the looks the woman’s friends were also giving her, that this woman had actually had Ryan and lost him.

Ryan went to the bar and got their drinks. Samantha unabashedly watched his butt as he walked away. It was perfectly showcased in his blue jeans, and Samantha admitted to herself that she wanted to take a bite. He was back in record time. As Billy Currington’s “I Got A Feelin’” started playing, Ryan drew her onto the dance floor and into his arms. They danced closely together, their bodies perfectly matched. Samantha could feel her nipples pebbling beneath her silk blouse and bra and wondered if he could feel them through the layers between them. Her pussy grew wet at the intimate contact. She could feel the length of his erection against her stomach. Drawing from the song, Ryan drawled, “
I
got a feelin’, darlin’. Are you feelin’ it, too?” Samantha blushed in response to his question and ducked her head to avoid answering him.

They alternated between dancing and sitting at the table just talking until about midnight.

“I need to get home. I have to work in the shop tomorrow for a few hours in the morning.” Samantha didn’t want the evening to end, but she didn’t want to drag into work tomorrow either.

“Let me walk you home.” Samantha nodded and Ryan led Samantha out of the club. It was a beautiful night. It was around seventy degrees and the humidity had dropped a lot since the sun had gone down.

They walked slowly, side by side and hand in hand, toward her apartment as the noise from the club slowly quieted. By the time they reached the bottom of the steps to her apartment, Ryan was making circles on the palm of the hand he held with his thumb, causing shivers to radiate throughout her body. He followed her up the stairs to her apartment door and held his hand out for her key.

Sighing softly, she handed him her key and waited while he went into the apartment to check for bogeymen. She entered the apartment when he came back to the door and motioned her in. She stood uncertainly by the door as he moved toward her. Taking her chin in his hand, he gently touched her lips with his own. Just a kiss good night. Brushing her hair away from her face, he turned and quickly walked out the door. “See you tomorrow night, darlin’,” he called softly as he walked down the steps into the night.

Saturday night, Samantha waited anxiously for Ryan to arrive. Her hair was down and she was wearing a slimming, black silk pencil skirt and black peekaboo pumps with three-inch heels. She looked good and she knew it. She heard his big diesel truck pull up in the alley behind the building and waited for him to knock on the door to the apartment. When it came, she forced herself to walk to the door instead of run to it. Opening it up with a smile, she feasted her eyes on Ryan. He was dressed from head to toe in black. Black slacks, black dress shirt, open at the collar, polished black boots, and a black Stetson completed the outfit. As always when around Ryan, her pussy became moist and her nipples began to tighten. Samantha counted her blessings that she was wearing a printed blouse in reds and yellows so at least Ryan didn’t know how much just looking at him affected her.

* * * *

Ryan knocked on the door and waited for Samantha to open it. When she did, Ryan was dumbfounded. She was exquisite. “You look beautiful, darlin’.”

Her murmured “Thank you. You don’t look too bad yourself” made his cock stand up and take notice, especially of that skirt and those heels. He’d told her to dress up a little tonight, as he was planning on taking her to the best restaurant in town, Michael’s. It was an Italian restaurant, and many of the movers and shakers here in town liked to have dinner there on Saturday nights. He wanted to show Samantha off tonight. He had called earlier in the week and gotten a reservation for tonight.

Ryan had heard the talk around the club about Samantha. He knew that quite a few of the men in town had asked her out on dates. A few of them had been players, like himself, but several had been pretty nice guys that were looking to settle down. Samantha had declined every single one of them. But, she’d said yes to Ryan.

In any event, Ryan was glad that there didn’t appear to be any other men on the scene where Samantha was concerned. If he had to, he’d compete for her affections. He’d just have to remember how. He hadn’t competed for a woman in a long time. Come to think of it, he’d never competed for a woman’s affections before. He’d always been the one to lose interest. In fact, he’d never pursued a woman like he was pursuing Samantha. Women pursued him. It had been that way all his life, even before he’d lost his virginity at sixteen with the lovely and more experienced Ms. Jenkins. He had heard often enough how good-looking he and his brothers were. Thinking back on his past relationships, he realized that nobody he’d dated in the last ten years had really taken the time to get to know him. Yet, he’d told his entire life story to a woman he’d known a mere two weeks.

All of the Chisholm brothers got their share of female attention. Though there were six of them, to their knowledge no two had ever taken the same woman as their lover before. It was sort of an unwritten rule. They just didn’t want to go there. The Chisholm brothers got their love of women from their father. They loved all women, blondes, brunettes, redheads, short or tall, it didn’t matter. No woman was safe from their charms. They had all dated women as far away as Corpus Christi, but so far, only Levi and Xander had found their forever women. Both women had lived in Deseo when they had met their future husbands, although Jordan had been new to town.

As they ate their meal, Samantha peppered him with questions. “What made you decide to open a club instead of working for
CRE
?”

“I decided in high school that I didn’t want to work on the Ranch. I wanted to make my own way. Not ride on the family coattails. As the oldest, Xander was expected to take on the role of running the Ranch. Levi, my second-oldest brother, always had a way with horses and was a natural to head the horse-breeding operation.”

“Did you go to college?”

“Yes. I majored in business administration. Ryder did, too. Then, not knowing what I wanted to do with my life, except for knowing I didn’t want to be running after a bunch of cattle, he and I followed the rodeo circuit for a few years. Most of my brothers had at least dabbled in the sport. Eli’s making a run for top bull rider right now, in fact.”

“I don’t get the draw, I guess. It looks like you could get hurt pretty badly.”

Ryan decided not to tell her about the fringe benefits of women and booze. He’d had more than his fair share of buckle bunnies. Ryan thought back to his previous thoughts that he and his brothers had never dated the same woman but, well, come to think of it, he couldn’t honestly say that. There had been that buckle bunny in El Paso that he and Ryder had both dated.

“Well, darlin’, that’s one of the reasons both Ryder and I decided to hang up our spurs nearly six years ago. I decided to leave the sport while I was on top. I’d been injured a few times, and I didn’t want to hang on until I got a career-ending injury. My brother, Levi, was seriously injured while riding the circuit, and Ryder was badly injured at the beginning of the season after I won the championship. I decided then and there to quit while I was still relatively healthy. I brought him home and nursed him back to health, and we decided to pool our resources and open up the best honky-tonk in the area.”

“So what did you ride?”

“Bulls,” he said succinctly.

He went on to tell her more about his relationship with his twin growing up and how they’d come up with their concept for Chaps & Spurs. They conceived and built the club with the goal of making it the hottest honky-tonk within sixty miles of Deseo. Hell, he’d met people in the club that had come all the way from Corpus Christi to see the club and all the rodeo memorabilia on the walls. Ryder went along with Ryan on most things, but when he got mad, watch out. He was all over running the club, though. Ryder had really come into his own since they had opened the doors to Chaps & Spurs. He’d come out of his shell. He’d become the face of the club, spending most of his evenings schmoozing with the customers. Ryder was also taking a more active role in promoting the club. He was no longer living under his twin’s shadow.

Now, looking at Samantha over the table, Ryan realized he would compete for her attention if he needed to. He wanted to be the only man in this woman’s life. Two weeks ago he would have added “for the next few weeks” onto that statement. Sitting across from her right now, he wanted to add “for the rest of my life.” Oh, hell! He should be running in the opposite direction. He was so screwed. He’d fallen for this woman. How the hell had that happened? He was in love with Samantha Michaels. She was the one.

What was he going to do? He’d only known the woman two weeks, for Christ’s sake. Then he remembered that Xander had only known Jordan for about two weeks when he’d realized he was in love with her. Should he tell her he loved her? Ryan didn’t think she was ready to hear it let alone believe it. Ryan had helped Xander in the wooing project after he had pissed Jordan off and she had told him to go to hell. All the siblings had. He knew his father and Levi had helped Xander with the wooing project. Maybe they could help him. He needed to talk to his father. He’d get his father alone tomorrow at Sunday lunch and talk to him about Samantha. His mother would go bat-shit crazy once she found out Ryan had met the one.