One Night Rodeo (4 page)

Except during the test of wills, the feel of her muscled flesh warming beneath his stinging hand and the seductive way her body writhed on his lap became an erotic interlude, not a punishment.

Round about spank fifteen, she surrendered.

Round about spank sixteen, Kyle had a hard-on that rivaled steel.

Breck had cracked jokes immediately after Kyle delivered Celia’s last birthday blow. But neither Kyle nor Celia had laughed. They’d barely looked at each other, unsure how to react to the sexual tension arcing between them like heat lightning.

That night Kyle realized Celia’s relationship with Breck wasn’t making her happy. Maybe it never had. He became a man on a mission—getting Celia to see she deserved better than Breck. He’d never suggested becoming her replacement lover, no matter how badly he’d wanted to.

After the breakup, Kyle had seen the suspicion in Breck’s eyes, as if Kyle had encouraged the breakup because he’d wanted Celia for himself.

Which wasn’t entirely inaccurate.

Celia Lawson stirred something inside him. Given their tumultuous past, he’d initially believed the feeling to be frustration. Yes, he’d lusted after her for the past two years, but the pull between them had always been more than merely physical. Everything about her spoke to him on the most basic level. How she could look both innocent and sexy almost at the same time. How she moved both on and off her horse. The fire in her eyes. Her pensiveness. Her sweetness. He’d never cared enough to examine another woman’s body language and quirks so intimately, which spoke volumes about his feelings for her.

Feelings that had her running scared and had him chasing after her.

He’d given her three weeks to think about the next step between them after that life-changing kiss in Texas. Now that she’d shown up in Vegas—as she’d promised—it was time she accepted that this thing between them wasn’t going away.

Kyle intended to pull out all the stops tonight to make her his.

After spending a few hours hanging out in the casino trying to win a little extra cash and partaking of free drinks, Celia wandered to the event center. She slipped on her all-access backstage pass and headed through the arena to the stage area. Two beefy security guys checked her pass, looked inside her purse, and waved her through. At the next backstage doorway, two more security guards blocked access. They scrutinized her pass, giving her a lewd once-over that suggested a thorough patdown. When thick-necked goon number one asked what had happened to her forehead, she almost said, “Knife fight,” but amended it to “Baking mishap.” Not as much fun, but that response didn’t trigger a strip search.

Celia smiled when Devin approached her. “If it isn’t the superstar man of the hour. How are ya?”

“Damn glad you’re here, brat.” Devin led the way down a long hall lined with people, but no one intercepted him.

“Who are all these people?” she whispered.

“No fuckin’ idea.”

“Why aren’t they talking to you?”

“It’s a stipulation in my contract that no one talks to me for two hours prior to a performance. Unless it’s an emergency.”

“Sometimes I forget you’re this big country music star beloved by millions and not just the meanie who used to hang me upside down from the barn rafters.”

“That was Kyle, not me.”

“You used to hide in the basement closet and jump out and scare me.”

“I had no part in that. Blame—”

“Kyle. I get it. Just a reminder that he’s always been horrible to me.”

“He didn’t seem horrible to you today at the hospital. In fact, he was straight up freaked out when he called me.”

“Guilt, I’m sure. Afraid my brothers would find some way to put the blame on him for my accident.”

“Accident?” He lifted a brow. “That’s stretching it. But you didn’t seem to mind his attentions, Cele.”

Don’t respond. Be cool.

Devin’s private ready room resembled a pricey hotel room, with a plush sitting area and a fancy bathroom complete with a lighted makeup mirror and a stylist’s chair. A small bar dominated one corner. Privacy screens blocked off an area behind the living space. Probably a makeshift bedroom. Guitars, notebooks, water bottles, and articles of clothing were scattered across the sofas, coffee table, and chairs.

Devin plopped down on the couch. “You are coming to the postconcert blowout at the Trade Winds Casino?”

“I guess. Why you having it there?”

“Because it’s a total dive. Cheap drinks, haggard cocktail waitresses, a crummy wedding chapel, a greasy-spoon diner, all with a honky-tonk
theme straight from the fifties. It’s perfectly retro and I’m feeling nostalgic.”

Devin grabbed an acoustic guitar and propped his bare feet on the coffee table. He strummed a haunting melody. He’d stop, scribble in a notebook, then pick up where he left off—both the conversation and his guitar playing. He’d always done that, talked while he noodled with the strings and wrote music when it looked like he was screwing around. Sometimes it was hard to reconcile Devin the scrawny, happy-go-lucky kid with Devin the songwriter who penned such dark songs about love, lack of it, and no redemption.

“What’s been goin’ on in your world?” he asked.

“Same old same old. Trying to win enough money in barrel racing to justify doin’ it for another year.”

“What will you do if you don’t?”

“Maybe enroll in trade school and get a degree as a vet’s assistant, since I know a lot about livestock. Fletch has always said I could go to work for him.”

He stopped playing to jot something down. “I take it you’re not going home much?”

“Did Hank or Abe say something to you?” she asked sharply.

“No. I’ve sensed restlessness in you the last couple of times we’ve talked. What’s keeping you from ditching the rodeo life and settling down in Muddy Gap?”

“And do what? I’m the odd one out in the Lawson family. I’ve got no place to live. My brothers are married with families of their own. Harper and Bran are married. My new buddy Tierney married Renner Jackson. Tanna is the exception, which is why she insists I spend my off-tour time with her in Texas.”

“Weren’t you seeing some guy, kinda seriously?”

“Breck and I were hook-up buddies and it wasn’t exclusive.” At least not on Breck’s end. “I’m not looking to get married. What about you?”

Devin snorted. “Not hardly. I don’t lack for hook-up offers, and that’s fine by me. Touring is a bitch. But I ain’t bitching because this career is fickle. I can have a song at the top of the charts, sell out big venues, and the
next year won’t land a recording contract. It happens all the damn time, and it will happen to me eventually, so I’m gonna ride this ride as long as I can. Then maybe I’ll find a woman who ain’t impressed with the celebrity and just wants a simple country boy from Wyoming.”

“Tell you what, Dev. If your career hits the skids and I’m still trying to find my place in the world, I’ll marry you. I know you from the days you sported a mullet. I saw you barf after gutting an antelope. And I’m thankful for the cool cred you gave me my first year on the Cowboy Rodeo Association tour when you showed up after an event and whisked me off to dinner in your tour bus.”

“We had fun that night, huh?” Devin gave her a considering look. “All right. If in a couple of years we’re both unhappily single, we’ll tie the knot.”

“Although, sex might be weird. Vaguely—”

“Incestuous,” they finished simultaneously and laughed.

“Not to mention her brothers would fucking kill you,” Kyle drawled behind her, “but it’d probably be worth it.”

Celia whipped around to see Kyle exiting the screened-off area. “Why do you always have to scare me half to death?”

“Like you scared me when I left the bathroom and found a fucking note on the bed?”

Shit.

“At least she left a note,” Devin pointed out.

“I don’t appreciate bein’ ditched, Celia,” Kyle said in that deep, sexy rasp of his.

She stood, hoping neither man noticed her body swaying from the drinks that were catching up with her. “Being forced to hang out with me has to cramp your style, bull rider.”

“That might be true if I had a style. And you can’t force me to do anything. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t wanna be.”

Devin sighed. “No fighting. I need only good vibes in here, okay?”

“We’ll just go over here,” Kyle said, directing Celia to the bar. He filled two shot glasses with three fingers of tequila.

“So we callin’ a truce?” Celia murmured.

Kyle’s eyes pinned hers. “I thought we’d called a truce on New Year’s.”

“Kyle. Don’t. Not now.”

“You promised we’d talk about this and we haven’t. So we’re gonna talk about it now. Why did you come to Vegas?”

“For Devin’s concert,” she said way too fast.

He got right in her face. “Really?”

Stop being such a chickenshit.
Celia threw her shoulders back and met his heated gaze head-on. “No.”

“At least that was honest.” Kyle inched even closer. “What are you so afraid of?”

Tequila truth serum had her blurting out, “You. And me. What if that kiss…that weekend we spent together…was a fluke?”

“What if it wasn’t?” he countered softly.

Flustered, she had to glance away.

Kyle tipped her chin up. “Tell me you don’t feel this.”

“I do feel it. I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Give in to it. Just for one night. What’s the worst that could happen?” He held his shot glass up for a toast.

Celia clinked her glass to his and downed the tequila. “Fine. I’ll give in to it. But you’d better keep me from doing anything stupid.”

Chapter One

Present day

C
elia stared at Kyle lounging on the bed, admiring his wedding ring. “Wrong. We are not going to Wyoming. We are marching down to that wedding chapel right now, telling them it was a mistake, and getting an annulment.”

“No.”

“No? I had a fucking head injury yesterday! You cannot believe for one second I was in my right mind when I agreed to marry you!”

“You signed the papers. With little hearts by our names, if memory serves. So some part of you wanted to marry me, Celia.”

Her jaw dropped. He was wrong. Completely, totally, utterly wrong wrong wrong.

Wasn’t he?

His hungry gaze took full measure of her body. “I’ll bet the scent of my cologne is still all over your skin.”

Celia fought the urge to blush because he’d been saying sex stuff like that since the moment she’d woken up. She stubbornly repeated, “I don’t remember a damn thing from last night.”

“Don’t matter. I have this”—he jerked aside his shirt collar to show a small purple hickey—“to prove it.”

Holy crap. She’d done that?

“What’s the last thing you do remember?” he prompted.

She tried to sort through her hazy memories, rattling off, “Us drinking tequila in the cab on the ride to the Trade Winds after Devin’s concert. I went to find Tanna and I took…a couple or three painkillers because my head and ribs hurt.”

Kyle’s eyebrow winged up. “Three painkillers? Did you wash them down with booze?”

“I don’t know.” Man, she’d been full of stupid decisions last night. “So at what point did we exchange vows of eternal devotion and cheap-ass rings?”

“Hey, I checked the receipt this mornin’. The rings were a hundred bucks a pop, so they ain’t completely cheap.”

He had a receipt? “Do
you
remember everything from last night?”

Kyle leveled that damnably charming smile at her.

Dammit. “Who else knows we had the clichéd, quickie, soon-to-be-annulled wedding in Sin City?”

“Evidently Devin and Tanna were our witnesses.”

Oh fuck. Celia slumped in the chair. This was seriously not good.

“I take it you haven’t talked to Tanna today?”

“No. I was a little busy trying to wrap my head around the fact that I woke up naked, hungover as hell, and wearing your wedding ring!”

His phone rang. He muttered, “I figured she wouldn’t like me hanging up on her.”

Celia had been so concerned about dealing with the bogus marriage issue, she’d lost focus for a few minutes about the terse phone call she’d interrupted. “What did you mean when you said she dropped a bombshell about your alleged father?”