Free Taken Home (Lone Star Burn) by Ruth Cardello Page A

down at the couch beside her, and an image of him with a woman flew into her head. “And this couch? Did you christen that, too?” I am so glad I didn’t sit down.
    He raised and lowered one eyebrow in concession.
    She glanced out the door at the pool she had adored only a short while earlier. “And the pool?”
    He nodded.
    “Are you sure you didn’t miss a spot? How about where I’m standing?”
    A shameless smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. He was guilty as charged, and for some reason Chelle couldn’t remain irritated with him. She swore to herself in that moment she wouldn’t sleep with him, but she found herself smiling back at him. “I don’t feel so bad now about getting a little blood on the carpet. It sounds to me like this place is due for a little sanitizing.”
    Mason looked around and conceded, “I probably should have chosen a different hotel.”
    Chelle rolled her eyes. “You think? You don’t put your fiancée in the same hotel room where you slept with everyone else. Oh my God, I don’t want to know what the manager was thinking when he showed me around.” Chelle waved a finger at him. “This is so wrong. One day you’ll be grateful you test-drove being engaged with me, because any self-respecting woman who was actually with you would be on the first plane out of here.” She looked down at the couch and wrinkled her nose at it. “I’m not staying in this room.”
    “I offered you a bedroom at my apartment. You said no.”
    “Because I didn’t want to . . .”
    “Sleep with me?” he asked with that sexy, coaxing tone that made her want to rip off her clothes and offer herself to him as an afternoon snack.
    Friends. We’re friends. Don’t forget that. Chelle folded her arms across her chest. “If you really want me to stay for the weekend, you have to stop doing that.”
    The naughty smile was back. “Doing what?”
    She waved at his smile and the expression on his face. “Constantly flirting with me. I didn’t come here to sleep with you, and you seem to have plenty on your plate as far as that is concerned anyway. When we’re in public, we can pretend to be together. But when we’re alone, tone it down a notch. Treat me like any of your other friends who are women.”
    Mason scratched his chin thoughtfully. “I have sex with my female friends.”
    Chelle rolled her eyes. “Of course you do.” It was almost funny. Almost. “There must be some woman in your life you spend time with and don’t bring here.”
    “My secretary, Millie.”
    “Okay, that’s promising.”
    “She’s in her late sixties.”
    Chelle burst out laughing. “You have a problem.”
    Mason’s cheeks reddened. “Ouch. Criticism from a twenty-five-year-old virgin. We could discuss what defines a healthy sex life, but you’d have to have one to contribute.”
    Chelle raised her hand to deliver a smack she wholeheartedly felt he deserved. He caught her hand midswing.
    The air between them was instantly charged with a sexual tension so strong it had both of them breathing heavily. “You have quite a temper for someone people describe as the sweetest woman in Texas.”
    “You bring out the worst in me,” Chelle answered.
    He leaned forward and brushed his lips lightly over hers, wiping the anger clean out of her. “I could say the same. I shouldn’t have made fun of your virginity. The more I think about the fact that you’ve never been with anyone else, the more I like the idea.”
    Chelle panicked and tried to pull her hand away, but he held it firmly between them. “Let me go.”
    “I don’t know that I can.” He brushed his mouth ever so lightly over her lips again. Chelle kissed him back, unable to fully resist the lure of their attraction.
    A part of her held back, though. If she gave herself over to the temptation of his kiss, there was no doubt what would come next. Tonight could be everything I wanted at the wedding. This weekend could be a wild sexual adventure with a dab