Devil in Texas(42)

Seeing him so appealingly undressed, Sadie had a hard time repressing a little growl. Cass's exquisite musculature was a sculptor's dream—and a woman's wet fantasy. But then, he'd always been an athlete, taking care to keep his reflexes as sharp as his mind.

Her man-shark hadn't noticed her arrival yet. That gave her time to plot her strategy. She raced him along the pool's longest edge, beating him to the shallows, where she waited triumphantly with a scowl. She was loath to let him know just how much she enjoyed watching his shameless virility cleave her ominous, black silhouette on the water.

When he pretended not to notice her, looming over him like an angry volcano goddess, she tugged his Bowie knife from her belt and flung it. The blade struck the deck's wooden planks above his head with a resounding thunk.

That got his attention.

He reared up out of the water, tossing back his hair in a gleaming arc of spray that looked like a moonbow around his golden head.

"I stopped by Wilma's place," she announced. Planting her fists on her hips, she straddled that erect and quivering hilt. "What the hell is this?"

Cass grinned. He trailed his wicked gaze from the knob on the hilt to the apex of her spreading thighs. "I'm not sure. But it looks illegal."

"You're illegal."

"That's why you like me."

She snorted. "As far as I'm concerned, Wright should have locked you in the calaboose and thrown away the key."

"Aw. Whose fluffy, white pillow did Vandy really soil? Yours or loverboy's?"

"You think vandalism's a game?"

"Life's a game, sweetheart. I just play by different rules."

"This from the man who wants to be a Ranger."

"I'm starting to have second thoughts about Rangerhood," he said drolly. "Women aren't allowed on the force."

"Oh, so now you're all about equality."

He winked. "Mostly, I'm about undercover work."

She didn't dare let her lips twitch.

"So tell me," he drawled. "How does a woman who couldn't bear to breathe the same air as a tin-star wind up becoming one?"

He was probing. Her guard raised a notch.

"If you can't fight 'em, join 'em," she answered breezily.

"Now that doesn't sound like you."

"Let's just say I liked the perks."

His eyes narrowed with speculation. "Care to be more specific?"

"Oh, you know. Steady pay. Lots of travel."

"And a tyrant boss to take the place of a husband?"

With a sudden flash of insight, she guessed where his questions were leading. The scapegrace was actually concerned about her! The notion warmed her heart in a dangerously romantic way.

"Does putting up with tyrants sound like me?"

He cocked his head, studying her. "No. But tyranny does sound like Sterne's style."

She rolled her eyes. "Right. I forgot who I was talking to."

"'Course, if you like being bossed around these days...." He flashed his Coyote grin.

"My, aren't you the considerate villain."

"Just doing my part to keep womankind sated and happy."

Dog.

Plotting his comeuppance, she let her gaze roam over the chamber. Tiled with colorful, Mexican-style images of suns, moons, and stars, it was the perfect backdrop for a heavenly body, like Cass's. Great earthen pots of yellow lantana, silver sages with lavender flowers, bushy dwarf palms and other drought-resistant flora had been cleverly arranged on limestone tiers to form a grotto, beneath which the spring's source bubbled forth. White colonnades, painted with fanciful sunflowers marched along the pool's eastern side, closest to the vaulted doorway that led to a pitch-black corridor and parts unknown.

Finally, Sadie spied what she'd been searching for: the glint of silver. Cass had stashed his all-black wardrobe in the shadows, under one of the grotto's slabs. Beside his boots and spurs sat his Stetson. He loved that hat almost as much as he loved breathing. Once, after he'd lost everything except his guns during a particularly bad craps shoot, she'd watched him bet his horse for the return of his hat—not for the knife that had made him a mumblety-peg champion. Not for his award-winning rodeo buckle. Not even for the hand-tooled Justin boots that he lovingly polished each morning until he could glimpse his stubbled mug on the toes.

The fact that he had stolen back his gear and his gelding hours later was beside the point.

"I don't suppose you paid to enter this bathhouse after hours," she accused.

"Why rent a pool when you own a lock pick?"

"Is that a confession, hooligan?"

"Are you going to arrest me?" he countered hopefully.

"Not if you're going to like it."

"Then I confess. I hate to swim. Especially when I'm butt-naked and all alone."

"Isn't that a shame?" Her smile was smug. "'Cause all I came for was the button."

She turned on her heel and headed for his trousers. She was intent on ransacking his pockets—maybe even tossing his hat into the pool.

"You mean this button?" he challenged, opening his fist. Brass flashed from the chain that slid through his fingers.

She sucked in her breath.

"Take another step toward that hat, Tin-Star, and the button gets it." He was wading backwards into the pool's center, her keepsake dangling precariously above murky waters.

"If you don't want to walk out of this bathhouse in your birthday suit," she retorted, annoyed that he'd out-coyoted her, "you'd better get your butt and my button up on this pool deck!"

He flashed all his pretty teeth. "I got plenty of duds stashed in Baron's private locker. You only got one button."

Baron has a private locker?

She filed that information away for future reference. Then she shot a vengeful glance at the Stetson.

Retaliating, he let the chain slide lower.

"You wouldn't dare!"

"Try me."

She fumed. The water was lapping around his pectorals now. If he dropped Daddy's button, even by accident, she wasn't sure she could ever find it in the pool's dark, green depths—at least, not by moonlight.

"If you lose Daddy's button, I swear to God, I'll skin you alive!"

"Be my guest. 'Course, you'll have to dive in first."

Donkey butt.

She eyed the water dubiously. In this part of Texas, spring-fed pools could be colder than a witch's tit—and that was in the sunshine.

"Truce?" she offered grudgingly.

"Spoken like a loser."

"A loser who pocketed four-hundred of your dollars, sucker."

He snorted at this dig. "Where'd you learn to count poker chips, cheater?"

"Cheater!?"

"Why, sure. If it looks like a duck, and waddles like a duck—"

"You are so dead, Cassidy." She ripped off the first boot.

He twirled the chain around his fingers, quacking like a mallard.

She ripped off the second boot. "You're fowl, all right!"

He winked, dunking the button like a teabag.

Her hat, trousers, shirt, and breast bindings flew off at his threat. Gritting her teeth, she took the plunge, leaping feet first into the shallows. The shock of that icy water ripped a shriek from her throat, especially when it slapped the undersides of her breasts and puckered her nipples. Sputtering curses against him and all his ancestors, she planned to drown him the moment her blood thawed.

Meanwhile, her man-shark was knifing through the water on a collision course with her. She glimpsed taut buttocks, gleaming like snow-capped hillocks in the lunar light. She was almost sorry when the show ended. He surfaced before her, a cascade of liquid emerald rolling off moon-chiseled shoulders, biceps, and pectorals and an abdomen that might have been cut from white granite. Tossing back his hair, he revealed starlit eyes that twinkled with mirth.