The Texan’s Bride(40)
“I don’t think so.” She took a bite of salad. “Your closet looks like something out of a magazine, everything in its place.”
“When you’ve lived in a twelve-by-twelve room with two sloppy brothers, you learn to be organized. Our mother always picked up our clothes from the floor and they just magically appeared in our closet. But Aunt Etta was different. If you didn’t put your laundry in the basket, they didn’t get washed or ironed. Kid didn’t get the knack of it until he had to wear dirty clothes to school. From then on he knew Aunt Etta was serious.”
“How did he get the name Kid?” She covered her potato with toppings.
“When my dad was small he used to watch The Cisco Kid, an old Western. He wanted to name me Cisco, but Mom wouldn’t hear of it so Kid got stuck with it. Chance teases him that he should have been named Poncho, the sidekick.”
They continued to talk as they ate, but Jessie knew they were skirting around the main topic—the night. How did she bring it up? How did she tell him she was ready to make love? She trailed her fork through her potato and stuck with an easy subject. “All three of you have unusual names. How did Chance get his?”
“After two boys, my mother wanted a girl. There were some complications with the delivery and she knew she wouldn’t be able to have any more children. It was her last chance for a girl and that’s what she called him.”
“And you?”
“It’s my grandfather’s name. My parents were just teenagers when they got married and they lived with him. My grandmother had died long ago. When I was eight, he passed away and he was so proud I carried on his name.”
Cadde took the remains to the trash and Jessie helped. “How did you get yours?” he asked.
She paused in picking up a container. “I have no idea. I guess it was a name my dad liked. When I was in first and second grade, the teachers kept trying to put Jessica on my papers. But it’s simply Jessie—Jessie Marie.”
Cadde leaned against the counter. “We don’t have middle names.”
“Really?” Her elbow brushed his arm as she rinsed the forks and knives. He instantly moved away.
“I have to go back to the office. You get some rest.”
What?
“Cadde!”
He stopped with his hand on the door.
“Don’t treat me like a fragile, helpless woman.”
“I never think of you as fragile or helpless. You can ruin my day faster than anyone I know, including Kid.”
“I don’t want to ruin your day,” she said with as much finesse as she could without blurting out, “have sex with me.”
He got the message. “You were attacked by a dog yesterday. That alone was traumatic and you said the other night you weren’t ready. I don’t think…”
“I’m ready.”
CHAPTER NINE
“JESSIE…”
“Let’s have a glass of wine,” she suggested, never dreaming it would be this hard to, well, seduce him.
He walked farther into the room. “You got mad the last time I drank wine.”
“That’s because you were guzzling it.” She opened the built-in liquor cabinet. Her father had always kept it well stocked, but she didn’t know how it was now. There were several bottles. Evidently Cadde had continued the tradition. “How about a merlot?”
“Fine.”
She handed him the bottle and their hands touched, and the sexual tension was a thing she could feel—pentup sexual tension, in him and in her.
Suddenly he set the bottle on the coffee table. “I don’t need wine to sleep with you.” His eyes roamed over her. “All I have to do is look at you in that shirt with your hair mussed up like you just got out of bed and every male muscle in me kicks in.”
She stepped closer to him, so close she could feel the heat from his body. “Then why were you leaving?”
“Because…”
She trailed her hands up the front of his shirt and felt the solid wall of his chest. As she slipped a button through a hole, his arms snaked out and grabbed her around the waist, pulling her even closer until there was nothing left to the imagination. Her soft curves welcomed the hardness of his body.
His lips tentatively kissed the hollow of her neck and paused over the tape for a brief second, then moved to her ear, her cheek. She gasped from the sheer satisfaction when he finally took her lips. Slowly, he kissed her, their tongues tasting, exploring and needing more. He groaned as his mouth moved over hers in urgent need. She didn’t know much, but she knew this was the real thing. Real emotions. Real sexual desires. He wanted her.