Or maybe she could. He certainly had more proof of her dislike than he did of any softer emotion.
Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he picked up a stack of payroll checks and started to sign them. The woman had just burned up his Excursion, and he was sitting here doing “she loves me, she loves me not.” Of course Rebecca Wells hated him. Torching someone’s vehicle wasn’t generally a sign of affection. And it wasn’t as though he cared for her, anyway.
Sure, there were times late at night when images of her haunted him. In his dreams, she always clung to him as he made her cry out in ecstasy, over and over again. Though last night that dream had changed a little. First he’d kissed away her tears, then he’d made her cry out in ecstasy. But every man had his fantasies. Some liked cheerleaders, others movie stars. He happened to have a thing for the girl who’d grown up across the street and put honey in his sleeping bag when he and his friends tried to camp out in the front yard.
Frowning, he wondered if that made him a masochist.
“There you are.” Janie, the freckled nineteen-year-old who exercised the studs and cleaned the paddocks and stalls, poked her head inside the room. “Mary’s downstairs,” she said, wearing her tan cowboy hat and wide-mouthed smile. “Want me to send her up?”
Mary. Josh took a deep breath and rubbed a palm against the stubble on his chin. “Does she have makeup on?” he muttered.
Janie blinked in surprise. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Tell her to come up.”
Janie’s steps receded, and Josh leaned back, waiting. He knew Mary expected a marriage proposal soon, knew she was growing almost as impatient as her parents and his. But how did a man marry one woman when way down deep, so deep he’d never admit it to anyone, he secretly desired another? Josh had tried to put Rebecca behind him, knew he’d be a damn fool not to, but this whole Buddy business, and his SUV, and last night…
“There you are, working hard, I see.” The petite Mary waltzed into the room in full regalia—dark hair curled to perfection, glossy pink lipstick, a thick coating of mascara on her lashes and a tailored, form-fitting suit. A belt at the waist highlighted her trim figure, but somehow even the thought of what lay beneath did nothing to stir Josh. For the first time, he noticed that her legs were too short.
“What brings you out here?” he said, trying to redirect his mind before he did something really stupid and broke up with her on account of a woman who hated him.
She gave him a promising smile and closed the door. When the lock clicked into place, he knew she’d come for more than talk.
“Don’t you have to be at work?” he asked curiously. Mary ran the office of the only attorney in town—the one who’d handled her divorce and everyone else’s for the past thirty years—and was usually quite busy.
“Lunchtime,” she said. Then she unbuttoned her jacket and let it gape open to reveal a sheer lace bra that left nothing to the imagination.
Josh felt his pulse kick up a few notches and welcomed the sudden infusion of testosterone as she climbed onto his lap. He didn’t need Rebecca to make his blood race. He was fine the way he’d always been.
Maybe he would propose to Mary. Maybe he’d marry her and come home to her every night and make her scream in ecstasy. Only something told him that if she screamed, it would be a calculated response. She’d be offering him what she knew he wanted to hear, not the wild abandon of Rebecca Wells—
Rebecca again. He jerked his hand from Mary’s breast and managed to stifle a curse.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. Suddenly Josh realized he hadn’t even kissed her. Maybe if he kissed her…
“Nothing,” he said and bent his head to press his lips to hers, trying to back up and approach their lovemaking from a whole new angle. But she tilted her face away before their lips could meet.
“You’ll get lipstick all over both of us, silly,” she laughed. “This has to be a quickie. I’ve got to get back.”
“Oh, right,” he mumbled, but when he hesitated, she lifted his hand to her breast again. As her nipple responded to the attention he gave it, he felt his desire build—but then she started telling him about some pointless incident that had happened at work, and he almost snapped that he needed to concentrate if she wanted this to happen.
To prevent himself from snapping at her, he started thinking about Rebecca again, and suddenly he didn’t need to concentrate at all. He had Mary on his desk and was just about to make her scream in ecstasy—at least that was the next step in his fantasy—when she chose that moment to mention seeing a wedding dress she really liked.
“After we’re married, you won’t have to wait until lunch to get what you want,” she added with a little laugh.
He pictured them making love in twenty years with her chatting about something inconsequential and wearing lipstick she wouldn’t let him kiss away, and somehow his desire—and everything else—withered on the spot.
Suppressing a groan of frustration, he withdrew and fastened his pants.
“What’s wrong?” she asked again.
“It’s not you. It’s…it’s just not going to happen this time. This hasn’t been a very good day.”
He saw the same pouty expression she gave her son when he scraped his knee. For a moment Josh was afraid she’d say something like, “Joshy got a boo boo?” Much to her credit, she didn’t. “You want to talk about it?” she asked.
Suddenly she looked so undignified on top of his desk, her skirt around her waist, her jacket open, that he helped her off and felt relieved when she started righting her clothes.
“Someone set fire to my Excursion last night.”
“You’re kidding! Who would do such a thing?”
“I don’t know,” he lied.
“That’s terrible.”
He nodded but began to feel a little uncomfortable again when her eyes fastened intently on his face. She had something to say, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it. “What?” he asked.
She straightened the lapels of her jacket. “I just don’t want you to feel I’ll think any less of you after this.”
“After—”
“You know…” She nodded toward the desk and all the papers they’d wrinkled before aborting his fantasy. “An upsetting event would impair any man’s ability to…perform. So don’t give it another thought. I certainly won’t.”