This was all just a fantasy. It looked like real life, it felt like real life, but it was nothing but dreams and wishes.
Unless…
Unless McCade got so caught up in all the make-believe that he actually convinced himself he really was in love with her. But then what? He’d stick around for a month or two, maybe three if she got lucky. Then he’d get restless and leave. However she looked at it, happily-ever-after wasn’t in the cards. Not with McCade.
“So they organized a cleanup.” McCade carried both of the sodas and the popcorn toward the theater.
Sandy stared at him blankly.
“You were telling me about that news footage of Simon Harcourt that you found,” he reminded her.
“Oh. Yeah. The community center. Right. Well, Harcourt donated all of the supplies needed to fix the place up, and the people in the neighborhood did the work themselves. But—get this, this is the amazing part—Harcourt actually helped with the physical labor.”
“No kidding,” McCade said.
“Nope. We have footage of him hauling sheets of plywood up the stairs. He’s in the background of an interview with the kids. Harcourt wasn’t looking for publicity, he didn’t say a single word in the entire clip. I’m not even sure the camera crews recognized him. He was just working, he looked like Joe Average, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, you know? I wouldn’t have known he was there if James hadn’t spotted him. But we zoomed in and sure enough, it was Simon Harcourt. James was mega-thrilled. He nearly did cartwheels because this stuff is gonna be so good for Harcourt’s image.”
The theater was dim and cool and sparsely filled. McCade stopped next to an empty row of seats to the right of the center aisle. “This okay?” he asked.
“Considering that it’s exactly where we always sit when we come here,” she said dryly, “I’d say it’s probably okay.”
McCade entered first, but instead of sitting down in the seat next to the one on the aisle, he chose the seats all the way at the end of the row, by the wall.
Sandy stared as he put the sodas in the cup holders attached to the arms of the chairs. He walked back toward her, took her hand, and pulled her with him.
“Lovers sit near the wall, where it’s darker,” he explained.
A gentle push sent Sandy into her seat, and McCade sat down next to her, slipping his arm around her shoulders as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
The dim lights cast mysterious shadows across his lean face and long nose as he looked down at her. His eyes seemed to glitter, suddenly looking more green and brown than blue. Smile, Sandy silently begged him. But he didn’t. He just stared at her.
Her stomach and her heart were involved in a competition for the most number of flip-flops per minute. She took a deep breath. “McCade—”
He tugged her toward him, reached with his right hand to pull her chin up, and stopped her words by covering her mouth with his own.
It was an exquisite kiss. Sandy couldn’t remember ever having been kissed quite like this before. It was a slow, leisurely sort of kiss that started with McCade lightly running his tongue across her lips. It was a gentle kiss, but firm enough so that she knew he wasn’t going to end it anytime in the immediate future. His tongue swept across her lips again, this time with more pressure, a silent request for passage inside.
Her lips parted before she had time to consider all of the ramifications of kissing McCade this way. And as McCade unhurriedly claimed her mouth, drinking her in, she stopped thinking. Spinning in a whirl of desire, she met each thrust of his tongue with equal passion, until there was no longer anything even remotely unhurried about this kiss. She heard him groan as he tried to pull her closer to him, but the arm of the chair got in the way.
He pulled back then, and Sandy slowly became aware that the lights had gone down and the movie previews had started. She stared at McCade in the flickering light from the screen, and caught her breath at the heat, the unhidden hunger in his eyes. For one split second she allowed herself to hope that he truly wanted her, that maybe he even loved her.
“Cassandra,” he said, and her hopes burst like a soap bubble.
He knew exactly what he was doing. He was well in control. He would have called her Sandy, he never would have remembered to call her Cassandra if he wasn’t. No, her imagination was running away with her. McCade didn’t really want her, nor did he love her. This was all a game to him, and she couldn’t forget that. She couldn’t let herself get caught up in the fantasy, or she’d end up burned.
He leaned toward her, to kiss her again, but she made herself turn away, pulling free from his arms. She clasped her hands tightly in her lap so that he wouldn’t see how badly they were shaking. Using all of her concentration, she stared up at the movie screen as if, instead of showing a trailer from some cliché-ridden comedy due out sometime in the fall, it held the answers to the secrets of the universe.
Puzzled, McCade backed away. What had just happened here? Mere seconds ago he had been kissing her, and mercy, that had been one hell of a kiss.
With his good looks and happy-go-lucky attitude, McCade was a stranger to female rejection. As the movie started he watched Sandy’s profile with a growing sense of unease. What if she simply didn’t want him? What if her feelings for him had been brotherly for so long, she couldn’t see him any other way? What if he couldn’t make her fall in love with him?
He studied her face in the dim light, aching with need, and scared to death that he was running out of time.
“I’m going to bed.” Sandy stood in the doorway to the living room. McCade sat on the couch, reading a trade magazine.
He barely glanced up at her. “Okay.”
“Good night.”
He nodded, not taking his eyes from the magazine.
Sandy climbed into her bed, desperately tired, but unable to fall asleep. She alternated between staring at the strip of light shining into her room from underneath the door and staring at the clock.
A half hour passed. And then another. And another.
At one-fifteen the light went off, but she could still hear him moving around out in the hallway. She heard his quiet footsteps stop directly outside of her door, and she held her breath.
As she watched, the door quietly swung open.
She sat up. “McCade?”
He jumped and swore. “You damn near scared me to death!”
“
I
scared
you?
You’re the one sneaking into my room, for God’s sake!”
“I thought you were asleep,” he said from the darkness. “I was looking for my keys.”
“Your keys?” Sandy leaned over and clicked on the light on her bedside table.
“I changed my clothes in here yesterday and I think I put my keys somewhere….”
McCade was wearing his motorcycle jacket and black leather pants that fit his long legs like a sexy second skin. But the night was warm—in the high seventies, at the least. If he wore leather, then wherever he was headed, he was planning to get there at high speed.
“Where are you going?” she asked, trying to sound casual.
“I need to go for a ride,” he told her.
Need. Sandy’s heart sank as she climbed out of bed to help him look for his keys. This was how McCade’s restlessness, his urge to wander, started. He’d go off on his bike in the middle of the night to roar along the highways, to feel the wind on his face and in his hair. At first that illusion of total freedom was enough to satisfy him, but eventually his midnight jaunts would get longer and longer. One day she’d wake up to find him packed and ready to leave. And then, as quickly as he had appeared, McCade would be gone.
They were on her dresser—a plain metal ring with four keys attached. “Found ’em.”
McCade watched her cross to him with the keys. She was wearing one of those ridiculous little white cotton nightie things she liked to wear to bed. It was extremely sweet looking and demure. Except in this light the damn thing was nearly transparent. With her hair in an unruly jumble around her face and down her back, she looked so sexy it hurt.
“Can’t you sleep?” he asked quietly.
He held his breath, waiting for her reply. Ask me to stay, he thought. If she would just ask him to stay and keep her company, he would tell her that he loved her and maybe—
“I’ve got a lot on my mind,” she said. “I keep thinking about all the things that can go wrong this weekend up at the Grand Canyon.”
Please ask me to stay.
Their eyes met and something sparked, and Sandy quickly looked away.
She handed him the keys. “Be careful. I always worry when you ride at night.”
It was clear that she wasn’t going to ask him to stay. He swallowed his disappointment. “I don’t have to go.”
She just looked at him.
“If you want me to stay,” he said quietly, “I will.”
“No. You
need
to go, remember?” She shook her head. “Go for a ride, and get it out of your system, Clint. If you don’t, you’ll be strung way too tight for the weekend. And I need
you
—and your camera—to be at one hundred percent.”
But he didn’t need to go. Not anymore. He needed to stay. He needed to talk to her. He needed to make love to her….
Sandy climbed back into her bed. “Good night, McCade.”
The phone rang. It was quarter to four in the morning, and the phone was ringing. Sandy groped for it in the darkness. “Hello?”
“Yo.” It was McCade. “Sandy, baby, you still awake?”
It
was
McCade and he had clearly had too much to drink.
“I am now.” She turned on the light. “Where are you?”
“Where the hell am I?” she heard him ask someone. She could hear bar sounds in the background—distorted country music and the unmistakable relentless ringing of a pinball machine. “The corner of Van Buren and Vine,” he repeated for her benefit. “I’m in a real dive of a roadhouse called the Cactus Ranch. What the
hell
is a cactus ranch anyway?”
Sandy could hear a good-natured voice on the other end, but couldn’t make out the words. Whatever the man had said, it made McCade laugh. “Shut up, Peter,” she heard him say. “My
pal
Peter, the bartender, took my damn keys,” he said to her. “He won’t let me drive home and this dump is closing in less than an hour. I don’t have enough money for a taxi, and Peter won’t give me an advance on any of my credit cards. He says they don’t take plastic here. I need you desperately, baby. Come and save me.”
Baby? That was the second time he’d called her that. “Just let me throw on some clothes and—”
“But I like what you’re wearing right now.” McCade lowered his voice. “It’s very sexy. Did you know that when you’re backlit, I can see right through that nightgown?”
God, no, she didn’t know that. She managed to keep her voice steady as she pulled on a pair of jeans. “Van Buren and Vine. I’ll be right over.”
“Hey, Sandy?”
“What, McCade?”
“Don’t tell Peter, but he’s right. I’m a little drunk.”
“A little,” she agreed.
This part of Van Buren Street could not be mistaken for the garden spot of Phoenix. Near Sky Harbor Airport, it was an endless strip of cheap motels, neon-lit roadhouses, and fast-food restaurants. The street was deserted at this late hour, and Sandy wasn’t sure whether that was cause for relief or worry.
The Cactus Ranch had a dirt parking lot with huge potholes. One dim spotlight lit the sagging front door of the ugly, squat building. A row of motorcycles stood out front. Other than the bikes, there was only one car in the lot.
She parked as close to the door as she could and got out of her car.
She’d intended to tuck her nightgown into her jeans and pull her denim jacket on—until McCade made his comment about being able to see through her nightie. After that, she felt obligated to change entirely, and now she wore a plain, blue cotton work shirt with her jeans. With any luck, she’d fit right in, no one would notice her, she could grab McCade and leave.
The door opened with a squeak, and she hesitated before stepping into a room filled with cigarette smoke and loud music.
There were about fifteen people in the entire bar, but most of them were big—even the women—and covered with leather and chains. So much for fitting in.
Sandy spotted McCade sitting at the bar, talking to the bartender—a friendly-looking man who seemed to be at least part Native American.
She ran the gauntlet of interested male and hostile female eyes and finally reached the bar.
“McCade.”
He spun on the bar stool to face her and fell onto the floor. But he grinned up at her as if he didn’t feel any pain. “Hey! Sandy! What the hell’re you doing here?”
“You called me.” She nudged him with her foot. “To come and take you home?”
“You must be Sandy. I’m Peter,” the bartender said with a smile, holding out his hand. She shook it briefly. “You’re actually as pretty as McCade said you were.” He reached under the bar for McCade’s keys and handed them to her. “We’ve all heard an awful lot about you tonight.”
McCade was struggling to get to his feet. “
I
called you?” He frowned. “When did I call
you?
” He waved his frown away. “Hell, it doesn’t matter. You’re here now, baby, and that’s what counts. Wanna dance?”
It was amazing. Even falling-down drunk, McCade still managed to be the most attractive man she’d ever seen. His hair was messy, he needed a shave, and he could barely stand, but his crooked smile was charming and his eyes were still an impossible shade of blue.
Very, very
hot
blue. He moved closer.
Step one—invade personal space
…. “Come on, baby, let’s dance.”
Sandy crossed her arms and took a step back. “McCade. I got out of my nice warm bed to come and bring you home. Assuming I ever make it back into bed, I have to go to work in less than three hours. So, no, I’m not going to dance.”
“Mercy! Will you look at her body language,” McCade said to Peter. “Is she mad at me, or what?”
“Go home,” Peter said gently. “I’ll keep your Harley safe. You can pick it up tomorrow, okay?”
McCade turned to Sandy. “Six women—” He looked back at Peter. “Six
different
women?”