Lauren Canan – One Night With The Texan (страница 1)
From one-night fling...to the real thing?
For wealthy real estate CEO Cole Masters, a weekend in New Orleans means meeting a beautiful woman and blowing off steam. No names, no strings. So months later when the same woman shows up on his doorstep, it’s a shocker. Even worse, she’s an archaeologist with a court order to access his property—and mess up his business plan. And yet he’s still wild about her.
For Tallie Finley, this mission is both professional and personal, and Cole could prove too tempting a distraction. Will her efforts to uncover her family legacy be derailed...especially when she discovers she’s expecting?
“Could we start again, Tallie?”
He lowered his head, his lips almost touching hers. Then he was kissing her again. This time she felt his hunger and it drew her to him. His tongue moistened her lips before plunging deep inside the cavern of her mouth. She felt his hand at the back of her head, holding her to him as he continued to blow her mind. She heard him groan, then he was backing away, making the heat of the day drop to below freezing.
She wanted his arms around her. She wanted him to kiss her some more, make love to her. She was putty in his arms, encircled by the scent and strength and touch of him. But he was Cole Masters. The Cole Masters. Playboy of the western world. He knew what he was doing. He knew a woman’s body as well as his own, so under the circumstances she couldn’t agree. Eventually he would feel her enlarging belly and he would know. Then his professed interest would change into loathing because he would think she’d set him up; that she had gotten pregnant on purpose.
“I suppose we could talk.”
* * *
One Night with the Texan is part of Lauren Canan’s the Masters of Texas series.
One Night with the Texan
Lauren Canan
LAUREN CANAN has always been in love with love. When she began writing, stories of romance and unbridled passion flowed through her fingers onto the page. Today she is a multi-award-winning author, including the prestigious Romance Writers of America Golden Heart® Award. She lives in Texas with her own real-life hero, four dogs and a mouthy parrot named Bird.
She loves to hear from readers. Find her on Facebook or visit her website, www.laurencanan.com.
Contents
Cole Masters descended the steps of the hotel after his business meeting, bodyguards in tow, and walked toward the waiting limo that would take him to the airport and back to Dallas. The deal he was here to finalize had gone without a hitch. He’d actually been hoping the other party would voice some objections, stir things up a bit. But it had gone down as just another dull and boring merger.
Cole stopped and looked around him. The late-afternoon sun felt good on his face. New Orleans. The Big Easy. It had been years since he’d ventured into the French Quarter with all its laughter and music, but he remembered it fondly. Suddenly something snapped inside and he walked to the waiting car.
“Find out where there’s a thrift store. Something like Goodwill.”
“Sir?”
“Just do it, please.”
The driver disappeared inside the car and returned minutes later with an address.
“Excellent. Can you take me there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Gene, you and Marco are dismissed,” he said to the security detail. “The plane is waiting in Concourse D. Use it and fly home.”
“Mr. Masters, I don’t know if this is such a good idea.”
“It’ll be fine. Have the pilot back here by tomorrow afternoon.”
Cole got into the limo. “Let’s go shopping,” he told the driver and they were off, leaving the two bodyguards standing at the edge of the street staring after him as though he’d lost his mind. And maybe he had. He wanted to be wild, live in the moment, free of obligations to anyone or anything. Blend in with the other pedestrians and enjoy the few hours he’d allotted himself.
He was tired. Tired of the yes-men who would agree with anything he said. Tired of people using him. Tired of the same corporate demands, the same schemes. He’d grown weary of knowing what questions would be asked and knowing the answers before words ever left the person’s mouth. He was especially tired of being hostage to the family’s business negotiations. The image he was required to maintain had come to feel like a chain around his neck. He couldn’t free himself from it. He couldn’t get a reprieve. Consequently he knew he had become hard and bitter. He heard words come from his mouth he didn’t recognize as his own. People were starting to distance themselves from him and he didn’t blame them. Cynical, suspicious, contemptuous; he sometimes saw himself through others’ eyes and didn’t like what he’d become. As the CFO of a successful 8.2 billion-dollar family conglomerate, he took no pride in his accomplishments.
After purchasing jeans, T-shirt, jacket and a pair of scuffed shoes, he dismissed the driver, changed his clothes and hit the streets where hopefully no one would recognize him and subsequently no one would ask anything of him. He would let his soul get lost in the music and the ambience that is only New Orleans.
* * *
The man looked every bit as daunting up close as he had from a block away. The hard features of his wickedly handsome face bore the stamp of experience: a complete awareness of the world around him and those in it. Even in the increasing darkness, illuminated only by small twinkle lights strung over the outside tables at the bistro, that much was obvious. The dark, chocolate-brown hair with lighter highlights seemed to accent the golden brown of his eyes. Eyes that tempted her to look closer. To come closer without any rational thought of the consequences.
His lips were full, sensuous, made for seduction. She couldn’t stop herself from imagining what it would be like to feel them moving over her own; feel his hands caress her body as the heat between them intensified. His skills in bed would be amazing. How she knew, she couldn’t answer. But she knew.
Tallie Finley sensed he would be a formidable opponent. He was tall, powerfully built, dressed in a pair of jeans that had seen better days, a black T-shirt with some faded design on the front and a black jacket that appeared too large—an amazing feat when one considered the breadth of his shoulders. He impressed her as a man who had at one time owned the world and lost it. But not without a fight.
“What’s next?” Kate “Mac” McAdams asked, polishing off the last of her glass of wine.
“Beads. We cannot go home without earning our beads,” Ginger Barnes stated.
Leaving the stranger behind—again, because it seemed that everywhere she went tonight, he was there—Tallie followed her two friends out to Bourbon Street to experience the “Beads for Boobs” tradition, knowing it was one she would pass up.
Once they’d climbed the stairs to their second-story hotel room, Tallie made her way out to the balcony railing and looked down into the crowds below. The people in the adjacent apartment were already vying for their beads. Guys on the street held up ropes of the shiny multicolored necklaces for display, tempting the girls on the balcony to remove their tops and show all.
Street musicians vied with the jazz and R & B pouring out the open doors of bar-and-grills in a manner you’d think would clash. But not here. Not in this amazing city. The air was full of laughter, drunken wolf whistles, woots and cheers, the flamboyant colors of the clothes and the scent of spices and food cooking over open grills. It was a world like none other and Tallie was front and center. She would miss it when it was time to leave and begin her new research appointment in Texas.
“Don’t just stand there,” called Ginger, her closest friend and roommate for the past six years during college and grad school. “You’ve got ’em, girl. Use ’em!”
“Right on,” Mac encouraged. She made up the third of the trio. She’d flown to the Big Easy just to celebrate with her best friends.
“I don’t think so,” Tallie refused. “But don’t let me stop you.”