The Maverick Meets His Match (Hearts of Wyoming Book 2)(33)
With arms crossed and heat in her cheeks, Mandy had been adamant it would be the twin beds. After dinner and several glasses of champagne at the Cattle Baron’s Grille, he thought she’d be primed for tonight. He’d been wrong.
He’d given in on the bedroom issue, for this evening at least.
Tomorrow they’d hit the road to meet with the various rodeo committees and offer assurances. They’d be staying in hotel rooms. He had to get lucky and have at least one place where they would have a room with a single bed. He’d make sure of it.
Tonight he’d just have to steel himself to frustration. Not quite how he would have guessed his wedding night would go, but then he’d never imagined it. Mandy must have. Every woman he’d met had thought about her wedding day at some time. Getting married in an office with only Brian, Shelia, and Harold to witness and before a strange judge must have been quite a letdown for her. He swiped a towel across his chin and secured a larger towel around his waist.
He’d always slept in the nude. He had no plans on changing. He’d use the towel to be discreet, but it wasn’t like she’d never seen a man before. And he had no problem with her checking him out. He had nothing to hide in that department.
She wasn’t in the bedroom, though the bed closest to the bank of windows had been turned down. He went and opened one of the windows. The soft cooling breeze of a late spring evening fluttered the sheer curtains. He looked around the yellow-walled room. It was simply furnished, containing two beds with old-fashioned iron headboards painted cream and covered in white bedspreads, one maple dresser, and a small vanity in the same wood. Obviously a room meant for JM’s grandkids when they were young. Not for someone’s wedding night.
Why had JM put him smack-dab in the middle of such a mess? It was one thing to want financial security for your family, but a whole other kettle of fish to try to play matchmaker to two people who were temperamentally unsuitable for each other.
Nothing to do but go to bed, he figured. They would be flying out in his plane at eleven the next morning and heading for Abilene, Texas, to talk to the folks there, and then they’d hit three more stops before flying back on Friday so they could make a Saturday rodeo Prescott was putting on in Washington. It would be a hectic week, but those Texas rodeos were influential. If the Texans held, they might not have to make more trips. Besides, there was an AFBR board member in Texas he’d like to see. He’d done a land deal with him a while back.
As he dropped the towel and slid under the thin cover, cool sheets greeted his hot body, hot for reasons unexplained by the mild temperature in the room. He was flying at half-mast even knowing tonight wasn’t going to be that kind of night. Damn.
He’d left the light on for Mandy and was just contemplating getting up and going to find her, when the door pushed open. She stood there dressed in nothing but a pink oversized T-shirt. Those long, shapely, tanned legs made his mouth dry and his shaft harden. An image of her wrapping those legs around his waist as he took her up against the door flitted across his overactive mind.
Mandy stilled in the doorway and stared at a bare chest displaying abs that looked like they’d been fashioned from corrugated steel. He had the kind of chest seen in fitness magazines and women drooled over. Tight skin, brown nipples, and a thin line of dark hair trailing toward the blanket bunched at his waist. Staring back, he propped up on his elbow to rest his head on his hand. The movement caused well-defined muscles to ripple and the blanket to slide down to his hips. Dangerously low. Below his belly button low. He was totally nude under that threadbare blanket.
That was knowledge she could have done without, knowledge that formed a pool of moisture between her legs.
She felt light headed, no doubt the residual effect from the poor decision of too much champagne, though she’d sobered up fast enough after stepping into her grandfather’s house. Too many memories.
“Make yourself at home, Ty.”
The words snapped in the air with more crackle than she’d intended. Partially to dispel her physical reaction. Partially because she’d just been down the hall in her grandfather’s room—remembering.
She flicked the wall switch off, killing the light. In the gray darkness, she picked her way past their two suitcases and the foot of his bed, toward her own.
“You okay?” he asked.
She flipped back the chenille bedspread and backed onto the mattress so she faced the window, not Ty. The cool sheets sent a chill through her as a slightly stuffy smell greeted her nose, probably from bedding that hadn’t been used for a number of years. She’d found them in the linen closet after she’d won the battle of the beds. Now here she was spending the night in the room she’d shared with her brother when they had stayed over at their grandparents’ in her younger years, when their grandmother had still been alive.
“Yes,” she mumbled. Could he tell she’d been crying?
She hadn’t planned on stepping into JM’s bedroom, the place she had last seen her grandfather alive. But being in the house, she’d felt an almost morbid need to confront the emptiness of that room. So much had happened since his death, she hadn’t had much time to grieve. The will was part of the reason, the rodeo, Mitch and Ty, the other parts, and somehow all interconnected. Regardless, she hadn’t had space to be alone, to process JM’s death.
The ache in her heart started the moment she’d set foot inside JM’s room. It looked the same, like it was waiting for his return. The comb on the dresser, that special book on the bed stand, the corduroy slippers tucked beside his chair. Only the empty hospital-like bed suggested the truth.