Lady Be Good (Wynette, Texas #2)(8)

“Were?”

“My father died when I was a child. And then when I was eighteen, Mum died on a dig in Nepal. She wasn’t happy unless the nearest telephone was a hundred miles away, so there was no way to summon help when her appendix ruptured.”

“You must have grown up in some pretty isolated places.”

“No. I grew up at St. Gert’s. Mum left me there so she could work.”

Lady Emma didn’t sound bitter about it, but Kenny couldn’t think too highly of a woman who’d left her kid an orphan so she could spend her time running all over the world. On the other hand, if his mother had spent more time running around and less time coddling him, his childhood would have been a lot easier.

Come give Mommy a kiss, baby doll. My beautiful baby. Mommy loves you best. Don’t ever forget that.

“Any brothers or sisters?” he asked.

“Just me.” She settled deeper into the hot tub. “I’m anxious to start in on my research tomorrow, and I’d also enjoy a little sightseeing, but before we do any of that, I need to visit a shop where I can buy some new clothes. And would you happen to know the name of a tattoo parlor?”

He choked and sent a spray of beer right up his nose. “What!”

She pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head and regarded him earnestly. “My first choice would be a pansy. But I’m afraid the color might make it look like a bruise, which wouldn’t do at all. There are so many flowers I love—poppies, morning glories, sunflowers—but they’re all so large. A rose would be safe, but they’re a bit of a tattoo cliché, don’t you think?” She sighed and returned her sunglasses to her nose. “Normally I make decisions easily, but this one is giving me trouble. Do you have any suggestions?”

For the first time in his life, the power of speech deserted him. The experience was so disconcerting that he slid under the water and stayed there for a while to collect his thoughts. Not long enough, though. Before he’d halfway run out of breath, she started thumping him on the top of his head. It annoyed the hell out of him, and he was scowling when he came up. “You want to get a tattoo?”

She had the nerve to smile. “I hadn’t realized there’d be this much of a language barrier in the States. And the next time you’re going to dunk your head like that, you might warn me. I presumed you were drowning.”

He could feel his blood pressure rising, which made it rise even more. “It doesn’t have anything to do with a language barrier! It has to do with the fact that somebody like you has no business getting a tattoo!”

For the first time since he’d met her, she grew completely still. For a moment she did nothing, then one hand emerged from the bubbles and slowly removed her sunglasses. She set them on the side of the hot tub next to her beer bottle and gazed at him with those honey-brown eyes. “What exactly do you mean? Somebody like me?”

He could see he’d riled her, but, for the life of him, he couldn’t understand why. “Somebody respectable, for one thing. And conservative.”

She rose from the water, and the expression on her face told him he’d just been sent to the principal, and she was it. “I’ll have you know, Mr. Traveler, that I am the least conservative person you’ve ever met!”

He started to laugh, then got distracted by the water trickling down those firm white thighs. “You don’t say,” he managed.

“I am—I am . . . completely disreputable! Just look at me! I’m in a hot tub with a man I didn’t even know until a few hours ago!”

“You aren’t naked,” he couldn’t help but point out.

She got rosy in the face, and the next thing he knew, she sank down in the water and started to tug. Right there in front of him, with nothing but bubbles hiding that milky white body, she stripped off her bathing suit. He watched her whip it out of the water and fling it from the hot tub. It landed on the pebbled concrete with a soft plop.

“There! Don’t you ever say I’m conservative again!”

He grinned. This was like taking candy from a baby.

As Emma watched those white teeth flash in his tanned face, she knew she’d done it. She had a dreadful temper, but she’d worked hard to control it, and it hadn’t gotten the best of her for years.

She fumbled for her beer and took a deep swallow as she tried to recover, but the fact that she was stark naked made it difficult. She was accustomed to dealing with rebellious students, unreasonable parents, demanding faculty members, and an overworked maintenance staff. How had she let one man upset her so easily?

As she tried to muster her dignity, she grew conscious of the slide of water over her skin. An unbridled streak of sensuality reared its silky head. She fiercely repressed it as she set the bottle back down and spoke more sharply than necessary. “Now that we have that settled, I’d like you to have the name of a clean tattoo parlor for me by tomorrow afternoon.”

He regarded her with the bland expression of the mentally impaired. Physically, however, there was nothing wrong with him. Sunlight flickered across shoulders that were strong and powerful. Without his Stetson, she could see that his blue-black hair was thick and a bit curly, like a dark archangel’s. If a Renaissance sculptor had ever gotten the urge to chisel a Texas cowboy into the frieze of a cathedral, Kenny Traveler would have been his man.