What I Did for Love (Wynette, Texas #5)(38)

His crude words sent a surge of heat sizzling through her, and she didn’t feel one bit guilty about it. They had no personal relationship. This was purely physical. Bram could be a stud she’d hired for the night.

But a stud went home when he’d done his job, and she reluctantly extracted herself from his arms. “Okay, I’m bored.”

His fingers brushed her hardened nipple before he stepped away. “I can tell.”

The breeze lifted her hair from the back of her neck and left a trail of goose bumps behind. She pulled her sweater tighter around her. “Well, you’re no Hugh Grant, but your technique has definitely improved from the bad old days.”

“Glad to hear it.”

She didn’t like that silky note in his voice. “Let’s go back,” she said. “I’m getting cold.”

“I can fix that.”

She’d just bet he could. “About that woman you were talking to on your cell today…” She walked faster.

“Are we back to that again?”

“You should know…If I die while we’re married, all my money goes either to charity or to my father.”

He came to a dead stop. “I don’t exactly see the connection.”

“You wouldn’t get a penny.” She picked up her pace. “I’m not making any accusations, just setting the record straight in case you and the friend you were talking to on the phone start thinking about how much fun you could have living off my money.”

She was mainly being a smart-ass to irritate him. Still, Bram was broke and had no morals, so she felt marginally better for having made sure he understood there was no advantage in plotting her premature death.

His heels kicked up the sand as he closed the distance between them. “You’re an idiot.”

“Just covering my bases.”

He grabbed her hand, more like a prison warden’s than a lover’s. “For your information, there was no camera. I just wanted to get my kicks.”

“And for your information…I knew there wasn’t a camera, and I wanted a few kicks myself.” She hadn’t known, but she should have suspected.

The breeze sighed, the waves lapped. She wasn’t done antagonizing him, and she leaned against his arm. “Skip and Scooter, together in the moonlight. How romantic.”

He retaliated by whistling “Tomorrow” from Annie, just the way he used to do whenever he wanted to piss her off.





Chapter 9




Georgie waited until the next morning when she heard Bram go into the workout room. She headed for the dining room, grabbed the key she’d seen him toss into a brass dish on the bookshelves, and made her way out to his office in the guesthouse. She still couldn’t get used to Bram having an office instead of conducting his business from a bar stool.

As she moved along the gravel path, she thought about how different Bram’s sexual aggression was from what she’d experienced with Lance. Her ex-husband had wanted her to be the seductress, and that’s exactly what she’d tried to do. She’d read a dozen sex manuals and bought the most erotic lingerie she could find, no matter how much it pinched. She’d performed stripteases that left her feeling stupid, whispered male fantasies in his ear that turned her off, and tried to find inventive lovemaking locales to keep things fresh. He’d seemed appreciative and always said he was satisfied, but obviously she’d come up short or he wouldn’t have left her for Jade Gentry.

She’d worked too hard to have failed so miserably. Sex might be easy for some women, but it was complicated for her, and just thinking about the quandary she found herself in with Bram made her queasy. Bram wasn’t going to give up sex. He’d either have it with her or with someone else. Maybe both.

She’d promised herself she’d face her problems head-on, but they’d only been married five days, and she needed some time to figure this one out.

She unlocked his office and turned on his computer. As she waited for it to boot up, she began searching his bookshelves. She had to know right now whether the reunion show was a figment of Bram’s imagination or something more tangible.

She found a diverse book collection and an eclectic pile of scripts, but none of them for a Skip and Scooter reunion show. She spotted assorted DVDs ranging from Raging Bull to something called Sex Trek: The Next Penetration. His file cabinets were locked, but not his desk, and that’s where she discovered a manuscript box under a bottle of scotch. It was taped shut. The label read skip and scooter: the reunion.

She was stunned. She’d hoped Bram had made this up to needle her. He knew doing a reunion movie would be a huge career setback for her, so why did he think he could convince her to go along with it?

She didn’t like the only answer she could come up with. Blackmail. He might threaten to walk out on their marriage if she didn’t go along with the project. But dumping her would put a stop to the money train, as well as making him look like an ass, although he might not care about that. Still…She remembered the way he’d behaved around Rory Keene. Maybe he cared more about his image than he’d led her to believe.

“What are you doing in here?”

Her head shot up, and she saw Chaz standing in the doorway looking like the love child of Martha Stewart and Joey Ramone. Her housekeeper’s uniform for the day consisted of holey jeans, olive tank top, and black flip-flops. Georgie pushed the drawer closed with her foot. Since she couldn’t conjure up a reasonable explanation, she decided to turn the tables. “Better question—what are you doing?”