Page 19 of Breaking the Cowboy's Rules

“You’re good with follow-up,” he noted, and she could see and feel his dodge, and her mind ticked over, even more interested. “CIA? Homeland Security?” he asked idly.

“That would be interesting. Maybe I should update my résumé.”

Again, the quick grin that lit his face and made her feel like she was the only woman in the saloon. He’d never once broken eye contract with her—never once let his gaze take in other women who were clearly trying to get his attention and bump into him as they hauled another partner by him. The group of dressed-up and drunk celebrants in two booths definitely were taking notice of Bodhi.

“You would be a killer spy,” he said. “Smart, calculated, cool under pressure, enigmatic, fascinating your prey before tightening the noose.”

Her tummy jumped at his list of accurate adjectives.

“Are those on your top-ten list?”

“They are now.”

“You forgot beautiful,” she said lightly.

“That’s the one every man in any room you walk into will see first. I’m fascinated by what’s underneath and what comes after.”

Nico missed a step.

He moved her out of the flow of dancers and effortlessly got her back in step, his hand never once straying from her shoulder blade. She felt it like a brand. His other hand still held hers, and he brought it to his chin. She felt the faint rasp of stubble down to her toes. The only men who had touched her never had stubble. Ever. Their faces were professionally shaved as well as beneficiaries of other high-end salon treatments.

“Why do you need a bride for a week?”

“It’s a game I got going with my cousins. A final good deed, so to speak.”

Final?

She’d save that one for later. “Have you committed many bad deeds?” she asked.

He steered her back onto the dance floor.

“I’m not sure,” he said slowly. “Maybe, but for what I thought were the right reasons at the time. God will judge.”

“The game. Will it hurt anyone?”

“It’s meant to help four people who mean the entire world to me.”

She’d questioned a lot of people. She’d been lied to by dozens, if not hundreds, more. And they paid the price for their lies.

Truth always sounded like knocking on solid mahogany. His eyes sizzled with a sincerity she’d rarely seen. And the way he held his body—at ease, confidence in every line, not crowding her or using his size or strength to remind her that he was the man, assuming that he was in charge added to the certainty that he wasn’t gaming her—as he was pitching a game. How Fed up was that?

“Why do they need help?”

“Why do any of us? We are blind because we do not wish to see.”

She acknowledged that truth. She’d been blind to the impact her family and her work had on others most of her life and then had been brutally awakened into someone else’s harsh, agonizing reality.

“About the lies.” She couldn’t live with any more.

“Never to deceive. Only to protect.”

“Yet they can be the same.”

“True.”

It’s not like she had any moral high ground to stand on. At best she was precariously perched on the sulfuric, quake-ridden, crumbling rim of one of hell’s inner seven circles.

A good deed.

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