“If this were a musical, this would signal the start of a dance number,” Rhett said, amused by the thought. “Angry girls sexy dance in unison around the bull pen. Men stride up and grab a partner to a choreographed tango.”
Nolan held his hand out. “Give me your man card. You have never sounded more like a girl than right now.”
“Screw you,” Rhett told him. “It’s a joke. It’s funny. Now you bitches can stand here quaking in your boots about what your women might do to you. I’m going to get my woman.”
He started to walk, moving toward his wife.
He heard Jared ask Nolan, “How does he get that caveman shit to work for him? I would get my balls ripped off and stuffed in my mouth if I pulled what he does.”
“Beats the hell out of me.”
Rhett smiled. He knew exactly how he got away with it.
Shawn knew he respected her above all things. Shawn trusted him.
And it was time to tell her that he had fallen in love with her and wanted their temporary marriage to become a very real one.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SHAWN was glowing in the triumph of beating Eve by exactly two seconds. Eve was taking it well, joking that she had thrown it so that Shawn could win at her own bachelorette party.
“It was the only kind thing to do,” Eve told her. “And by the way, I have a feeling my thighs are going to be killing me tomorrow. Good thing it’s Sunday. I have a few days to recover.”
Shawn grinned at her. “Yeah, it’s harder than it looks, I’m not going to lie.”
“Look behind you,” Dawn said, pointing. “It looks like our party has been crashed. I swear, what were they thinking?”
Shawn and Eve turned and there were Rhett and Nolan and the other guys, watching them from across the room. “How long have they been here?” she asked, her heart starting to race. Just the sight of her husband got her blood pumping.
“Long enough that they caught both your final rides. Voyeurs.” She sounded disgusted.
Shawn wondered if she was a disgrace to wives that she actually wanted her husband to be there. And that it actually turned her on that he had seen her ride a bull. “I wonder whose idea it was to come here?”
“It had to be Rhett or Nolan. The other guys, one, know better. Two, they don’t really want to see us. Y’all are still in the honeymoon phase, but never fear, the need to see each other all the time will wear off.”
Somehow Shawn didn’t think she would be like that. Given that her adult relationships had never been particularly all-encompassing, romantic, or devotional, she found that with Rhett, it was totally different. She both loved and was terrified by her need, her want, to be with him.
“Maybe I don’t want it to wear off,” she murmured as Rhett started toward her, his stride confident, Nolan immediately falling in step behind him.
“It’s not practical,” Dawn stated.
Something about her tone had Shawn wondering if Dawn and her husband were not quite okay. But she wasn’t about to ask her here, not now.
“If Shawn doesn’t care that the guys are here, then I don’t suppose you should,” Eve told her. “It’s her bachelorette party.”
“I don’t mind,” Shawn said.
In fact, when Rhett came over and smiled at her, immediately pulling her into his arms, she didn’t want to do anything other than kiss the stuffing out of him. So she did.
“Mm. That was an awesome greeting,” he murmured in her ear, stroking his hands down her back. “Nice bull riding.”
“I have strong thighs.”
“Something I’ve always admired about you.”
“So what are you doing here?” she asked him.
“I was bored. I missed you. I thought if we’re already married, why shouldn’t we spend the night partying together, instead of separately?”
“Sound logic,” she told him. “Though you may have pissed your sisters off.”
But he just shrugged. “It’s not their night. It’s ours. And I found myself wanting to dance with my wife.”
Oh, damn, he was just so . . . much. It wasn’t charm, it wasn’t being smooth, it was something else. Something . . . more. He looked at her like that, and she melted. She gave in, she opened to him, she forgot who she was, and wanted nothing more than to be with him, to please him. It was exhilarating. Awful.
“Are you asking?” she said, to remind him that outside of their bedroom, she called the shots, so to speak. Not that she did, really. Rhett was by nature a dominating personality, and even when he was being polite and thoughtful and offering to cook dinner or change her oil or take her to the movies, he tended to initiate the order of their days. She didn’t mind, not really, because if she said no to anything, he would change gears without question. If she wanted pasta instead of steak, he would go to the grocery store and get pasta, so she didn’t care that he had a strong personality.
But she worried that she should.
“Yes. Will you dance with me, Shawn, my beautiful wife?”
“I would love to.” The ease with which he used the word wife made her feel warm inside. It made her wonder if he was wondering what she was wondering—that maybe they shouldn’t automatically dismiss their relationship as temporary, as fake. That maybe it could be, should be, something real.
As they swayed to the music with more feeling than any particular skill, Shawn smiled up at him. “Are we going to survive this party tomorrow?”
“It will be fun.”
“I’ve never seen you in a suit.”
“I’ve never seen you in a wedding dress. I’m not sure my blood pressure will be able to handle it.”
His hands were warm on her waist, and he was inching farther south than was really appropriate for a public place, but she let him for now. Once he reached her ass, she would stop him, but for now she was enjoying his touch. “I don’t think you’re that delicate. You’ll be fine.”
“There is delicate, then there is vulnerable. You have no idea how vulnerable I am with you,” he said, his voice low and near her ear.
Shawn shivered, the pulsing beat of the country ballad reverberating through her feet, her br**sts, her inner thighs. Or maybe that was just him. But the room was warm, the lighting low, their bodies close and intimate, and she was barely aware that anyone else existed.
“I don’t see how I can make you vulnerable,” she whispered, inching her fingers up to stroke the back of his neck. He smelled like cologne and beer. He didn’t usually wear cologne and she found it appealing, like he had kicked his own manly scent up a notch. “I think it’s the other way around and sometimes it pisses me off.”