A Stranger's Touch Read online

  Dulcy and Jena stared at her.

  “What? He is.” Conviction vanished from her face. “Isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he is,” Dulcy agreed, dragging the back of her hand across her mouth. She stared at it in horror. Had she actually just done that? God, her mother would die if she knew. She picked up a napkin, hoping she wouldn’t next be running the heel of her hand against her nose.

  Then it dawned on her what Jena might be after. “Oh, no. You can just forget about it. I am not sharing any…intimate details about any part of Brad’s anatomy.”

  Not that she could share details. At least, not specifically.

  She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from blurting out what she had essentially kept from her friends for the past few months. Namely, that straight off the bat, at the end of their first date five months ago, Brad had suggested they not have sex. First he’d told her he didn’t want to move too fast, then after they became engaged two months ago, he’d said they might as well wait until their wedding night.

  She’d thought it quaint—for a whole two minutes. Then her overactive imagination began wondering what he was hiding. Could the breathtakingly handsome playboy be a minute man? Done the instant he began? She shifted awkwardly. Then there was the size issue. Something she’d immediately set out to disprove by launching a surprise attack on him after dinner at his mother’s house one night. She smiled to herself. Oh, no. Size was definitely not a problem. But at the time, Brad’s scandalized reaction was.

  So the guy was traditional when it came to the woman he wanted to marry. She told herself she should be flattered. Still, a little part of her thought the whole thing was a bit…weird. Not to mention immensely frustrating.

  There. That was it. The reason why her hormones were running amok. It was only natural that she’d want to make love with her fiancé, the man she planned to spend the rest of her life with, right?

  She swallowed. The only problem was that lately everything but Brad seemed to set her off. Her recent highly charged state had even made her consider acquainting herself with the gag gift Jena had given her for her last birthday. She probably would have if the damn vibrator wasn’t so large it took enough batteries to run a small car.

  Jena rolled her eyes. “Good, because I, for one, am not interested in hearing about them…it.” She snickered. “Whatever. No, I want to know how it feels, generally speaking. You know, your being on the verge of becoming Mrs. Bradley Wheeler III.”

  Dulcy straightened. “As a bride, in general, I feel pretty good.” Damn good, actually. At some point over the past year she’d stopped ignoring her mother’s incessant speeches about her needing to find a prosperous prospect before there were none left, and started listening to them. And rather than tossing the bridal magazines Catherine Ferris had subscribed to and had delivered to her condo, Dulcy had started absently leafing through them. Then she’d met Brad at a cocktail party and everything had fallen neatly into place. Too neatly, she sometimes found herself thinking.

  She smiled at Jena’s frown and waved her finger. “But I know that’s not what you’re asking. As for that, all I have to say is that his being Bradley Wheeler III has absolutely nothing to do with my feeling good. I’d be just as happy if he were a…bartender.”

  “That’s sweet,” Marie said.

  “That’s dumb,” Jena disagreed. “Honey, bartenders don’t make Bachelor of the Year three years running.”

  “Neither do hockey players,” she pointed out.

  “Depends on which publications you’re reading.”

  Dulcy laughed. “Sorry. My subscription to Jocks-R-Us must have run out.”

  Jena playfully slapped her palm against the table. “Then, you must renew, pronto. These guys take home some whopping salaries.”

  Dulcy tugged the bowl of chips closer to her. “I’ve already got a groom. Remember? And money has nothing to do with it. I’m marrying for love.”

  She caught Jena’s cringe and silently chalked up another one.

  “That’s nice,” Marie said, sighing.

  Dulcy and Jena stared at her again.

  Okay, so Marie got romantic when she drank. Jena grew even bawdier. And Dulcy was a sloppy drunk. Dulcy didn’t know how they’d gone so long without discovering this before, but she tucked the information into the back of her mind for future reference. Some night when they were vegging in front of the television with a stack of old videos, frapuccino and popcorn, she’d pull it out and they’d have a good laugh.

  She propped her chin on her hand and gazed at her two friends. “Thanks, guys—you know, for doing this for me. I’m…I’m having a great time.”

  “You’re drunk,” Jena said.

  “That, too. But I meant what I said just the same.”

  “But we’re just getting started, Dulcy Ferris.” Then Jena fixed the kind of determined gaze on her that made Dulcy and Marie say “uh, oh” whenever they saw it. That gaze was what made her such a great criminal defense attorney. It’s also what made her a downright nosey friend. “So tell me, Dulc. Since in eight days, when you go in front of that altar and profess your undying commitment for Brad Wheeler in front of God and everyone, you’ll forfeit all possibility of seeing it come true…tell us, what’s the sexual fantasy you’ll miss most?”

  “Yes,” Marie chimed in, the dreamy expression vanishing and an almost voyeuristic interest taking its place.

  “And if Brad satisfies all my sexual fantasies?” Dulcy asked. Oh, please let that be the case. Let them get married, hit the honeymoon suite and have Brad shed his conservative behavior and turn into a virtual Tarzan in bed. Images of hard abs, ropes and a leather loincloth leapt to mind, and she sighed.

  “Ha ha,” Jena said. “I’m serious.”

  Dulcy dropped her gaze and cleared her throat, then told a bald-faced lie. “What if I told you I don’t have one?”

  Jena scoffed. “Everyone has a sexual fantasy, even Marie here. Don’t you, Marie?”

  “Oh, yes. But we’re not talking about me. I still have plenty of time to fulfill mine. Dulcy’s the one getting married.”

  Dulcy stared at them pointedly. She’d never been very comfortable discussing items of a personal nature. Being amused and sometimes appalled by Jena’s behavior was one thing. Telling her friends when she had her period or how frustrated she was that she and Brad hadn’t slept together yet…well, that was quite another. She knew her discomfort was due in large part to her upbringing. You could live in a conservative, emotionally repressed household for only so long before some of it rubbed off on you. In her case, it was talking about intimate matters.

  She slumped back against the booth. “God. You’re not going to let me off the hook on this one, are you.”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “No.”

  “Okay, then…” Resigning herself to the fact that putting them off would only make things worse, Dulcy searched her mind, trying to come up with something that would please them. “Okay. My secret sexual fantasy is a night of white-hot passion with an anonymous bad-boy.”

  Jena grimaced. “Been there.”

  “Done that,” Marie agreed.

  Dulcy lifted her brows. “You have?”

  Jena waved her away. “Never mind us. We’re talking about you. And certainly even you can do better than that. Half the female population has that fantasy.”

  Okay, so she was a cliché. Wouldn’t be the first time. She twisted her lips and looked around the hockey-player-choked bar, then through the glass doors to the lobby of the hotel. The silhouette of a man seemed to appear out of nowhere. She swallowed hard. Boy, could her imagination work overtime with a little help from tequila. The silhouette moved closer to the club, then halted in the doorway, his face concealed, his body the stuff of which dreams were made. Tall. Broad shouldered. Long legged. Rock hard.

  Every single last urge she had hoped she’d drowned with the liquor came rushing back tenfold. Especially when she realized the guy wasn’t an apparition at all, but
a flesh-and-blood male who seemed to prowl rather than walk. His dusky skin hinted at a mixed heritage. The length of his longish black hair teased the back collar of his shirt.

  All sorts of naughty thoughts popped to mind, suddenly making her task much easier. “Okay,” she said slowly, her throat mysteriously tight as she tugged her gaze away from the real thing and focused instead on imagination. “My secret fantasy is a night of white-hot passionate sex with an anonymous bad-boy…in an elevator.”

  Jena’s gaze narrowed. Marie nodded encouragingly.

  Dulcy’s pulse seemed to slow to a steady thrum as she worked her way through the vision. “I, um, would have on this short short skirt…and I wouldn’t be wearing any underwear. And he’d…um, he’d be wearing leather pants…black…” That was good. The guy who still stood at the door had on jeans. Close-fitting faded denim that hugged his crotch and thighs to perfection. “And he’d have leather straps in his pants pockets. Straps he’d use to tie my hands above my head….”

  Dulcy couldn’t swallow, with the vivid images in her head of open-mouthed kisses and soft moans; the glistening, silk-covered shaft of an erection pulsing in her hands; the scent of sex thick and musky, tanned skin pressing against her sensitive pale flesh.

  Jena shifted, and Dulcy blinked her into view. It was the first time she’d seen her friend speechless. Afraid of how much she’d just revealed about herself, she curled her fingers into her palms and searched for a way out of the corner she’d painted herself into.

  “Oh, and…there would be another hot guy standing in the corner of the elevator…watching.”

  Judging by the way Jena’s brows shot up and the way Marie’s eyes bulged, she’d succeeded in her endeavor.

  “You just made that up,” Jena accused.

  Dulcy rubbed the side of her neck, glad she’d momentarily sidetracked her friends. The fact that the guy in her fantasies was real wasn’t improving her finely tuned condition any. “Okay, you’re right,” she lied. “But you have to admit, I had you two going.”

  She’d also made herself more than a little hot and bothered. Not because she got into exhibitionism or S&M by any stretch. But the hot passion and the anonymous stranger part had long been a secret fantasy of hers. Ever since she’d graduated from ogling her high school P.E. teacher and had taken to privately rating men in public places on how she thought they might perform in bed. Like having coffee at the café around the corner from their office and summing up the young, athletic waiter in the tight black pants that left very little to the imagination. Or dining out at her favorite Mexican restaurant and watching the hot Latin dancer teach customers how to tango, making her wonder how he danced in bed. Or during lulls at work, eyeing the building’s new maintenance man, whose biceps practically split the seams of his shirt while he fixed the rash of broken light fixtures.

  Dulcy twisted her lips. Curiously enough, all three examples were from the past week alone.

  Her wedding—and wedding night—couldn’t come soon enough for her.

  Jena folded her forearms on top of the table. “Okay, since you’re not interested in sharing your real fantasy with us…tell me, Dulcy, why did you say earlier that you have to lie to get married?”

  Dulcy made a face. “I did not.”

  “You most certainly did.”

  Had she? She thought back and realized that, yes, she had, when she’d suggested that maybe Marie wasn’t married yet because of her inability to lie. “It was a joke,” she said.

  “No, it wasn’t. You don’t make those kinds of jokes. Does it have something to do with Brad?”

  “Jeez, Louise—Jena, give a girl a warning before you go back to something we talked about two days ago.” Had she really just said ‘Jeez, Louise’? Horrified, she realized she had.

  “It was five minutes ago, not two days. And are you going to answer my question?”

  Dulcy grimaced. “I plead the fifth.”

  “It’s impossible to incriminate yourself with us, Dulc.”

  When Dulcy merely smiled, Jena sat up. “Would you like me to rephrase the question in a simple yes-or-no format?”

  Dulcy pursed her lips, then said, “Yes.”

  “Okay. Did you lie to your groom, your husband-to-be, one certain Mr. Hottie,” she glanced at Marie, having used her name for Brad, “today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did it have to do with sex?”

  “No.”

  Jena frowned. “Damn. Okay…did it have to do with your friends, one Ms. Jena McCade and Ms. Marie Bertelli?”

  Dulcy went completely still, the question hitting a little too close to home. “Well…it’s more complicated than that—”

  “A simple yes or no will do, Ms. Ferris.” Jena looked to Marie. “May I request Your Honor instruct the witness to respond in the manner requested and agreed upon?”

  Dulcy looked to Marie, the session’s judge, hopefully.

  “Answer the question, Ms. Ferris.”

  Dulcy gaped at her. Marie never sided with Jena. “Okay, then…yes. Yes, the lie I told to Brad had to do with you two.”

  She didn’t realize the weight of the question and corresponding answer until silence settled on the table. She blinked to stare at her empty shot glass, avoiding her friends’ curious looks.

  Jena had warned her last month during a cocktail party at the Wheeler estate that Brad would try to break up their friendship after he placed the old rock and ring on her finger. Dulcy had laughed at her, thinking the prospect ridiculous…until Brad had asked her earlier today why only Jena and Marie were involved in her bachelorette party. And why his mother Beatrix—who looked remarkably like Betty White on steroids—wasn’t included, as she wanted to be. During the drive into town, she, herself, had begun to wonder whether or not Jena’s warning held any water. If Brad did disapprove of her friends now, what would happen after they were married? Would he begin by suggesting they leave one or the other of them off the list of dinner invites in deference to one of his friends or family members? Would he suggest they go to his family’s for the holidays, essentially banning her from spending time with Jena and Marie?

  She’d snapped her mouth open to make it clear to Brad that her friendship with Jena and Marie wasn’t up for debate. But there weren’t enough words in existence to convey the special bond that had developed among the three of them when they were kids. A tragic incident with Jena’s parents had inspired in each of them an interest in law, and that interest had taken them through the bar exam and eventually to their recently formed law practice in partnership with Barry Lomax. Then she’d decided that she wasn’t going to be placed in the position of defending her friendship with Jena and Marie. It was a fact he’d just have to accept.

  Concerning her mother-in-law to be, she’d told Brad that bachelorette parties were traditionally for the bride’s peers. Besides, Beatrix scared the living hell out of her.

  As for the lie…she’d told Brad the three of them were going to dinner and a movie, then staying at Jena’s afterward.

  “Let’s dance.”

  Startled, Dulcy looked up to find Jena getting up from the booth. “What? Without—”

  “Men? Absolutely.” Jena tugged on Marie’s hand; Marie in turn grabbed Dulcy’s.

  Giving a protest yip, she found herself stumbling down the aisle toward the dance floor set up in front of the band. They were playing Seger’s “Old Time Rock ’n’ Roll” and the decibel level was ear splitting up this close.

  Jena easily found her groove, shimmying and shaking in that spontaneous way Dulcy had always secretly admired. Marie began clapping her hands, not nearly as graceful and slightly out of step, but having a good time.

  Dulcy shrugged. Why not? She could do this. After all, it was her last real night as a single woman. Surely even she deserved to cut loose and have a bit of fun with her best friends.

  With that, she threw her hands up in the air and began shaking her hips in a way she hoped wasn’t too ludicrous.

>   GREAT. HIS FIRST NIGHT OUT in three months and he had to pick a gay bar.

  Quinn Landis leaned against the highly polished bar and eyed three men standing nearby. They looked like models from a Gap commercial—as did every other male in the place—and they didn’t seem to mind that there was nary a female in sight. He frowned, then asked the bartender for a beer. When he was handed an ice-cold bottle, he leaned across the bar. “What’s going on tonight?”

  “Sir?”

  Quinn gestured with the neck of his bottle toward the guys.

  The tender grinned. “Hockey team staying in the hotel.”

  “Oh.” He paid the man, including a generous tip. “Thanks.”

  Gripping his beer, Quinn made his way toward the only empty table in the place, a small one near the dance floor. He hooked his foot around a chair leg, pulled it out and sat. Okay, so the joint wasn’t a gay bar. But considering the low percentage of female clientele, he might soon wish he were anywhere but here. His odds of snagging a prime, long-legged woman interested in spending an hour between the sheets with him were looking slim, with all these jocks roaming the place. He glanced to where a waitress was taking a swat to the bottom from the guys at the neighboring table. Her grimace made him grin. Then again, maybe his chances weren’t that bad, after all.

  Good. After three months on the range, with nothing but fellow weathered ranch hands as company, he needed to get laid. As soon as humanly possible. Tonight. It was the reason he’d stopped at the hotel for the night rather than heading straight for his best friend Brad Wheeler’s family estate. He needed the release before he could even think of facing his friend and hearing all the details about his upcoming nuptials. Besides, merely thinking of Brad’s mother Beatrix Wheeler made him roll his eyes. Would the self-proclaimed Queen of Albuquerque appreciate his having trimmed his hair for the occasion, rather than relying on a simple leather cord to hold it back? He doubted it. To her, he’d always been that offensive boy Brad had dragged home when they were kids, no matter the style of his hair.

  Married.

  Quinn settled back more comfortably into the chair. He couldn’t believe Brad was getting married. Of the two of them, he’d figured he’d be the one to settle down long before his restless friend. Well, he supposed he had settled before Brad, at least in an important way. Only, his lifestyle didn’t include a woman. Not many females were interested in life on an isolated ranch where you had to drive over an hour just to go to the market. He’d thought he’d roped one, once. He wasn’t about to make that mistake again. But Brad…