Real Men Do It Better by Carrie Alexander Lori Wilde Susan Donovan Lora Leigh

didn’t last night. It was too quiet and I was freezing.”
    “I see.”
    “I need real coffee. We’re about an hour out of Santa Fe, right? Can I borrow your car?”
    Jorey tried not to laugh, but was unsuccessful. The last thing this woman needed was caffeine. “I don’t have a car. I have a Land Rover.”
    Her eyes lit up. “So do I! Well I did, anyway, before I totaled it. So I’m experienced.”
    “Clearly.”
    “All right. Fine. I’ll get my stuff and you can drive me back into town, then. My Blackberry isn’t working up here, so I’ll need to use your phone to call the airline.”
    Jorey didn’t know which bit of good news to share with this woman first. She obviously wasn’t the type who was cool with things not going according to plan. Monica had mentioned that Kate was one of those go-getter sales types. It figured. He’d certainly known enough of them in his previous life.
    “Miss Dreyfuss?”
    “I’ll be packed in five minutes.”
    She’d already turned toward the kitchen doorway. Jorey allowed himself a few leisurely seconds to watch her tight little ass as she scurried her way across the room. Then, still enjoying the view, he recited the facts to her as he knew them. “The phone lines are down. The bridge is washed out. The roads are flooded. We’re living on generator power at the moment.”
    She stopped. She spun around. Jorey observed a wave of emotions wash over Kate’s face and flow out again, leaving in its wake an almost innocent stare.
    “Pardon me?”
    “Nobody’s going anywhere for a few days, unless you’re familiar with burros.”
    “Burros? What the hell?”
    He hadn’t been this amused in months. The way her mouth fell open and the way she blinked and the way she blindly reached for the counter to steady herself—it was entertaining.
    She stared out the big kitchen window at the incessant rain and swallowed hard. “This shit cannot be happening,” she whined.
    Jorey shrugged and took a few steps toward her, momentarily brightened by the hope that she might be handy with a circular saw, though he wouldn’t bet on it. “It’ll be all right.” He reached out to place a friendly hand on the bare skin of her elbow. The silky warmth he encountered reminded Jorey that Kate Dreyfuss was all woman—tense and angry and at least a decade younger than him, but all woman.
    “Sweetheart, have you considered that this might be the divine spirit telling you to stop and smell the roses?”
    Kate squinted at him, and Jorey could see the gears turning behind the creamy loveliness of her forehead.
    “First of all, there are no roses up here.” She put the coffee mug on the counter and her hands on her hips, shaking his hand free of her elbow. “And even if there were, it wouldn’t matter because I can’t smell jack with my broken nose. Plus, that right there—” She pointed a manicured nail at the mug. “That is decaffeinated coffee, so don’t even try to lie to me. And the divine spirit can fuck off, and so can you.”
    She spun around so fast that her hair whipped out around her, momentarily chasing away the chaotic aura of oranges, violets, and magentas Jorey had watched dance around her pretty head all morning.
    He grinned, thinking that there were only a select few ways to break through an aura that unruly, and one of them involved lots and lots of sex.
    “Shall I expect you for lunch?” Jorey called after her retreating form. As she slammed his bedroom door with finality, he realized he’d never made it in there to get clean clothes. The dirty jeans he’d found on the laundry room floor would have to do until she came out again.
    *   *   *
    She woke up completely disoriented. Nothing felt right and nothing felt normal. It wasn’t light but it wasn’t dark, and she let her eyes roam around the room, trying to put the pieces together. For an eerie moment, Kate’s mind floated, grasping for anything that would make sense, and when nothing came to her, she