RopeMeIn by Cerise DeLand Page B

A wicked smile
spread across his full lips. “Come early, if you can. We’ll be ready for you.”
    “If I considered darkening your door, I could be toting my
daddy’s shotgun.” She knew she was crazy now, because she had no such weapon.
Her father had never even owned one.
    Jed made a face, feigning that he was wounded. “Just bring
you and the keycard.”
    “I won’t!”
    Nonchalant, he hitched himself up inside the driver’s seat,
closed the door and through the open window, chucked her under the chin. “You
need the code.”
    “Yeah.” She widened her eyes at him in outrage. “That’s why
you won’t be seeing me.”
    He tsked , the damn self-centered egotist. “Don’t
worry. It’s easy to remember.”
    “Get the hell out of my parking lot.”
    “It’s Cara. The code is Cara.”
    Momentarily shocked, she snorted. “You are crazy.”
    “About you, yes ma’am. That’s why the code is C.A.R.A.” He
turned the engine over and revved it in place. “Five o’clock. Adios, baby.”

Chapter Nine
     
    Five o’clock Friday came and went.
    At seven Saturday evening, Cara stood in her kitchen, loving
the satin feel of her lick-me-head-to-toe imported lingerie and smiling into
the phone. “Okay, Eva, I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”
    “Deal. I’m so glad you’ve come back to Bravado to live. I
haven’t had anyone to talk with or go out with,” replied her friend.
    “We’ll make it a regular event. Thirty minutes. I’ll honk
the horn.”
    Cara hung up the receiver, triumphant she had finally
persuaded Eva to go with her tonight to the local dancehall. Eva’s beloved
husband had passed away eight months ago and, though she was Cara’s age and
lonely as hell, Eva had not been out as a single female to anything half so
much fun as the Two Step. Cara was grateful to Eva because she sure as hell was
not going alone, especially if somehow the MacRaes learned she was there,
catting around. She would not put it past them to show up and make a scene. Not
after Jed had pointed out how the local men dealt with the male-to-female
ratio.
    Certainly not after Aunt Bree had confirmed how the shortage
of females in Bravado had made the men fiercely possessive of those women they
took a shine to.
    “If the MacRae men like you after those two and a half days
you spent with them,” her aunt had declared right after Jed left the store that
morning, “the question you need to ask yourself is, did you like them right
back?”
    “I did,” Cara had told the lady who had had two loving
husbands, each of whom had kicked the bucket far too young. “What I didn’t care
for was Jed’s declaration that I was his.”
    “Well, sweetie pie, for more than ten years, the men here in
Bravado have been in competition for the few women who remain. Any new female
who wanders in gets to be swept off her pretty feet. Ready or not. So if you
are complaining about the odds, you’re the only man-loving woman in the world
to do so. If you are complaining about what these males know about romancing a
female, then you are welcome to try to educate them.”
    “Train a man?” Cara had objected. “Impossible.”
    “I have had two men in my lifetime, Cara,” the stunning
forty-five-year-old redhead told her. “None of them was a saint when we first
met. I loved every hair on their handsome-as-hell heads, but some things they
must do to keep a woman by their side. You see, I am a firm believer that a man
is a rough-hewn creature, put on this earth for a woman to sand down and polish
to her liking.”
    “What if you can’t polish a man,” or three? “to your
liking?”
    “Some men, like your ex, are not worth the trouble. Your job
is to choose wisely in the beginning, then refine them.”
    Choose wisely. I did not do that with Jeff. When I met
him, I knew he was a tomcat. I thought I could change him, make him loyal. But
my bigger misperception concerned his character. What I took for strength
turned out to be his desire