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  Hard Lovin’

  Copyright © 2015 by Desiree Holt

  ISBN: 978-1-61333-850-6

  Cover art by Syneca Featherstone

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC

  Look for us online at:

  www.decadentpublishing.com

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  Also by Desiree Holt

  Joy Ride

  Aftershock

  Night Mission

  He Came Upon a Midnight Clear

  Flyover

  Lust Becomes You

  Overnight Sensation

  Soul Dreams

  Dark Secrets

  Knockin’ Boots

  Dedication

  As always to David, my once and future cowboy

  Hard Lovin’

  By

  Desiree Holt

  Chapter One

  Gypsy rover came over the hill, down through the valley so shady

  He whistled and he sang ’til the greenwoods rang and he won the heart of a lady.

  Erin Braddock slipped into the ill-lighted bar through the back door, squinting against the darkness, and found her way to a tiny booth in the corner. The area was so small, a second person would be hard pressed to find room in the space, but that suited her fine. She hadn’t come here looking for company. Unless it was the cowboy up on the postage-stamp sized stage, alone in the spotlight with his guitar and his smoky voice. Ebony hair curled down to the nape of his neck, and a work shirt and worn jeans clung to his lean body like a second skin. The muscles in his arm flexed as he picked at the strings of the guitar, coaxing a tune from it.

  The lights were dim in the smoky club, a sea of black with the man in the searing white glow of the spotlight a stark comparison. The air was heavy with expectation as he strummed the melody of a love song that whipped its sound over the crowd, only to slow like the stroke of a lover’s caress.

  You are so out of your mind for doing this.

  So what else was new?

  She’d had to get out of the house. Away from the ranch. Away from…everyone. Her father, Rance, who was suffocating her with his protective kindness. T.J. Elliott, the fiancé she couldn’t seem to break away from. The houseful of people all gathered to celebrate a wedding tomorrow.

  Hers.

  A wedding she didn’t want.

  The memories of the nightmare with Cal hadn’t yet faded, and her father was suffocating her with his protective kindness. The far too wealthy Rance Braddock was like a tidal wave swallowing people up. And then there was T.J. Elliott, her father’s choice for a “safe” and well-connected husband. A way to guarantee her future. No danger there.

  Not like Cal, the worst mistake she’d ever made. And she’d wanted safe. Needed it. Her father and T.J. treated her like some child too fragile to be let out on her own. Well, maybe she was. Look what she’d gotten herself into. And didn’t want to get out of, until she’d had no other choice. Now, at thirty, she suddenly didn’t seem to be able to put one foot in front of the other anymore.

  Until now.

  The bad part about being rescued from a situation like the one she’d been in was people were afraid to take their eyes off you. She didn’t even seem to have the strength to tell them they could let her be. She went along to get along, letting herself be swept up in a courtship she didn’t want and a wedding suddenly bearing down on her like a tornado.

  She’d come to the bar a few nights ago with her girlfriends, who had practically dragged her out of the house.

  “Have fun,” her father said.

  “You’ll be fine with the girls,” T.J. told her. He’d kissed her on the cheek and teased, “Last night out before becoming Mrs. Elliott.”

  She was safe with her friends. Girls’ night out was okay. Both her father and T.J. had relaxed.

  But her friend, Lili, had whispered in her ear, “Wait until you see Grady Sinclair. He’s hot, hot, hot. And his music!” Lili rolled her eyes. “Just listening to him makes your pussy get wet and your nipples poke like diamonds.”

  Erin had shivered, skeptical but hopeful. She didn’t think she’d ever have that reaction again. Or want it. The best thing about T.J. was he was nonthreatening. She could always fake orgasms. She’d become a very good actress living with Cal.

  So she’d let them coax her out and come to Smoky’s with them, and damn but Lili was right. Wrapped in the almost mystical cloak of the music drifting to her from the stage, she’d felt stirrings she’d thought long dead. Responses she didn’t think she was capable of anymore. And then she’d come back with them. Again and again, to hear the troubadour with eyes as black as his hair and a rugged face, drawn by the clear, mesmerizing notes of his songs and the sadness in his voice.

  Tonight, when the reality of what was happening in her life crashed in on her, when she’d felt herself squeezed by the juggernaut rolling over her, she suddenly had to get out, get away. For once, no one’s eyes were on her. Her father and T.J. were both busy in the mob of guests at their pre-wedding celebration. How easy it had been to slip into the kitchen and out the back door. With all the vehicles coming and going, no one paid attention to another truck pulling out of the driveway.

  And she’d headed straight here like a homing pigeon, to the cowboy minstrel whose music gave her the first real pleasure she’d ever known. A pleasure all her own. So, now, here she sat, listening to him sing about love lost, a heart broken. Cruelty. Well, she certainly knew about that.

  The waitress came by, and Erin ordered a soft drink. She didn’t drink alcohol anymore. Not since….

  Don’t go there. Do. Not. Go. There.

  The song ended, and he moved right into the next one. This was about loving and being free, about giving and being given to, and something in the words unlocked a part of her she’d kept stored away. Freed the emotional cage she’d been keeping herself in. Free. That’s what she needed to be. And the ranch and T.J. would never give her freedom. She saw it so clearly now. It had been eight months since she
’d come home to the ranch. Eight months away from Cal. Eight months of counseling and pampering and dealing with her own responsibility for what happened.

  Tonight, she’d run because she didn’t want to exchange one kind of prison for another. And she’d come here because maybe she saw Grady Sinclair as the first step on the road to freedom.

  Applause broke her concentration, and she realized the song had ended. The sound of clapping filled the space left by the absence of music, but the heat of his voice still filled her ears. Yes, she’d done the right thing, coming here. She closed her eyes to recapture the feeling the song had given her, the melody playing again in her mind.

  “Okay if I sit here? Or are you waiting for someone?”

  For a moment, she thought she’d imagined him speaking to her—she was still so focused on the song. But a warm hand touched her wrist lightly, she looked up, and those dark eyes were fastened directly on her. She was stunned she didn’t feel the least bit of fear with him. Especially after….

  Don’t go there.

  She realized he was waiting for an answer and tried a tentative smile, amazingly soothed by his touch.

  “No. I mean, yes.” She wet her lips. “No, I’m not waiting for someone and, yes, you can sit here.”

  “I saw you when you came in with your friends the past few nights.” The waitress brought him a bottle of beer, ice-cold drops still sliding down the glass. “I thought how beautiful you looked. How I wished you’d come back by yourself.” He smiled, a crooked grin making every pulse in her body pound with sudden fierceness. “And here you are.”

  Yes, here I am. Shaky and calm at the same time.

  For one brief moment, panic coursed through her, but it disappeared as quickly as it came. His scent, a mixture of earth and musk, drifted tantalizingly across her nostrils. Oh, and his eyes. A deep blue, like the shifting colors of a stormy sea. Eyes that ate her up but also held shadows of sorrow and pain.

  “I…like your music.” It helps me find escape. And calls to me.

  “I’m glad.” He took a long pull at the bottle, the muscles of his throat working as he swallowed the liquid.

  “I love your whole show, in fact. You’re very good.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Have you been doing this a long time?”

  He shrugged. “Some might say.”

  “Where are you from?” she wanted to know. His drawl was definitely Texas.

  He shrugged. “Here and there.”

  “No, I mean originally,” she persisted.

  “Just a place.”

  Someplace he obviously didn’t want to talk about. Erin could certainly relate.

  “You wander from place to place?”

  It must be nice to have no one to answer to, nothing to tie you down. Able to make your own decisions.

  For a moment, she was seized with a fit of jealousy, but she smothered it. What she should be feeling guilty about was sitting here talking to the first man she felt comfortable with since that day in the hospital instead of being back at the ranch getting ready for her wedding.

  “Right. Wherever there’s a gig. I can walk away any time I want.” He drank some more of the beer.

  Must be nice. I’m thirty-one years old, and I don’t think I’ve ever really been able to do that.

  “You look so sad and lonely sitting here,” he commented, his gaze a caress on her skin. “Are you okay?”

  Was she? Not by a long shot. But, somehow, sitting in this bar, listening to Grady Sinclair, everything else fell away, and this became her only reality. She’d thought never to trust a man again, not one who made her body respond in any way. Never put herself in such danger. But something about Grady Sinclair said you can trust me. It was the damndest thing, but she had a feeling she could. Either he was a rare find, or she was losing her mind.

  “Hey.” His voice was soft, cutting through her fog.

  She realized he’d asked her a question. Was she all right?

  She shrugged and fiddled with her glass, wondering how long it would be before she was missed at the house. Before her father and T.J. began cross-examining everyone. Her bridesmaids, especially Lili, mounting an all-out search for her.

  As if he sensed her uneasiness, he asked, “Can you stay for the last set? I’ll sing a song especially for you.” When she didn’t answer right away, he added, “Please?”

  Erin should probably get out of there. Hooking up with a stranger after the disaster with Cal was probably the worst thing she could do, but something held her in place. The pull of this man. The very distinct sexual awareness, unlike anything she’d ever felt before. Arousing, but nonthreatening. And the lure of freedom. She’d never really had it before. Someone had always been pulling the strings, even when she fled to Houston on her own.

  Oh, yeah. I certainly made a real success.

  Well, she had, as far as her career went. She’d built a life for herself there. A job she loved. Friends who were…okay. Of course, she’d mostly been working her ass off to prove to her father she didn’t have to be Rance Braddock’s daughter to be successful. She’d tried, damn it. Come home to the ranch with her shiny diploma and started to learn the vast ranch operations with the business manager. Only her father had been breathing over her shoulder every damn minute. And still trying to choose her friends and her dates.

  The biggest fights they’d had were when she demanded he give her room to breathe.

  Maybe if she hadn’t been trying so hard to prove something, she’d never have fallen under Cal Stadler’s spell. Talk about disasters.

  But this was different. She knew it. Could taste it, smell it. Feel it.

  She nodded. “All right.”

  They sat together in a quiet that didn’t seem to need words until it was time for him to climb up on the stage again.

  “Don’t forget.” He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. “I’ll be singing just for you.”

  He headed back to the stage with an easy, loose-hipped gait and picked up his guitar.

  “Last set of the night, folks,” he announced. “And last call. Thanks for coming to see me. I’ll be heading out in the morning. Got folks waiting for my music someplace else, but I hope to get by this way again.”

  He was leaving? Tonight?

  Erin’s hands tightened around her glass. No, he couldn’t leave. Not when she’d just found him. Maybe found the key to unlock the shambles of her life. No, no, no. Maybe she could find out where he was going next.

  And what, idiot? Trail after him like some groupie? Some camp follower?

  But she couldn’t let him go.

  Then she heard him say, “I’m singing this last set for someone really special. Someone who looks like she needs music in her life.”

  He picked out the opening notes of a song, eyes focused directly on her. Erin stared at him, hypnotized by his music, as his fingers picked out the first notes of a song and he began singing about a lost soul and the home it searched for. He was right. He could have been singing directly to her. He wasn’t a man who played for others as much as for himself. And now her.

  The music was so sweet, so magical. She let it wash over her like warm rain cleansing her. It almost transported her to some other time, some other place, where the thing with Cal had never happened and the wedding of the century wasn’t scheduled for the next day. Sudden applause roused her. When she heard him say, “Thanks for comin’ out folks. I appreciate it,” she realized the troubadour was finished for the night, even though she wasn’t half-ready for him to be done.

  She slid from the tiny booth, fished in her purse, and dropped some money on the table for her drink and the tip. Dragging her feet, she headed for the door, unwilling to break the spell the music had woven around her. When a hand touched her arm, she jumped skittishly and automatically tried to pull away.

  “It’s just me, sugar,” the smoky voice said.

  And, inexplicably, inside her body, she relaxed.

  “Thank you for the so
ng,” she told hm.

  “My pleasure. Thanks for sticking around.”

  He pushed open the back door of the building and guided her out into the parking lot.

  “My truck’s over there.” She pointed to the far end of the lot.

  “I’ll walk you over to it.”

  But she couldn’t make her feet move. Couldn’t take the steps to lead herself away from this man. Grady Sinclair was danger but a different kind than she’d been swallowed by. There was safety in this danger, as paradoxical as it sounded.

  Without warning, he stopped and pulled her gently into his arms. His hands stroked her back while his lips brushed her mouth. There was something about being wrapped up in him like this, something about the signals her body was sending. About the heat they were generating. She wanted to plaster herself to him and never move. Grady Sinclair would never hurt her. Deep in her gut, she knew it with a certainty.

  “Listen.” He dusted kisses over her forehead. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. You’re so far above the women I’m with these days. But here’s the thing. I want you. You can smack me or run screaming if you want, and it wouldn’t surprise me.” He pulled her tight against him so his erection pressed into the softness of her tummy. “I’ve got a room I’m renting outside of town here. Not much. Just a house where a woman lets itinerant musicians like me crash when we need a place. But I would love it if you’d come home with me. For a little while. Let me make you feel good. Not so sad.” He tilted her chin up. “Make me feel good, too.”

  Go home with him? Was he crazy? Was she crazy? They didn’t even know each other. The possibilities as well as the ramifications battled in her mind. And what assurance did she have she wasn’t jumping from one frying pan into another? There were so many, many reasons why, if her brain had been working, she shouldn’t do what he suggested. Should run as far and fast as she could.

  “You can trust me.” His fingers stroked the side of her face. “Whatever you’re afraid of, I won’t hurt you. I promise. Listen, why don’t you text someone. Tell them what you’re doing. Give you a safety net.”