you don’t offer any additional services that aren’t part of our regular tour package?”
Durango pretended to be offended. “Are you impugning my virtue?”
“No, but I think your next customers might give your virtue a run for its money.”
“Oh?”
“You’ve got a pickup at Tranquility Spa. Name’s Baxter, party of two for the private Vortex Tour and the lady specifically asked for Durango Creed. She sounded very sexy too.”
“I’m on it.”
“I’m sure you are, cowboy. Over and out.”
With a shake of his head, Durango grinned and wheeled his bright orange Jeep up the narrow L’Auberge Lane and then headed west toward the secluded, chichi health spa. He blew past the Black Cow Café, the warm desert wind stirring both his hair and his blood, and hung a right at the split.
From his peripheral vision, he caught a glimpse of Cathedral Rock jutting proud and majestic in the distance. The sun, filtering in and out through the shifting clouds. made it appear as if the formation was in motion, a subtle, graceful dance of light and shadows. The sight of those mesas never failed to rouse something primal inside Durango.
A motorcycle came up on his left. He turned his head. The sound of the bike’s engine captured his attention. When he saw it was a Ducati he found himself thinking about Abby Archer, and a double twist of wistful longing and downright horniness knotted his gut like a pretzel.
Without any difficulty at all, he could still picture how she looked the last time he had seen her. Standing on the balcony of her father’s palatial house, wearing a thin white sheath that in the moonlight showed off every inch of her nubile seventeen-year-old body. Her dark hair, which was usually pulled back in a sleek ponytail, was hanging loose about her shoulders, her breasts rising high and firm, her creamy skin gleaming seductively.
God, she’d been something special. Just like Sedona herself. Beautiful, calm, tranquil on the surface but underneath ran all that raw passionate energy. Maybe that’s why he had ended up in Sedona. He’d always been a sucker for the fire-and-ice paradox.
And if he and Abby had ever fully explored the chemistry surging between them, they probably would have spontaneously combusted.
But she’d told him she didn’t trust him. That he was too wild, too untamed, too reckless for her. The tears shining in her eyes had belied her words, but he’d had no choice other than to leave her behind.
Durango exhaled. It was just as well nothing had happened between them. Even though they came from the same privileged world, she fit in and he never did. As evidenced by the very different paths they’d elected to walk. Abby had stayed with the tried and true and he had chosen the road less traveled.
It’s just that every once in a while, he couldn’t help wondering what if?
He turned down the secluded driveway to the spa and slowed long enough to flash his pass when he reached the security gate. The guard waved him inside and he motored around to the front entrance.
Two women stood under the awning. One was a skinny redhead dressed in funky, punky threads and high-heeled sandals that were totally inappropriate for hiking the mesa trails.
Mentally he rolled his eyes. Tourists.
The other woman was a breathtaking brunette who wore a pair of classy tailored white shorts, a red V-necked tee that enhanced her gorgeous breasts and a sensible pair of walking shoes that, in spite of their ordinary construction made her legs look extraordinary. Pricey designer sunglasses covered her eyes and a large straw hat held back her hair and shaded her face from the sun.
His mouth watered.
Strangely enough, the brunette looked a lot like Abby. She had the same full lips, same proud tilt of the head and the same dimpled chin. Maybe that’s why he was instantly attracted.
Something in his chest tugged.
Trick of the light and his imagination. He’d been thinking about Abby and now he was seeing her. He killed the engine and climbed from the Jeep to find out if they were Baxter, party of two.
He approached the redhead. “Hello, I’m with Sunrise Tours, did you ladies arrange for a—”
He broke off when the brunette inhaled sharply with a soft, well-bred sound. Quickly she reached up and snatched off her sunglasses.
His heart hammered and his palms went slick with sweat as he peered into those familiar hazel eyes.
It is Abby, he thought, at the same moment she whispered, “Durango Creed.”
FROM THE MOMENT she spied Durango’s long, lean muscular body swinging out of the Jeep, Abby knew she’d been set up.
“Tess Baxter, what have you done?” she hissed through clenched teeth.
“Consider this my thank-God-the-wedding-didn’t-go-off present to you.” Tess laughed.
Before Abby had time to tell her that she was sooo dead for pulling this stunt, Durango was filling her direct field of vision with his breathtaking presence. The man was more impressive than the incredible red rock formations surrounding them.
All Abby had wanted was to come to Sedona, get a massage, maybe take a mud bath or two and have an expert facial. Her goal was to relax and regroup after getting ditched at the altar by her fiancé. But one look in those unforgettable eyes and everything changed.
She felt something shake loose in her chest, like a tearing away sensation.
Omigod, here he is, here he is in the flesh.
She curled her fingers into her fists at her sides and forced herself to breathe normally.
The years had been far more than kind. In fact, time had been embarrassingly generous. He had fully matured, his teenaged shoulders and thighs broadening into manhood. Yet he still wore that cocky, defensive bad-boy stance like a mantle of pride. His face was fuller, less rangy than it had been, but his waist was just as narrow. His hair, long and bound back in a short ponytail, was just as dark and thick. His eyes just as impossibly black.
And wicked.
He was even more gorgeous than before.
Her pulse took off, galloping like a high-spirited Thoroughbred on the last furlough of the Kentucky Derby. She stifled the urge to flee from the intensity of those eyes, which seemed to possess a secret, sinister wisdom all their own.
Then an equally compelling craving had her longing to fling herself into his arms with an ease born of intimate knowledge.
But she did neither.
Five years in the public relations business and twenty-seven years as the daughter of an influential judge had taught her how to sweep her true feelings aside in favor of the politically correct response. Abby thrust out her hand, pasted an artificial smile on her face and repeated his name.
“Well, well, well,” he said, ignoring her outstretched palm and sinking his hands onto his low-slung hips. “If it isn’t Angel Archer.”
Angel.
The sound of his old nickname for her stirred Abby inexplicably. She’d forgotten he used to call her that because she was such a Goody Two-shoes.
She stood there with her hand thrust out, feeling like a fool and not knowing how to gracefully retract it. She had the oddest sensation that if she just stretched her hand out far enough she could caress that night ten years ago, touch the girl she had once been and pull her back from making the terrible mistake of sending him away.
Fanciful, decried the critic in her head. You can’t recapture the past.
Grab him, whispered her long-buried desire. Make a new future.
And there lay the crux of her predicament. Safety on one side, passion on the other and Abby trapped firmly in the middle, immobilized.
Durango