His Private Pleasure
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Donna Kauffman
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1
THE MOMENT SHE SPIED that nicely formed male derriere sticking out of the tree, Liza Sanguinetti realized that giving up her career was going to be a whole lot easier than giving up men.
She slowed her shiny blue roadster convertible to a crawl. Which was only slightly slower than the speed limit posted next to the sign welcoming her to Canyon Springs, New Mexico. Population… “A hell of lot less than L.A.,” she murmured. But definitely bigger than some of the one-horse towns she’d driven through. Canyon Springs looked like a festive place, with rows of quaint storefronts lining the main thoroughfare and banners streaming from the light poles, announcing some upcoming celebration.
The town was nestled in the foothills of the rugged Black Range Mountains, which, according to the brochure she’d picked up at breakfast in Santa Fe, were the source of the natural springs that fed down into the deep canyons and rincóns. Whatever the hell a rincón was.
All she knew was that she’d been drawn toward the dark shadowy mountains as if some guiding hand was pointing the way. The vistas here were downright awe-inspiring and pulled at something deep inside her. Which struck her as odd, considering she was a born and bred city girl. Her idea of a wild country weekend meant going horseback riding in a Palm Springs resort spa.
All she wanted at the moment was a bite to eat and the chance to wander around the antique stores she’d seen advertised on her meandering drive. Sounded like the perfect way to spend the afternoon. She was hoping the perfect housewarming present for Natalie and Jake would sit up and grab her attention. She smiled, picturing Natalie’s face when she told her she’d been antiquing in the mountains of New Mexico. Not exactly on the list of Liza’s normal haunts. But then, that was the point of this trip. Expanding personal horizons.
At the moment, however, the only thing grabbing her attention was the man perched in the towering corner oak.
“I could think of another way to spend a perfectly nice afternoon in Canyon Springs,” she murmured appreciatively, staring openly at the fine masculine scenery as she tooled beneath the outstretched branches of the tree. An amazingly loud screech erupted a second later, causing her to swerve around the corner and pull to the side of the road. One hand clutching her racing heart, she climbed out of the low-slung car and shaded her eyes with her free hand. Just past the beautiful specimen of man was an even more exotic specimen of bird perched just out of his reach.
“Come on, Mango. Step up,” the man beckoned, reaching his hand alarmingly close to that intimidating black beak.
The enormous bird was mostly white, with a vibrant orange plume that erupted all about its head as it spread its huge wings and shrieked once again. Liza covered her ears at the skull-splitting sound and wondered how the man managed to keep his perch a mere foot away without so much as flinching.
“Mango is a pretty bird,” he cajoled, though now Liza could see the muscles flexing along his jaw and neck. Perhaps the bird sensed the tension as well, since it lunged for the fingers being offered, as if they were a snack to be gobbled down rather than a lift to safety.
“Pretty, pretty Mango,” he said, repeating the words over and over in a smooth, singsongy voice. A nice deep singsongy voice, Liza found herself thinking. What sort of things could that voice cajole her into?
“Come on, pretty boy, pretty bird.”
Another piercing shriek split the air, making her jump.
“Pretty loud bird,” Liza muttered, testing one ear, then the other. The bird flapped and ducked, bobbed and pranced in quite an ornate show of birdy fervor, but didn’t move one speck closer to the outstretched hand of its brave savior.
“I don’t think he’s interested,” Liza called up.
The man glanced down then, and Liza thought, But I sure am! Even frowning, he was quite gorgeous. Not Hollywood glamorous, but real world rugged. Mmm. Her afternoon was getting better by the second. No, down girl, down. It had been eight weeks since she’d gone cold turkey on men and she still got the shakes when confronted with a prime specimen. Surely that was natural. On the bright side, he’d be a real litmus test of her testosterone sobriety.
And test her he would. She couldn’t make out the color of his eyes, but she could definitely make out just about everything else of importance. The close cropped blond hair, straight nose, sharp cheekbones and square jaw topped equally squared shoulders and a chest that did justice to the brown-and-tan uniform he wore. The shiny star on one pocket explained why he was up in the tree.
She’d never harbored uniform fantasies before, but that fact was in rapid transition. Just because she couldn’t play with him didn’t mean she couldn’t imagine what kind of playmate he’d have made. “Doesn’t the fire department usually handle this sort of thing?” she offered oh-so-helpfully. Something about that scowl provoked her. She was an unconventional flirt, but this wasn’t actually flirting. It couldn’t be flirting as long as he kept scowling, right? “I passed a station on the way into town,” she continued. She remembered because the guys had been out washing the trucks. Suds and muscular men with long hoses, always a good combination.
She sighed and wondered if there was a resort spa out here with a twelve-step plan to help her embrace celibacy. Hi, I’m Liza Sanguinetti and I enjoy hot sex. Probably the first step was truly grasping there was a problem with that. But she was working on it. At her own pace.
“If you’d like, I can drive over and ask them to send some help?” she offered. Who knew, maybe there were trucks still being washed. Another sobriety test in case she failed this one.
“I can handle things, ma’am,” he said evenly, clearly not keen on his rescue mission drawing an audience. Even an audience of one.
Liza wasn’t put off. She was still hung up on that “ma’am.” All husky and direct, in that I-can-take-care-of-anything tone they must teach them at the law enforcement academy. She shivered, just a tiny bit. Apparently she’d repressed more uniform fantasies than she’d thought. “I can see that,” she responded, smiling, not going anywhere. “Totally under control. I’m sure the citizens of Canyon Springs sleep better knowing that you’re on the job. Protecting them from killer birds.”
He merely stared at her. “Thanks for stopping. Please be careful when you pull back into traffic.”
She glanced over her shoulder. He must be kidding. Traffic? Sure, the town had a steady little bustle of cars and trucks streaming up and down the main road, but traffic? Obviously he’d never seen Long Beach Freeway at five-thirty on a Friday.
“I think I can handle it, Officer,” she said with great seriousness.
“I’m sure you can.”
She smiled then. So, there was a real man lurking behind the badge. And that oh-so-official tone. She wondered what it would take to put a shudder in that “ma’am” of his. No, bad Liza, bad. No playing with small-town sheriffs.
But wasn’t she on this personal odyssey for the express purpose of discovering new things, new ways of life? In addition to an appreciation for mountain scenery, she’d discovered she had appreciation for uniforms. That was totally new. Liza had spent the past eight of her twenty-nine years hopscotching around the globe, making sure her celebrity clients were all well pampered and cared for, and she’d never once lusted after a man in blue. Or brown and tan, as the case may be. So this could be seen as a positive step.
Maybe this was a test of another kind. “And maybe you’re trying way too hard to rationalize an afternoon quickie,” she murmured. But the longer she looked up in that tree, the harder it was remembering why celibacy had been an absolute rule on this journey of hers. Yes, she’d watched her oldest and dearest pal, Natalie, fall headlong into love earlier this year, and yes, her own heart had taken a tiny ding when she’d stupidly allowed one of her playmates to become more than a playmate. In her mind, anyway. And okay, so it had been more than a tiny ding.
More like a wake-up thwack in the head. And heart. But those weren’t the only reasons Liza had taken stock and decided that success didn’t always equal happiness. She supposed she’d been heading toward that epiphany for some time. Natalie’s wedding and Conrad’s infidelity had simply been an impetus to examine why it was that the more successful Liza got, the less fulfilled she felt.
Sure, she’d kicked ass as the hottest public relations consultant on the West Coast, and just as certainly, she’d enjoyed the wealth and the wide variety of perks it brought her way. Hard work and hard play had made Liza a very happy girl. For a time. But somewhere along the way she realized that while she enjoyed the limelight she garnered for her clients, at the end of the day, when she went home to her glossy, Century City penthouse condo, she went alone. She’d substituted clients for real friends, and flings with the man of the moment for real intimacy.
She could put together an A-list party at the drop of a hat. But if she wanted someone to hang out with? Talk to? Just kick back and be Liza with? Other than Natalie, who lived three thousand miles away—or had before meeting the man of her dreams—she had exactly no one. In fact, outside of her work persona, she wasn’t even sure who the real Liza was. Hence her personal odyssey…and hence swearing off men until she figured out how to have fun without one.
But…but if she knew it was just a fling, a teeny tiny little detour, something to take the edge off—after all, it had been two months, for God’s sake, and a vibrator could only do so much; she had needs, dammit—wouldn’t that be okay? Sort of a little reward for being so good for so long?
That rationale took on more and more logic the longer she stood there looking up at the sheriff’s gorgeous chiseled face. Even his scowl turned her on. She had no idea why he was so irritated with her; she was only trying to help. Well, okay, maybe she wasn’t helping, exactly. But she certainly wasn’t keeping him from doing his job. And usually men were more than happy to let her help them. She’d built an entire career on that specific ability. Her clientele had been largely of the male persuasion simply because she understood their needs, their sense of pride and that little boy insecurity they never seemed to outgrow.
That was the part she missed most. Being needed, being the one they called to make it all better. She knew it was more of that faux intimacy thing, but without that, the gaping void in her life loomed even larger. Actually, it had sort of come as a surprise to her that she didn’t miss much of anything else. Not the parties, the tours, the openings, the award ceremonies, the press conferences. The wild, uncontrolled sex with the Hollywood hottie of her choice. Okay, so maybe she missed that last part just a little bit. But she didn’t miss the empty feeling that came afterward. The little pangs of neediness that postcoital snuggling no longer fulfilled.
Only, she wasn’t quite sure how to transcend the arm-candy-at-the-latest-premiere followed by the fun-in-the-sack part. Probably she had to be friends with a guy first, find a man who satisfied her on levels other than sexual, a guy whose sole credentials weren’t that he owned his own tux and looked damn fine in it. Then the rest would probably just happen. Wouldn’t it? She thought of Natalie and had to grin. Her best friend had found her man in exactly the opposite way. An exclusive, purely sexual relationship that had led to real love.
So why couldn’t it work that way for her?
Because it never has before, Liza, that’s why. Nat had just gotten lucky.
Well, she’d like to get lucky, too, Liza thought with a wistful sigh as she watched Sheriff Sexy Ass lever that impressive torso of his up a bit higher, trying to reach his quarry. A quarry with an awfully big beak.
“Does he bite?” she asked.
Mango strutted some more and let out another one of his ozone-disintegrating screeches.
“Never mind,” she called up. “Who needs the beak when you can defeat your predators by deafening them first?”
She thought she heard Sheriff Sexy Ass snort under his breath, but when he looked down at her again, his face was an impersonal mask. “Really, we’ll be fine up here, ma’am. Thank you for stopping,” he repeated. “Please be careful when you pull back into traffic.”
Brown. She was pretty sure his eyes were brown.
“Do you always come to the rescue of your feathered citizens?”
“Do you always refuse to take a hint?”
She merely grinned.
He sighed. “I do when it’s this one.”
“She belongs to you, then?”
“God, no,” he said, his tone one of horror. Mango strutted closer and he turned his attentions back to the bird. A minute or two passed, but he didn’t look her way again.
She was being dismissed. Had been being dismissed for the past several minutes. Problem was, she wasn’t ready to leave yet. An occasional drawback of hers, true, but more often a hallmark of her success. She never left something alone until she was done with it, no matter if it was done with her.
Staring at the flex of muscle in the good sheriff’s thighs as he pushed himself up even higher, she freely admitted she wasn’t done with him yet. In fact, right at that moment there was nowhere else she’d rather be than standing on a street corner in downtown Canyon Springs.
Suddenly Mango lunged, and Liza squealed and pointed. “Look out!”
He might not have flinched at Mango’s scream, but he did at hers. Mango made a beak-dive for the nice, shiny star on his pocket just as he lost his balance.
Liza gasped. He slid from his branch and fell, butt first, into the V of branch and trunk just below. Mango flapped his wings and raced up and down the branch overhead, screeching the entire time as the sheriff cut loose with his own vocal tirade.
“I’m pretty sure they didn’t teach you that in the academy.”
“Nope, those I learned courtesy of Vegas street scum,” he grumbled, trying to unwedge himself.
Las Vegas? Street scum? Hmm, Liza thought. She didn’t think he was talking about Las Vegas, New Mexico. Which meant her sheriff had once run a much bigger town. A town filled with vice and sin. Fully intrigued now, she folded her arms and leaned against her car as she watched him try to extricate himself. He certainly appeared to have the upper body strength for it. A nice, thickly muscled chest, and incredible arms… Did they have a gym in Canyon Springs? she wondered. Somehow she didn’t think her sheriff had paid a membership fee for those biceps.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to run over to the fire department and get them to bring a ladder or something?”
“I’m sure,” he growled, not bothering to look at her. His gaze was focused on Mango, who sat, quietly now, preening his magnificent tail feathers and looking as innocent as a little canary. “Escape artist,” he muttered.
“So, he makes a habit of this, huh? Whose is he?”
“My mother’s.”
“Aww, that’s so sweet of you, rescuing your mom’s bird.”
“There is nothing remotely sweet about this bird. Or my mother, most days, for that matter.”
Liza thought of her own parents and nodded in understanding. She hadn’t heard from her father since marriage number five, which, as several years had passed since then, was likely several “I do’s” ago. Her mother only remembered to check in when she wanted something. Which was mercifully infrequent. “So, what kind of bird is Mango?” she asked. “I’ve never seen a white parrot before.”
He gave her a long look, then sighed. “He’s a cockatoo. Moluccan.”
“He’s really gorgeous.”
“Yeah. Right. A real prince. Listen, maybe you can do me a favor.”
Liza grinned. She knew she’d get to him eventually. “Sure.”
“How good are you at climbing trees?”
Her grin disappeared. “You’re not asking me to climb that tree.”
He twisted a bit and looked down at her. He could smile, as it turned out, only there was nothing friendly about it. This was more like a take-no-prisoners kind of smile. Still, it managed to send those shivers through her again, anyway. She might like being taken prisoner by him for an afternoon…or three. But she drew the line at physical exertion of any other kind. That’s what personal trainers were for—to sweat with her clients while she got her nails done and took another business lunch.
“I’m not what you’d call a climber,” she said. “Social, maybe,” she appended with a saucy grin. “Why don’t you let me get you a nice strong fireman with a ladder?”
“Because Tucker Greywolf would love nothing more than to come pull me out of this tree.”
“Ah.” The pride thing. This she understood. “What exactly is it you think I can do for you if I were to climb this tree?” Not that she was going to, but she was nothing if not good at solving crisis situations. It was simply a matter of finding out who to call to fix it.
“My belt is stuck under a knob on this branch. I can’t reach around for it without letting go. If you could climb up just a few feet and pop it off, I could maneuver myself out of here.”
He was only about twelve to fifteen feet up. A person—meaning someone other than her—would only have to climb about three or four feet, reach the rest of the way, and presto. Shouldn’t be too hard to wrangle someone walking down the street to do that. Only when she turned and looked around the corner, there seemed to be a sudden dearth of pedestrians. A few children down the block on their bikes and two elderly women crossing at the far corner—that was it. She sighed and looked up again.
He was staring down at her, waiting.
She glanced down at her perfectly gorgeous Jimmy Choo slings. They gave a two-inch advantage to her skimpy five-foot-four frame, but that wasn’t going to be enough.
“I can’t climb in heels,” she said.
“Then kick them off.”
“I really don’t climb trees. I’m a city girl. L.A. by way of New York.”
“This is a city.”
She planted her hands on her hips. “A city with a perfectly good fire department two blocks down.”
“Forget it.” The sheriff redoubled his efforts, making the branch Mango was perched on sway wildly. The bird merely continued to preen, as if it were the wind blowing and not its rescuer flailing about. Then the sound of ripping fabric rent the air. “Well, shit.”
“Shit! Shit!” Mango did a little hop from claw to claw, quite happy with his new vocabulary word. “Well, shit!”
Sheriff Sexy Exposed Ass let his chin drop. “Wonderful. This is all I need.”
Liza was wide-eyed, staring both at the bird…and the patch of bright yellow smiley faces peeking out from those brown trousers. She focused on the former, though it cost her. “I didn’t know Mango talked. What else does he say?”
“Only the things you never want him to. Listen, could we cut the chatter—” he glared at Mango “—from both parties, and get my belt unstuck, please?”
Liza shifted her attention from the prancing cockatoo to the smiley faces. After all, she had tried to focus on the bird first, hadn’t she? “A briefs man, huh?”
“Wha—? Oh, that. Present from a friend. A joke, really. It’s early when I get up and they were just what came out of the drawer next. Why am I explaining this to you?”
She shrugged. “That’s what you get for dressing in the dark. Me, I prefer doing it with the lights on.”
For a split second his gaze sharpened to such a fine point she thought she felt it pierce her. Right where she wanted to be pierced, too. Then he sighed and let his head drop back, and it was like the moment never happened. Only it had. She knew it, and her libido definitely knew it. And wanted to be pierced again. And again. Down, girl.
“Please, I’m at your mercy here,” he said. “Name your price.”
Boy, talk about a test. The things she could come up with right now. But she met the challenge and said, “Do they serve lunch somewhere nearby?”
“Fine, lunch, great. Now could we— Oh, shit.”
“Shit!” Mango mimicked happily. “Shit, oh, shit!”
Liza ignored the bird and turned in the direction the sheriff was looking. From his vantage point he could see past the corner. She took a step or two and craned her neck so she could see as well. A small, somewhat interesting contingent was heading their way. A strapping man in a form-fitting blue uniform, framed by two identical middle-aged women in identical business attire, fronted by a tall, rawboned woman wearing plaid Bermuda shorts, a pale green, long-sleeve pullover and a floppy straw hat. A long braid of shocking red hair lay over her shoulder. Her cane clacked against the cement sidewalk.
“Please God, just kill me now,” she heard the sheriff say over her head.
“Greywolf and company, I take it?”
“I will pay any price if you could get me out of this tree before they get here.”
Liza looked at the closing contingent, still a good block and a half away, then back up to the beseeching eyes of her sheriff. Definitely brown, she thought. And she was a sucker for brown eyes. Okay, so she was a sucker for green eyes. But that was only because she’d never seen eyes like his before.
“This is going to cost you big, you know,” she said, still weighing her options. “Very, very big.”
Then he grinned. A real grin. The Cheshire cat had nothing on this grin. “Oh, I’m sure it already has.”
Liza sighed, then kicked off her shoes.
