Taking On The Cowboy

Part 17 - Chapter Sixteen

Gage couldn't sleep. That was kind of to be expected. There were plenty of things he could blame for his poor slumber. There was the fact that he was sleeping in a strange bed, or the fact he was in the city. Or perhaps he should blame his inability to sleep on the fact he was about to throw his deceased friend to the wolves. Or maybe it was just that the woman he couldn't get out of his mind- his dead best friend's sister - was slumbering peacefully in the twin bed next to his.

Being in the city didn't help. San Antonio might be a nice city, but he couldn't see the stars clearly, the light from the city meant it never got dark enough. All the constant comings and goings kept him awake too. The noises a city makes during the night, that the country doesn't. The baseline hum a city seems to have. Noise pollution. He turned on to his side in the bed, faced the wall in an attempt to get away from the half night coming in through the closed curtains. It didn't really matter, one lost night of sleep wasn't going to kill him. He'd just have to wait out the sunrise.

He must have fallen asleep at some stage because he woke to the warm sweet smell of hotcakes sprinkled with lemon juice and sugar, a small pile of defrosted blueberries bleeding out their purple juice onto the plate.

Tara had straightened her hair and was dressed in a crisp white blouse, tailored jacket and matching pencil skirt. She was wearing some heady scent he hadn't smelt before and the most elegant fine gold necklace with a single drop pearl pendant.

"Wow." Gage whistled his appreciation.

"You like hotcakes?" She handed him the tray, carefully so as not to tip the little jug of milk they'd been given for their coffee.

"Yip, that's what I was whistling about. That's definitely what I was whistling about." Gage's eyes travelled the length of her body, from her perfectly coiffed hair to her well appointed toes and back up again, lingering at her hips, her breasts and finally settling back on her eyes.

"Eat your hotcakes." Tara waved her index finger at him, furrowed her brow in disapproval, turned on her shiny black heels and strolled from the room.

"Yes Ma'am." He called after her, adjusting his boxer shorts which had become uncomfortable. He couldn't quite believe what this woman could do to him. He was about to go before the Court of Appeal and all he could think about was sliding his hands up over Tara Blake's thighs and under her skirt.

Gage closed the bathroom door and hoped like hell that a quick shower with the temperature adjusted to balls achingly cold would take some of the heat out of him.

She'd left the shower damp, the sweet fruity smell of her shampoo hanging in the air. She'd been naked in here not half an hour ago. Her milky white skin all slick with soap and those beautiful pert breasts bare beneath the jet of water. It didn't bear thinking about. It certainly didn't bear thinking about what other parts of her body had been naked and wet beneath the jets. He considered the part of his own body that was standing to attention. The only sort of relief he was going to get would be self-administered and he wasn't about to do that in a hotel room he was sharing with Tara Blake. He took the more brutal option and turned the temperature dial right down, the cold stream of water enough of a shock to chase away all traces of his desire.

Gage unzipped the plastic cover that protected his suit. It looked like a body bag. It was the suit he'd worn the first time round - to his sentencing. His mother had wanted him to buy a new one, worried that this one might be bad luck, given what had happened last time he wore it to Court, but Gage reckoned the fewer suits in his wardrobe the better. "You make your own luck" his father had always said and that made sense to Gage.

The jacket fit beautifully but felt funny. He could see he'd knotted his tie correctly but that didn't mean it felt right. He'd never understood the purpose of ties. He'd joked with Dan that perhaps business men wore them so that they could string themselves up quickly when their desk jobs got too depressing. He'd be able to throw the tie away after today, or maybe he'd make a scarecrow and the scarecrow could wear the whole suit. It sounded like a plan for a minute, but then he realised he'd see the scarecrow and the damned suit every day. Nope, that wasn't going to work. The whole suit could go to charity.