Calamity Gene

Chapter 3

Gene's mind was in a churning, bubbling foment as she made her way to the lodge for lunch. Because it had dawned on her in that one blinding Devil's Cub moment that the universe had dropped a present in her lap. Actually the universe had gone one better and flung it on top of her—complete with a very impressive hard-on.

And Gene St John was not the type of person to turn her back on the universe.

She allowed herself one long sigh because it was quite romantic really, the notion that the universe was playing fairy godmother and sending her to the ball to meet her prince. In fact, if she thought about it like that...

Ergh, no! No. No. N.O. Mental slap to the head.

The Cinderella analogy was all well and good, as long as her version of the story stopped stone dead at the stroke of midnight (although in her case "midnight" was actually two weeks, which was when her holiday would end and she'd jet back to the cold hard reality that was waiting for her a world away in London). That  would make Trace Johnson not her happily-ever-after but her last hurrah, which was acceptable. He would be the man she was meant to have before she packed up her romance novels and DVDs and donated them to her local library to make sure she could never drool over them again. The ultimate romantic archetype: the cowboy—complete with chaps, spurs, hunk-shoulders, and a mop of dark hair under his Stetson, would be her remember when... moment, a memory to keep her warm as she lived her life of vibrator-supplemented celibacy, poring over catalogues of cat species.

Perfect really, because wildly attracted to Trace Johnson she may be, but she didn't especially like what she'd seen of his personality so far. And Trace, similarly, was clearly attracted to her—hello, hard-on!—but didn't like her one little bit. Which meant that for once in her life, sex could be the main game, the only game, hold the hearts and flowers. Had to be simple to do that, seeing as how everyone she knew was doing it. Her ex-boyfriend Kevin, for example, who'd indulged in emotion-free sex with both Gene and the mysterious woman he'd been seeing on the side—the one that little blue jeweler's box she'd found in his sock drawer (sock drawer! Seriously, how clichéd) was really meant for. And her ex-best friend Ines, who'd slept with Gene's boss for the express purpose of snatching Gene's promotion right from under her naïve, flower-smelling nose.

Of course, Trace may turn out to be lousy in bed—that'd be just her luck! But, really, so what? It would be additional proof that fantasies weren't real if the cowboy turned out to be a sexual dud. And at least the disappointment of that wouldn't have the power to upset her—not when her feelings weren't engaged.

But if, on the contrary, Trace ended up being that most elusive of fantasies, a bringer of multiple orgasms? Well, great. G.R.E.A.T! She'd rarely had even one orgasm during sex, let alone a string of them. If it finally happened with a guy she didn't even especially like it would prove that the earth-shattering sex that had always eluded her was about physiology, not romance. And if she paid attention to which spots were being stimulated and how, she'd probably even be able to recreate the experience with the vibrator she was going to buy when she got home and she would never again need to read a romance novel (which was just as well since she was donating them to the library).

Ha! Sex without love. With a cowboy. She would do it, and in the so-doing liberate herself.

"Ready or not, here I come, Trace Johnson," she sing-songed under her breath as she entered the lodge. "And come, and come, and come if I'm lucky."

In an ebullient frame of mind, Gene wasn't daunted that Trace skipped lunch. She wasn't daunted that he no-showed for the post-lunch tour of the ranch either. Or that he skipped the afternoon trip to the closest town to the ranch, Pinedale—a last chance to shop for necessities before work got underway tomorrow. She figured he couldn't avoid her forever, and by the time she saw him again she'd have the answers to a few probing questions she couldn't easily ask the ranch hands in his presence. It was always better to go into battle armed with all the facts. For example—was he even available to have a crack at? Not that it was unheard of for guys to get hard-ons at random moments in the presence of complete strangers, but if Trace of the massive erection was married with children, or engaged, or had a girlfriend (in descending order of perfidy) physiology could go fuck itself as far as Gene was concerned because she wouldn't touch him with a barge pole . She might, in fact, be hard-pressed to even look at him, which could prove tricky as she'd be seeing him every day for the next two weeks.