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He could see he’d riled her, but, for the life of him, he couldn’t understand why. “Somebody respectable, for one thing. And conservative.”
She rose from the water, and the expression on her face told him he’d just been sent to the principal, and she was it. “I’ll have you know, Mr. Traveler, that I am the least conservative person you’ve ever met!”
He started to laugh, then got distracted by the water trickling down those firm white thighs. “You don’t say,” he managed.
“I am—I am . . . completely disreputable! Just look at me! I’m in a hot tub with a man I didn’t even know until a few hours ago!”
“You aren’t naked,” he couldn’t help but point out.
She got rosy in the face, and the next thing he knew, she sank down in the water and started to tug. Right there in front of him, with nothing but bubbles hiding that milky white body, she stripped off her bathing suit. He watched her whip it out of the water and fling it from the hot tub. It landed on the pebbled concrete with a soft plop.
“There! Don’t you ever say I’m conservative again!”
He grinned. This was like taking candy from a baby.
As Emma watched those white teeth flash in his tanned face, she knew she’d done it. She had a dreadful temper, but she’d worked hard to control it, and it hadn’t gotten the best of her for years.
She fumbled for her beer and took a deep swallow as she tried to recover, but the fact that she was stark naked made it difficult. She was accustomed to dealing with rebellious students, unreasonable parents, demanding faculty members, and an overworked maintenance staff. How had she let one man upset her so easily?
As she tried to muster her dignity, she grew conscious of the slide of water over her skin. An unbridled streak of sensuality reared its silky head. She fiercely repressed it as she set the bottle back down and spoke more sharply than necessary. “Now that we have that settled, I’d like you to have the name of a clean tattoo parlor for me by tomorrow afternoon.”
He regarded her with the bland expression of the mentally impaired. Physically, however, there was nothing wrong with him. Sunlight flickered across shoulders that were strong and powerful. Without his Stetson, she could see that his blue-black hair was thick and a bit curly, like a dark archangel’s. If a Renaissance sculptor had ever gotten the urge to chisel a Texas cowboy into the frieze of a cathedral, Kenny Traveler would have been his man.
“Search services are extra,” he said.
“What do you mean? Extra what?”
“Money. That fifty dollars a day you’re paying me doesn’t cover search services.”
“You consider finding a tattoo parlor a search service?”
“Yes, ma’am, I do.”
She’d known his fee was too good to be true. “Exactly what does the fifty dollars cover?”
“Driving, mainly. As I said, finding tattoo parlors is extra. I also don’t do hair and manicures.”
“I didn’t ask you to—”
“Massage is included in the fifty. But, ’course, you know that.”
“Mas—”
“Suitcase hauling only once a day. Any more than that’ll cost you an extra thousand bucks. Pointing out the sights is included in the base fee, but if I have to do any Spanish translation for you, I’ll need to charge you by the hour. As for sex, that’s an additional fifty dollars. Does that seem fair?”
She stared at him and wondered if she’d somehow gotten water in her ears.
He shook his head. “No, you’re right. It’s the off season, so I need to discount. Tell you what. Let’s make it thirty for sex, and that’ll cover the whole night, not just one time, you understand. A budget traveler like yourself will have to agree you won’t find a better rate than that.”
Slowly her tongue came unglued from the roof of her mouth. “Sex?”
“The whole night for thirty dollars.” He propped his elbows on the deck. “Lately I been thinkin’ about how unfair that is. A woman can charge hundreds of dollars for an entire night, but a man—Hell, it’s discrimination, is what it is. I swear, lately I been thinkin’ about filing a complaint with the EEOC.”
She couldn’t take her eyes from him. She was both repulsed and strangely fascinated. “Women pay to have sex with you?”
He regarded her as if she were the slow-witted one. “You hired an escort service.”
“I thought I hired a driver.”
