...Stormy socked him on the shoulder. “Go on with you. I don’t need no forty acres to turn my rig around. Twenty will do just fine.”

At the instant her fist impacted his solid bicep, his hand closed around her wrist. All at once the cab filled with a humming tension. Energy arced between them, eyes to eyes and skin to skin where his callused fingers shaped a bracelet around her arm. She relaxed her hand and spread it across the heat of his solid muscle absorbing the masculine power he radiated.

After a moment, he tugged, shifting her balance until she fell toward him. He released her wrist, but only long enough to close his arms around her. She settled against the comfortable breadth of his chest, a slow sigh leaking out of her lungs. I’ll move, pull away in just a minute, but this feels so damn good… Before she completed the thought, his mouth found hers, and coherency flew right out of her mind.

He tasted of coffee and mint gum, and he kissed like a master at the craft. She didn’t even think before she opened to the teasing probe of his tongue. He edged a hand up between their bodies and palmed her breast. Her whole body shivered at the touch as her nipple pebbled inside her bra, straining at the silky lace fabric. It felt like heaven, but was still not enough. Nowhere near enough.

“Can’t get a room, but the sleeper behind us has a real nice mattress.” She cringed at the inane remark, but it was said and it made the point.

“Lead on, sugar. I’m right behind you.”

Stormy felt exposed when she climbed down from the cab and opened the sleeper door, Tom right behind her.

I might as well be standing naked in front of the No-tell Motel. Oh, hell, for all anybody knows, we’re married. It’s nobody’s business anyway. It’s been too long since I got laid and I need this.

The sleeper had no wasted space. It held a double bed, which took about all the room there was. She crawled onto the mattress and toward the back corner, leaving room for Tom to get up beside her. He shut the door behind them and stretched out. She flipped on one small light, the one she sometimes read by, and turned to face him.

He toed off his boots and laid them down in the six-inch strip of floor that edged the bed.

“Don’t want to get mud on your pretty quilt,” he explained. “It looks like the kind my grandma use to make. She lived up in the hills outside of Nashville and pretty much clung to the old ways.”

“My gran made this one,” Stormy confessed. “She’s been gone quite a while, but she left a bunch of pretty handwork behind. I use this to keep her memory alive and a little bit of her here with me.”

“You can’t beat a good ole southern hill lady unless it’s a good young one.”

She caught his insouciant grin out of the corner of her eye.

Oh, man, he’s got a line and charm as thick as peanut butter. Stormy kicked off her athletic shoes and dropped them beside his boots. Before she was done, he laid her back with two sure hands and rolled up to prop on his elbow looking down at her.

“Is that your real name, Stormy? How’d a pretty lady get stuck with such a moniker?”

“Yeah, ’bout as real as it gets. My birth certificate reads Stormy Jane Alcott. I took back my own name after my louse of an ex took off. Wasn’t about to call myself Stoker any longer. If I could, I’d change my kids’ names, too. As to how or why, Mama used to tell me it was a real dark and stormy night when I made my appearance and she just thought it fit. Always did have a bit of a temper…”

Tom laughed, a deep, honest laugh that seemed to come from the depths if his soul. “Well, I was named after my daddy, Thomas Carrick Holden, Junior. Of course, they call me Junior or sometimes just June. Except for maybe Bubba, it don’t get much worse or more deep south than that. “

He reached with one hand, sliding it under the hem of her shirt where it had pulled out from being tucked into her jeans. His hand felt hot and a little rough on her skin. Sinfully good, too. She shivered at the ticklish caress.

“Soft,” he murmured. “I knew it would be. You might act like a tough lady, but your skin says that’s a lie.”