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  A REAL MAN

  * * *

  Cole Dawson thought it was going to be a short job. Prop cowboy. Hell, he could do that!

  Anything to take his mind off his dad’s surgery and the very real possibility of losing their family’s home—the BC ranch. Until he met Tabby. And fell. Hard.

  * * *

  Tabby Grey was still shocked out of her mind she’d become a top-selling erotica author, overnight. Take that, you jerk of an ex-fiancé. But she’s sworn off men. And sex, despite her hot-as-hell book.

  * * *

  But when hunky Cole Dawson shows up for her book-signing tour and doesn’t make a move except for being himself and tossing her those long, lingering glances—it’s game over.

  * * *

  She should do something. Anything. Because the tour is over tomorrow—and then it’s ba-bye. Because Tabby Grey is hiding a secret. One she can’t bear for the man she’s head over cowboy-boot heels in love with to find out. It would simply do her in.

  * * *

  Because if he knew—what would he do about it?

  Also by Susan Saxx

  Real Men

  A Real Man

  Real Deep: Small Town Military Romance

  It Started on a Back Road: Small Town Military Romance

  Real Hero: Small Town Military Romance

  Real Miracle - Small Town Military Romantic Suspense

  Jack's Bay / Real Men Bundle 1

  Jack's Bay / Real Men Bundle 2

  The Real Men Series

  It Started with a Candy Cane

  Real Temptation (Special Delivery)

  A Real Man

  A Real Men Short Story - Book 1

  Susan Saxx

  Susan Saxx

  Copyright © 2017 by Susan Saxx

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  To Dad

  * * *

  You said I could

  * * *

  …and you were right.

  * * *

  Love you.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Hello - from Susan

  About Jack’s Bay & Series Titles

  Also by Susan Saxx

  About Susan

  1

  Holy Hell. Walking into the wrong motel room had never looked like this before.

  Tabby Grey stood in the darkened bedroom and stared straight ahead as the pulse from her hammering heart threatened to jump through the skin at the base of her throat.

  In the bathroom, in front of the vanity. Sliding those faded blue jeans off solid thighs. The dusting of black hair above his navel arrowing to disappear beneath those black briefs.

  Cole Dawson. In the flesh.

  Her tongue. Had she swallowed it?

  Common sense assailed her. She should turn around now, get the hell out of there as fast as her legs could carry her.

  The jeans slipped lower. The guy she’d spent three weeks fantasizing about—the prop cowboy her editor had hired to accompany her on her book tour throughout the western areas of the US and Canada, for a ‘touch of authenticity’—kicked off his dusty blues.

  She couldn’t move, even though her brain and every sense of fair play and propriety told her to run. His cock was beautifully outlined in those snug briefs. Ample, she’d say, if she was writing about it.

  Her hand threatened to strangle the life out of her day bag’s strap.

  Was she really standing here ogling Cole Dawson?

  Not only was she impinging on his privacy, but did she really need that to moon over for the rest of her life?

  While she knew men like Cole existed — she’d drooled over the photos online, quickly clicked them off when she realized she was spending way too much time eyeing and far too little time putting words on the page—she also knew there’d never been a specimen as fine so close to her in her whole work-centered life.

  And since the abrupt changes in her life two years ago, there never would be, either.

  The worst part of it was Cole was decent to boot. Not some fly-by-night dude, full of what he was going to accomplish in life, ignoring others. Cole Dawson was dependable. Thoughtful. A stalwart cowboy, and a Canadian army reservist, to boot.

  Despite his rugged good looks and hard physique, the man was not full of himself.

  And Lord, would she like to be full of him…

  She hauled herself back harshly from that precipice. There was no good to be had flinging herself off that particular mountain top.

  Only misery, heartbreak, and two really well used fingers.

  Her brain told her to move. Escape through the motel door, let the soundless outside door hush closed. If he looked up and saw her staring at him, she’d lose every bit of respectability she’d worked so hard to attain with him.

  But hell, she couldn’t.

  Didn’t matter that her cowboy erotica novel—penned while she’d been in recovery for a year—had surprised everyone, most of all herself, by being the crazy breakout sex book of the year.

  Tabitha Grey, newcomer at twenty-two, takes erotica to new heights, Publisher’s Weekly had said.

  And take that, she’d mouthed to her loser ex-fiancé, who’d dumped her after the accident.

  But the success hadn’t changed the fabric of her life. At all. The sad truth was that for all her stories of hot and imaginative encounters, she hadn’t had a real encounter of her own for way too long.

  And there he was. The perfect cowboy.

  Literally in the flesh.

  A deep desire surfaced in her. If only everything that had happened since the accident wasn’t carved stone-hard in her life. A painful fact.

  Wearing only his trademark Stetson and those skin-molding briefs, Cole now leaned over the tub, yanked the flimsy curtain aside, and she vaguely registered the noise of the water pounding in the tub as the steam built and started filling the room.

  Or was that the blood pounding in her ears?

  Those powerful thighs working even with so simple an action as bending over made her drool. His ass, normally wrapped in worn blue jeans, was front and center, the knit fabric hugging it lovingly.

  And muscles. Skin glistened from the tiny water droplets that clung to them, and she couldn’t yank her gaze away.

  She’d spent most every hot July night thinking of what that man would look like naked. How he might use his considerable talents to take care of the one thing she longed for the most. The one thing she knew no matter how much money or fame she got from the sale of that book, she’d never have.

  Sex? Partly.

  While that was certainly a mind-blowing prospect with him, it still wasn’t the whole enchilada. No, sex, sadly, was easy, if you weren’t overly fussy. She got offers all the time from all kinds of losers since The Book had released and, crazily, become a best-seller.

  But none of the guys appealed. Hell, she was just barely over twenty-two, and yet her personal life was already over. Sex—sure, she’d had sex.

  But the fire that every woman longed for, deep down, from eighteen to eighty—that was a different story. Real heat, based on actual connection with someone who really cared, and who’d be there through thick and thin—that wasn’t so easy to come by.

  Yeah. Love.

  That particular item had never come her way, even though she’d tried to tell herself she’d had it w
ith her loser ex. And ever since the accident…

  Cole let the curtain fall closed, ran his fingers over the waistband of the briefs. Slipped his fingers in under and pulled. Down.

  God. Did he know she was watching?

  No matter. She couldn’t pull her gaze away now. His cock came into full view. Sprang erect, unfettered. Long.

  And now she really was frozen. She stood there and longing slammed into her. Desire. Need.

  Horror. He stepped aside, out of the briefs, and she registered a woman, mouth unattractively open, staring at her from the vanity mirror behind him.

  Her.

  He started to raise his head, a slight grin on his face, the five-o’clock shadow making his jaw oh so lickable. He turned, a wisp of a degree towards her.

  Shock slammed through her.

  She couldn’t end the tour, just before their last day together, like this—as a sex-starved voyeur.

  The practicality she’d been known for her entire life suddenly made an appearance like a tornado rushing through her. She moved faster than a woman determined to not ruin the one thing she had left in the whole wide world—her pride—and got the freakin’ hell out of there.

  2

  Cole waited in the spacious motel lobby, worn boot heels grinding on the stone tile, his middle finger tapping a rhythm on the counter as he waited for the clerk to come back with the afternoon mail.

  They’d done the American Midwest, then zigzagged up to western Canada, finishing up here in Alberta, or Texas North, as it was known. Close enough to his family’s ranch at the foothills of the Rockies in British Columbia that he’d felt the pull, unmistakably.

  Home.

  But somewhere, deep inside, he’d also felt an odd melancholy. And he knew why.

  His last day on tour with Tabby. Something he definitely hadn’t been looking forward to.

  Then Tabby’d insisted he leave the evening book signing and go to the motel to pack up the promo stuff. Told him she’d get a ride back with the proprietor of the general store, once he closed for the night, and truth be told, was a bit snippy about it.

  Cole hadn’t liked the idea, but then she’d been strangely controlled all day. From the moment of shock she’d seemed to experience first thing that morning when he surprised her by brandishing a hot cup of coffee under her nose in the lobby, he knew something was off.

  Then the conversation had dropped off between them. Oh, a couple of times they’d gotten into it, and he’d seen that flow he’d come to count on come back for a few moments here and there, but mostly, she seemed to have disappeared into some private funk.

  Yeah. He gazed off into the distance, noting the people coming in and out through the motel’s front doors.

  There was no doubt about it. Tabby Grey was wound up tighter than a lasso around a heifer’s flailing feet.

  Could all that be because of a little skin?

  He’d caught sight of her the moment she’d entered his bedroom last night and had been secretly pleased beyond all sense. He’d seen her take her stand, transfixed, as he slowly, deliberately, put on the best show a man could for the young woman he was undeniably smitten with. Hadn’t even taken his hat off, hoped it would add to the fantasy and allure.

  Truth be told, he’d been ready to get down on his knees and thank his maker she’d been in his room uninvited and that things were finally coming to a head between the two of them, despite the fact that she was the agency’s client and unofficially off limits.

  And when he’d tugged his briefs off and let her see the erection he was sporting—just for her—she’d turned tail and run. He’d just been about to yank his jeans back on, commando-style, and take off after her when he’d gotten her abrupt phone message about the change in the next day’s itinerary. It had hauled him up short, and his intuition had blared.

  Something had told him to leave the situation alone.

  His finger caressed the message replay icon on his cell.

  Could all her discomfort and distance be because she’d found him that way last night? Bare-butt, bare everything?

  He gave in, replayed the brief message from her, for the fourth time.

  Hell’s bells.

  Arousal staggered through his body at that husky voice. If Tabby Grey had sold promotional items in a call center, his barn would be full of the junk. Or if she’d done online tech support, his damn PC would’ve always been breaking down.

  She was already the type of woman he was drawn to. Curvaceous. Thin wasn’t for him, and neither were women who moaned and groaned as they rode treadmills creating sweat for no reason. His dad had filled his ear a few weeks ago about that whole area. They’d seen people huffing and puffing on treadmills in the hotel the night before he’d been admitted to the exclusive New York medical center they’d mortgaged a pile of stuff to get him into. Fake walking machines, his Dad had called them.

  He’d had to agree. Pretending to go somewhere when life was full of opportunities to actually go somewhere and do something—real life, it was called—just didn’t add up in his brain.

  City vs. country. Often interesting differences, he’d found.

  And that was further borne out when he’d fled for a reprieve to some of the local bars at night, after full days of watching over his Dad recovering from the required surgeries.

  While he enjoyed people—always had—that had cemented his opinion on the particular type of city woman he seemed to see everywhere. All the worries about this matching with that, and the calories in a steak.

  Calories in a steak? He’d practically laughed out loud. What the heck did they think steak was for?

  And so, while he enjoyed the locals, nothing had meshed on a deeper level, and his New York sojourn had turned into the longest self-imposed sexual dry spell he’d ever had in recent history.

  Then, he’d seen the notice in an agency bulletin. Prop Cowboy, it had been titled.

  He’d grinned. Seeing as he’d worked as head foreman for his family’s ranch, been a cowpoke and wrangler before that, yeah, he figured he could act like a cowboy.

  And with his Canadian army reserve experience – he’d signed up as a soldier sharp at the age of eighteen and had been deployed to fight forest fires as well as to assist with flood relief efforts—they’d practically begged him to take the short-term contract, muttering something about his ability to deal with the unforeseen.

  As his dad was pushing at him to leave him alone, to let him recuperate the way a man ought to—alone, the old man had gruffly stressed—and they needed the cash, he figured it was the best thing to do.

  So he’d taken the gig. When he’d found out he’d be working for an author, he was fine with it. People that had a way with words—he had an admiration for them.

  But nothing had prepared him for Tabby.

  Ample personality, when she let it get away from her. That woman had the rock-solid determination to kick life in the balls no matter what it threw at her.

  Mostly though she was quiet and controlled, as if she’d catch herself letting loose, then drape herself in the properly befitting persona. But it was apparent, the more time he spent with her, there was a strong personality underneath, just kicking to get free, and his admiration grew. Even though he’d been hired to act as her Man Friday, more or less, she didn’t want to be coddled. Tabby Grey hefted her bags and packages herself, even if she winced at times.

  The woman was both a definite draw and a constant puzzle. No two ways about it.

  He’d googled her, learned that while she’d spent some time living in Toronto, she was from a small town in northern Ontario, straddling cottage country and city living. Jack’s Bay.

  And that had been an interesting surprise. One of his best buddies, an army reserve brother, Eli Austin, was also from Jack’s Bay, as was another dude he’d served with, Rand Peters.

  Well. He knew he thought the world of Eli and liked Rand well enough, and now, Tabby.

  He’d also learned she’d written a bests
elling book about some unusual, inventive, cowboy sex. That had gotten his attention. And because of the book, there was a lot online he could read about her. Lots of things said, more things hinted at.

  But as he’d read the articles, he couldn’t find a lot of past history. He’d tried to connect the dots, but things didn’t quite add up. Just a feeling he’d garnered, and it had niggled at him. Could be it had something to do with the fact that Grey was a pen name, chosen specially by her publisher for the erotica genre—some type of spinoff on the success of Fifty Shades.

  Then one day the first week an old carpet bag he was carrying for her fell open, and as he was piling stuff back in before it wafted away in the Texas wind, his eyes snagged on the well-worn business card.

  A highly respected doctor. He’d heard the name bandied about, with all the time he’d spent in the medical center. Only took on the toughest, long-term cases.

  And the name on the back, with an appointment penned in, was for Tabby Logan.

  And suddenly, things made sense.

  He’d tried to crack her open, a few questions here and there, but hadn’t gotten anywhere. Didn’t help she pushed guys away.

  And he couldn’t blame her. After that crazy, hot book she’d written, she’d had the dregs of the earth come to her book-signings, and that was part of his job. A sane, stalwart presence to keep the creepy fans at bay, a bodyguard of sorts.

  Yeah, Tabitha Grey wrote hot erotica.