But she still wasn’t stunning or mysterious. She could dress the part of the femme fatale, but she was still too cautious to fulfill what the sexy shoes promised.
“You wouldn’t have noticed me in the casino if I had dressed like this,” Christine said as she gestured at her dress.
Travis flattened his hand on the tree trunk above her. “You wouldn’t have noticed me if I hadn’t approached you.”
“Don’t be so sure.” Her dream list didn’t include sex with a tall, dark and gorgeous man, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t have noticed Travis.
He leaned in. “Would you have done something about it?”
Her world was growing smaller as Travis filled her senses. She pressed her spine against the rough bark. “Depends on how brave I felt at the time.”
“How brave do you feel now?” he asked. He raised his other hand and caressed her cheek. She trembled from the soft touch. “We’re in your territory now and you know that I came all this way to find you.”
“It’s different,” she insisted hoarsely. “This isn’t Vegas. I have to be on my best behavior.”
Her phone chimed. She glanced at the text from Jill. He kissed you? Christine closed her eyes and groaned. Gossip traveled fast in this town.
“Does your best behavior include hiding under a desk?” Travis asked as his hand rested against the fluttering pulse at the base of her throat.
She opened her eyes wide as the embarrassment gripped her. She could barely breathe. “What?” Her voice sounded strangled as heat scorched her skin.
“Just now?” He gestured at the bank building. “There is no other door to your office. You were under the desk, weren’t you?”
“Okay, yes.” Christine tossed her hands in the air in defeat. She should have known she was no match for Travis Cain. He saw everything. And why wouldn’t he? She was no different from the countless women who threw themselves at his feet. “You caught me. I should have expected that. I panicked when I saw you.”
His eyes darkened. “Why?”
“I didn’t want you to see me,” she said in a harsh whisper. “Not like this.”
Travis’s hand drifted down the side of her body, grazing her breast. “Like how?” he asked.
“I’m not a woman of action, but I want to be. I went to Vegas and pretended to be someone else. A bolder version of myself....” Her voice trailed off as she became very aware of Travis’s hand spanning her waist. “But I wasn’t that brazen after all.”
His hand skimmed her hip. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m just a small-town girl,” she admitted. “My days are filled with my job and my friends. That’s it. I haven’t traveled around the world. I don’t even have a passport.”
“Then how...” His fingers flexed against her hip as he looked around the bank. “This doesn’t make sense.”
“I lied because I didn’t think the real me would interest you. I still don’t.” She heard the chime of her cell phone. She squeezed the phone in her hand and ignored it.
“So the bucket list was a lie, too?”
“No, that was the truth. There really is one.” Unfortunately, she thought with a twist of her lips. She wished she had never found it. It only reminded her of time wasted. Of dreams unfulfilled.
“How do I know it wasn’t some pickup line?” he asked. “A clever way to keep me at your side. I never saw the list. I was taking your word for it.”
If only she was that clever when it came to luring men. “I didn’t have it with me because I had it memorized.”
“Anything else you’d like to confess?”
“Didn’t you hear me? The list is true. It’s a real thing,” she insisted. “My friend Jill has seen it. I don’t go waving it around to people because it’s not something to brag about. I only have two things checked off.”
“Wait a second.” He let go of her waist and placed his hand on the tree trunk, trapping her. “You told me you wrote it when you were eighteen. That you had a hundred items on the list.”
She felt a wave of prickly heat crawl up her neck. “Yes,” she muttered.
“You only accomplished two things in ten years? That can’t be true.”
She wanted to say it was because she was confined here in Cedar Valley. That she couldn’t take a risk with her neighbors watching, waiting for her to fail. But she knew that was no longer true. That had been an excuse.
“I wanted to do all those things but life got in the way,” she said dully. “Whenever I wanted to try something, my plans fell apart. If I raised the money for a trip, I would suddenly have to use that money for emergency home repairs.”