Maybe she didn’t know he was in love with her.
Maybe she’d never think of him as anything more than the old friend she’d grown up with.
For damn sure, maybe she’d never realize that his offers to marry her were sincere.
But if Winona were in trouble, Justin was going to be there for her-whether she wanted him there or not.
Two
Winona was in such trouble.
She’d slept with the same dream two nights running, replaying the evening of the Texas Cattleman’s Club gala. She knew it was just another dream, because the same details kept getting embellished. In the dream, she was breathtakingly gorgeous-which was a lot of fun, but not remotely realistic. She’d been whirling and swirling on the dance floor, not tripping, being graceful-which was another reason she knew it was a dream. And she kept dancing with different men-man after man after man, all of them adorable, all of them charmed by every word that came out of her mouth, fighting to have another spin with her around the floor…
Okay, okay, so these were pretty ridiculous dreams. But they were her dreams, and she was having a great time with them.
Only in this particular night’s version, Justin pulled her into his arms. For “The Tennessee Waltz”-which had to be one of the schmaltziest songs of all time, a song doomed to bring out romantic feelings in even the toughest of women-such as herself-and suddenly she was naked. Whirling around the floor. Waltzing. Without a stitch on. Only being naked was okay, because there wasn’t a soul in the room who realized that she was naked. Except for herself.
And Justin.
Alarm bells started clanging in her ears, but Winona determinedly ignored them. Obviously this wasn’t real, and since this happened to be her personal, wicked dream, she didn’t want to let go of it until she had to.