I quickly closed down my phone and stuffed it into my back pocket as I shot Tammy a scowl and teased, “I’m not looking at dick pics, you perv. And that’s the only thing that could hold your attention because you’re a horndog.”
Tammy’s face split into an unrepentant grin. “Girl, you know it,” she said on a giggle before skipping off to check her tables.
Twisting my wrist, I checked the time on my watch before moving to the switch on the wall at the end of the bar and flickering the lights. “Last call, people,” I shouted over the din of the crowd. “Fifteen minutes to close, so drink ’em if you got ’em.”
In spite of it being a quarter to midnight on a Tuesday, there were a few grumbles of protest. But that was always the case.
The Tap Room was a Hope Valley institution and had been since way back in the day when my grandparents opened the place. Now that my folks had retired and it was finally mine, I was thrilled to keep that legacy going.
Moving back down the bar, I stopped in front of one of my regulars. “How’d you get here today, Dusty?”
He drained the last of his beer, setting the glass mug down with a heavy thump before looking at me with glassy, red-rimmed eyes. Years and years of not taking care of himself had made him look at least a decade older than his fifty-five years. “Walked here,” he answered on a mumble.
Dustin Filcher was a lifelong resident of Hope Valley and used to run the most successful real estate company in three counties. He had a reputation for being fair and always looking out for his clients’ best interests. How he was in business made him well respected, but it was his kind heart in general that made him well loved by everyone in town.
Then one night, ten years ago, he’d been driving his family home from a vacation during a nasty storm. Another driver had lost control of his car and smashed into Dusty’s. His wife and son were killed instantly, and he’d been stuck in the hospital for a better part of a month because of his injuries.
Now, instead of selling houses, he spent his time on a barstool at The Tap Room, drowning his sorrows from noon until close every single day.
I used to get so mad at my father for enabling his problem until Dad put it in perspective for me one day years back.
“Can’t help a man who’s not ready to help himself. I know because I tried. That man spends every waking moment of every day living in his own personal hell, Rory. Might not seem right to you, but I see where he’s comin’ from. Can’t imagine livin’ my life without you and your mama in it, and if drinkin’ the memories away’ll provide him with a few hours of relief from that hell, I’m not gonna be the one to judge that, so long as he’s not puttin’ anyone else at risk.”
I didn’t necessarily agree with my dad, but I understood, so I stopped riding him about it and instead turned my attention to giving Dusty an ear or shoulder to lean on if he ever needed it.
He was still well respected and well loved, but unfortunately, he was now pitied as well.
“You need me to call you a cab?”
“That’d be appreciated, if you don’t mind.”
Reaching over, I placed my hand on his and gave it a squeeze. “Not at all, sweetie. You just hang tight here, and I’ll get right on that.”
The cab showed a few minutes later, and I rounded the bar to give Dusty a hand. Usually he was able to get himself up and out on his own, but tonight was worse than normal.
“You need help with him?”
I looked up at Dan, my other bartender, and offered him a smile. “Nah, I’ve got him. But if you wouldn’t mind, could you help Tammy and Mona with clearing the floor? I’ll cash you guys out when I get back in.”
He gave me a nod and set about helping my waitresses clean the floor of empties and stack the chairs on the tables. The few people I had on staff were more than efficient, helping me run the bar like a well-oiled machine. I didn’t know how I’d function without any of them.
“Cryin’ shame,” Dusty muttered as I guided him out of the bar, his arm tossed carelessly over my shoulder as he leaned against me.
“What’s that?”
“Pretty girl like you. Sweet as can be. Should have a man and a buncha kids all your own.”
Ignoring the pang that sent through my chest, I tightened my grip on Dusty as he began listing to the side. “I’m good as I am, Dust. You don’t need to worry about me.”
“Still think you deserve better, girl.”
One of the benefits of living in a small town was that everyone knew everyone, so the guy who ran the cab company was experienced when it came to these nightly pickups.
When he saw us, he quickly hopped out of the driver seat and jogged around to throw the back door open before coming our way and helping me load Dusty in.
“Thanks, Hal,” I said, smiling up at the man.
“No problem, honey.”
“You mind helping him get inside when you get to his place?” I asked once we had the door closed. “Tonight’s a bad one. I’m not sure he can make it through the door on his own.”
Hal looked to the car, his expression awash with sympathy. “Understandable, given the day.” I nodded in agreement, my heart breaking for poor Dusty. “Don’t worry yourself, darlin’. I’ll get him squared away.”
He returned to the driver’s seat, and I stood in the empty parking lot, watching with a broken heart as the red of the taillights disappeared around the corner.
I was just about to shake off the melancholy and head back inside when a huge, imposing figure I’d recognize anywhere stepped out of the shadows and blocked my path.
Chapter Two
Cord
I’d been standing in the parking lot of The Tap Room for twenty minutes, waiting for the place to start clearing out in the hopes of catching a moment alone with Rory. She’d been avoiding me for months. Since getting released from the hospital, every time I tried talking to her she shot me down and all but kicked me out of the bar or off her property.
The closest I’d gotten recently was a little over a month ago when her friend Gypsy ended up in the hospital after a brush with the drug dealer who’d been terrorizing our town. Rory had been a wreck after that, and after hours and hours of stressing and pacing the halls of the hospital, I’d finally managed to talk her into letting me take her home.
She spent the entire ride in silence, staring out the window and doing her best to pretend I didn’t exist. I’d barely had the chance to put my car in park before she jumped out and bolted to her door, and she had the goddamn thing unlocked and opened before I even made it to her front porch.
I got a mumbled “Thanks for the ride” before she shut it behind her, closing me out once again.
I was tired of the avoidance. I wanted Rory back in my life. Truth was, I’d missed her like crazy. And I only had myself to blame for that. I’d pushed her away after Laurie showed up. I didn’t want to do it. Hell, not being able to see her or talk to her every day fucking killed, but it wasn’t right to be with one woman while feeling an unmistakable pull to another. With our history, I owed it to Laurie to give her everything I had. I’d made a commitment to her, and as wrong as it felt to put distance between Rory and me, the sense of loyalty to my past was just too strong to ignore.
In the process, I’d fucked up and hurt a woman who meant the entire goddamn world to me, and I needed to somehow fix it.
I watched as she helped a guy I’d seen frequent the bar into a waiting cab before pushing off the brick wall and moving toward her.
“Seriously?” she snarked, crossing her arms over her chest with a glare. “You’re lurking in dark corners, sneaking up on people now?”
Jesus, even when she was throwing around attitude, she was gorgeous. “I wasn’t lurking in dark corners. I was waiting to talk to you.” I looked back to where the cab had disappeared. The uneasiness twisting my insides since I saw her come outside with that drunk was still plaguing me. “You really think it was a good idea to walk out here all alone with that guy?”
I felt my lips pull into an unhappy frown at her carelessness. “He was drunk out of his goddamn mind. And you shouldn’t overserve a guy like that,” I scolded, an irrational agitation that she’d put herself in a potentially harmful situation making my gut clench. “It could’ve been dangerous.”
“Like I said, Dusty’s harmless,” she argued vehemently, her face pinching in anger. “And not that it’s any of your business how I run my bar, but today marked the anniversary of Dusty losing his wife and son in a car accident. He’d been driving and was pinned inside that car with them until the cops finally showed up and got him out, knowing all the while that they were gone and he wasn’t, even though he wanted to be. So if he wanted to drink until he forgot tonight, I was gonna damn well let him. And I was also gonna make sure he made it home safely.”
“Shit.” Reaching up, I rubbed at the back of my neck, feeling like a jackass. “I didn’t know.”
“Yeah, well… now you do.” She wrapped her arms around her middle like she was trying to hug herself or ward off a chill as she looked anywhere but at me. “If you don’t mind, I’ve got stuff to do.”
Moving on instinct, my hand shot out and gently grabbed her arm as she started past me. “Rory, please,” I pleaded when her bright blue eyes came back to me. “I just want to talk. Please.”
She tugged against my grip, but I held on, panic searing through me at the thought of losing this chance with her.
“I’ve already told you, there’s nothing for us to talk about.”
“Seven months,” I replied on a low hiss, stepping in closer. “Seven fuckin’ months you’ve been avoiding me like the plague.”
Her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open in astonishment before she whispered, “Are you kidding me?”
“Rory—”
“You’re unbelievable, you know that?” she bit out, wrenching her arm so hard I had no choice but to let go to avoid hurting her. She took two steps back, a caustic laugh bursting past her lips. “You cut me out of your life for a year and a half, and you actually have the nerve to give me shit for doing the exact same thing?”
“I’ve been trying to explain, but you won’t lis—”
“The time for explaining passed a long damn time ago.” Casting her gaze to the side, she pulled in a long, deep breath and raked her hands through her midnight locks before looking back at me. “I was fine just being your friend,” she said in a quiet voice filled with pain. “You knew how I felt about you, I made that clear from the beginning. But I accepted that nothing romantic would happen between us. It killed, but I accepted it. You picked Laurie over me. It sucked, but I understood. As long as I had you in my life, I was happy.” Her eyes began to glisten with unshed tears beneath the streetlights.
“Rory, I’m so sorry. I fucked up—” I tried, but she kept talking like she didn’t even hear me.
“I watched you two together, you know. And I never understood what she had that I didn’t. She didn’t deserve you, but even knowing that, I tried my best to like her because you were my friend, Cord. You were my best friend, so I tried so damn hard.”
Christ, she was killing me. “Dollface, please.”
She winced at the nickname I’d bestowed on her during that first meeting, then pushed on. “Then she gave you an ultimatum. A good woman would never put her man in that situation. But she did. Her or me. She couldn’t stand that I was in your life, so she made you choose. And you did, Cord.” She shook her head as more tears fell. “Once again, you chose her. Only that time, you cut me out altogether.”
“It was a mistake,” I said desperately. “We had a history. I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“I never would have done that to you,” she continued. “Never.”
“I know,” I whispered, trying to swallow past the lump of regret that had formed in my throat.
A dreadful silence enveloped us like a fog so thick it made it impossible to breathe. Or maybe it was just the pain I could see etched into every inch of her, from her face to how she was holding herself, that made each inhale a struggle.
I started to speak again when the door to The Tap Room suddenly opened, and a man I recognized as the other bartender stepped outside. “You okay, Ror?”
Quickly brushing at the tears that had leaked from her eyes, she took another step back, and the distance she’d created between us felt endless. “I’m fine, Dan.”
My hands clenched into fists and my jaw began to tick as the man eyed me suspiciously before addressing Rory again.
“You sure, sweetheart?”
A hazy red film drifted over my vision at hearing him call her sweetheart. “She said she was, didn’t she?”
The man’s demeanor grew combative as he took a step closer. “Wasn’t talkin’ to you, man.”
I mirrored his step, itching to plow my fist into this jackass’s jaw. “How about you back the hell off, huh? This is a private conversation between me and Rory. It’s none of your business.”
“I walk out here and see you have a woman cornered in a dark parking lot while she’s got tears in her eyes, it most certainly is my business.”
“Listen, asshole—”
“Enough!” Rory said loudly, breaking through the tension that had built between me and her employee. She looked back to him and lifted her hand to keep him from coming any closer. “Go back inside, Dan. I’ll be there in a second.”
He hesitated for a beat before giving her a nod and me a killing look. Then he headed back into the bar.
When Rory turned back to me, the pain in her eyes was gone, replaced with a coldness that filled me with dread.
“I would have done anything for you.” Her tone was as flat as her expression when she spoke, sending a chill across my skin. “When I found out you’d been shot, I rushed to the hospital. I stayed with you for days, waiting for you to wake up.” My whole body jerked back at that admission. I had no idea she’d been at the hospital with me. All the pain meds pumping through me had made that entire first week a blur. I couldn’t remember anything from that time. “I didn’t care that you’d pushed me away. I didn’t care that it had hurt worse than anything I’d ever experienced. I would’ve forgiven you for everything if you just woke up.”
“Rory, I didn’t—”
“And you did,” she whispered. “You woke up and looked right at me. The moment I saw your eyes was the first time I’d been able to breathe in three days. Then you kissed me.” My heart stopped as every instinct in me screamed that what was coming next was going to be worse than anything I could think up. “It was the best kiss of my life. Until you called me Laurie.”
Fucking shit. I moved closer and reached for her, but she shot back out of my reach.
“Now I’m done, Cord. I’m just… done. If caring about you and trying to keep you in my life means feeling this awful, then I don’t want it anymore.”
“Rory, I didn’t know,” I declared, desperation tearing at my insides. “I don’t remember a goddamn thing about that time in the hospital.”
She shook her head in defeat. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does,” I argued. “I can fix this, Rory. If you just give me a chance, I can fix everything.”
“No,” she asserted. “No more chances. I mean it, Cord. I’m done. From here on out, the only people I want in my life are the ones who’d choose me.”
Then she turned on her heels and rushed back into the bar.
Chapter Three
Rory
The second I hopped the fence surrounding my parents’ house, a familiar calm washed over me, and the stress I’d been dealing with since my confrontation with Cord in the parking lot of The Tap Room two nights ago faded away.
The ranch I’d grown up on had been my safe place all my life. The river that ran through my parents’ land was where I’d learned to swim and where my fat
her taught me to fish. This was where my mom had taught me to cook and knit and sew, where my dad taught me to hunt and ride horses.
Growing up the only child of Bill and Becky Hightower, I learned all things girly from my mom and all things boy from my dad. I could prance around in sky-high heels and rock a little black dress as well as shoot a gun and bait a hook.
My childhood had been full of love and fun and great memories I’d carry with me always. So whenever things became too much, when I was struggling on my own, I’d come here to be surrounded by everything I held so dear. It was the best balm for the wounds adulthood could leave on a soul.
When I turned twenty, I’d moved into an apartment a few blocks from the bar. It was a nice space, perfect for a single woman, but my dream had always been to start a family and have a house built for us on the land that held so many great memories.
When I turned thirty, I decided to stop waiting for that family, and I had a house built for myself with the thought that one day it wouldn’t just be me living there. I never imagined another decade would pass without that dream being fulfilled.
I heard the TV the moment I stepped inside. “Mama? Daddy?” I called as I kicked my shoes off by the front door, a habit from my childhood that still stuck with me. This ranch had been in my family even longer than the bar, and dirty boots were a hazard of working the land. But my mom kept a spotless house, and it drove her crazy whenever Dad tracked mud and dirt onto her clean floors. Once I was old enough to walk, I started following my dad around like a shadow, getting just as dirty, if not more so. Hence the rule that no shoes were allowed in the house.
“In the kitchen, honey.”
I stopped in the living room on the way to the kitchen, leaning over the back of my dad’s recliner to place a kiss on his cheek. “Hi, Daddy.”
He turned his attention from the TV and smiled up at me. “Hey, dumplin’,” he said with excitement, like he hadn’t seen me in months. “Well if this isn’t the best surprise I’ve had all day.”
Stay With Me (Hope Valley Book 5) Page 2
