Bill shrugged. “I’m busy,” he said again. “I have no interest in runnin’ the bar. The only interest is in keepin’ the bar going, with me as one of the owners so that it remains in the family. Someone like you—someone who is excited and actually willin’ to work to make this happen—that’s what the bar needed more than anythin’.”
His unexpected appraisal filled her with courage. Bill knew that this bar, this business, meant everything to her. That failure was simply not an option.
He needed her motivation as much as she needed his money to make it happen. Was it a fair trade? Only time would tell.
“Here,” he said brusquely, and handed her a checkbook with a generic vinyl blue cover. “You can use this to get what you need. But if you’re gonna spend a big amount, run it by me first.”
“What’s a big amount?” she countered.
“Somethin’ with more than a couple zeros,” he said, as if he didn’t care that much after all. “I don’t know, get off my tail.”
That man was hardly a charmer. It took considerable effort to not roll her eyes like a teenager. Speaking of…
Allie looked at the floor in the corner of the bar, where kids had stamped out cigarettes on the cement. Someone had written on the wall with a black Sharpie: RIP FRED, in HEAVEN!!!!!
“So is this bar still being used as a ‘clubhouse?’” she asked, staring at the graffiti.
“Prob’ly.” He shrugged, like it didn’t matter. “Ain’t no bar in town to meet at.”
Bill pulled the corner of the dusty white sheet off the edge of the bar top. The mahogany was dull after a year of neglect. Allie wanted to rush right toward it to polish it and make it shine.
It would be awesome if she could wave a magic wand and make the entire bar just poof! transform into the one in her vision. But that transformation wasn’t going to happen immediately, no matter how hard she wished. It would take time and effort. That’s why she was there, anyway. It made her worth the investment Bill was making in the business.
Bill hopped up on to the bar with the ease of man used to mounting horses, and sat, kicking his legs out in front of him, and let his boots thud against the side of the bar when they dropped.
“Have a seat, Allie,” he said, patting the space next to him.
She eyed him warily. “Why are you being nice to me, all of a sudden?”
She left the graffiti behind and hopped up on to the bar next to Bill.
“Nice jump, there.”
“Who are you, and where did that surly man go who was harassing me two minutes ago?”
He touched his cowboy hat, pulling the black rim down over his forehead just a bit more. “I don’t feel like bein’ ‘surly’ at the moment.”
“Okay…” Allie raised her eyebrows. Guess she should just enjoy it while it lasted.
“I haven’t been in here since Uncle Freddy retired,” Bill said. “I didn’t go look at it after he died either. Too many memories.”
“What’s it like being here now?” Allie asked.
“Nothin’ like I remember it.” He turned to her, his fingertips touching hers, splayed on the bar. “You gotta get everythin’ back the way it was, Allie. Hell, if I could go back two years…” A cloud came over his face.
The muscles in his thigh hardened against her own thigh, tensing. She was sitting too close to him, how did that happen? He was like a magnet, drawing her toward him.
“What would you do,” she asked, urging him to finish his thought, “if you could go back in time?”
“Ne’er mind that,” Bill said abruptly, as if he hadn’t brought it up himself. “You can’t go back in time. You can only move forward.”
As if sensing that the conversation had turned too deep, too fast, Bill leapt from the bar, his black cowboy boots hitting the cement floor. Allie froze, perched on the top of the bar.
Bill moved toward her and put his hands on her waist possessively, as if he knew she wanted him to.
“Bill,” she whispered, the word barely coming out.
“I’m helpin’ you down,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean to scare ya.”
“You don’t scare me,” she said, almost as if she meant it. “And I don’t need help.”
Getting up onto the bar had been easier than getting down would be, though. Why not accept a helping hand, especially when the helping hand was attached to a gorgeous cowboy?
“Well, as my partner in this business venture,” Bill said, “you won’t be much use to me if you break an ankle your first day on the job.”
Slowly, he lifted her and she slid down against him, feeling every inch of his muscular body pressed against hers until her feet touched the ground.
Whoa.
“Thank you,” she said. Maybe he wouldn’t notice her flushed cheeks.
The testosterone came off him in waves, intoxicating her. He cocked his head, his black hat shading his gray eyes as he stared into hers.
The air was thick with sexual tension.
“Come on,” he said, his voice low. He put his large, warm hand on her lower back, guiding her back toward him with gentle but firm pressure. “Let’s go upstairs.”
Upstairs… with this cowboy—not even necessarily the Bill she’d gotten to know from his emails, but this Bill…one moment cold, the next hot, broken and vulnerable… this man whose very touch made her tremble. An image of Bill tumbling with her on a bed flashed through her mind, and she gasped. Yes.
Wait—no.
“We’ve just…” Allie breathed, gathering her thoughts from wherever her hormones had discarded them. “I know it feels like we know each other, but really we’ve only just met.”
No matter how sexy he is. Besides, he was Big Bad Bill. The audacity of him, to assume she wanted to sleep with him (even though she did—it was something about his take-charge way, perhaps—but he couldn’t have known that).
A look of confusion crossed his face for a split-second, and then he smirked. “Maybe it’s ’cause it only ‘feels like we know each other’,” he said, “but I got a pretty good idea of what you thought I was suggestin’.”
“But you weren’t,” she guessed.
He grinned. “I’ll stay down here, then, while you go check out your new apartment upstairs on your own.”
Oh. Right.
“Yes,” she said, “that’s for the best.”
She sighed. He must think she was an oversexed moron. Obviously he’d only intended to show her around upstairs. Something about that man made the devil whisper in her ear…deliciously sinful things.
“I suppose you could…wait at the bottom of the stairs for me,” she said. “In case I have any questions, I mean.”
“Of course.” He touched his hat, but in a way that seemed like he was appeasing her social awkwardness, like a mockery of chivalry.
Seemed he felt like being mean again. The break hadn’t lasted long.
Allie walked over to the door in the back of the bar and opened it. A long skinny staircase went up into the darkness.
“So this leads to the apartment above the bar?” she asked.
Bill nodded. “It’s all yours. I haven’t been up there since I had to gather my uncle’s things an’ move ’em out.”
She reached her hand into the darkness, her fingers brushing blindly against the wall until the hard plastic of the light switch nudged her hand.
She turned around and looked at Bill. “Can’t you turn on the power or something?”
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said, raising one thick eyebrow. “You’re the one who showed up two weeks early.”
“Is that a no?” Allie crossed her arms in front of her chest. Going up into that dark apartment with no lights was…scary.
“It’s a ‘gimme some time and I’ll have it sorted,’” he shot back without missing a beat. “But you’ll be fine goin’ up there on your own, you said so yourself.” He chuckled to himself. “Go on, now.”
Allie growled under her breath, and opened the
flashlight app on her phone. It was horrible for her battery, but it worked like a charm. The stairs creaked as she climbed them, putting each foot lightly on the wood before letting her full weight rest, in case the stairs broke.
They shouldn’t break, of course. Why would they? But the building had such a rundown feel, stepping lightly seemed like a valid choice.
Bill wasn’t following her. She almost wished he would, after all. As large and growly as he was, the shadows here made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.
A horrifying thought popped into her mind. Had his uncle died here, in his bed? Was Uncle Freddy’s ghost still…hanging around?
Stop that.
The dark brought on ridiculous thoughts sometimes. She shined her flashlight-app around, and the sound of tiny claws on linoleum scattered. Something scurried away along the wall. She covered her mouth, muffling the unexpected squeal of disgust.
Mice. Or rats! (No, no, imagine it’s just a cute little mouse from a kid’s animated movie). But imagining those mice (rats?) singing and dancing on their hind legs didn’t work, or make her feel any less creeped-out.
The stairs opened up to a small main room with a couch. Cotton stuffing from the couch littered the carpet, and the middle cushion had a spring sticking out, glinting off the light from her cell phone. Somewhere underneath the beer cans, cigarette butts, and old newspapers, was a coffee table… at least she assumed there was a coffee table. Surely it wasn’t just a pile of junk?
While the couch faced the wall, as if there would have been a TV there…there was no TV. Someone must’ve taken it. Someone from town?
Nah—in a town this small, it wouldn’t make sense for a local to steal from another local. The chance of getting caught was way too high. Maybe it was an outsider, an out-of-towner.
Not an out-of-towner like herself, of course. Allie would be different. She hadn’t come all the way to Bear Creek Saddle to cause trouble, or even to change the way folks did things.
(Except for their— our local bar). Change was coming for that, for sure.
Something scratched in the walls and she shuddered. Damn that man, for allowing his own building to go to hell like this.
The one bedroom consisted of a mattress on the floor, and nothing else. Heaven forbid someone shined a black light on that thing. Where had all the furniture gone? It appeared people had just taken things out of the apartment—her apartment!—as they saw fit.
“Not cool,” she muttered.
Bill had promised it would be furnished—and considering she couldn’t exactly go purchase a whole bunch of furniture (or even a microwave), she’d been pretty much counting on that.
Had homeless people been squatting here, or maybe transients traveling through, on their way to Canada, maybe? Was it just the good old boys in town, commandeering the place as their own? Perhaps the teenagers brought their girlfriends up to the mattress to have some privacy from their folks.
Light from a window in the bathroom gave her a good look at the yellowing tile, and the toilet which appeared to have been used, repeatedly it seemed, without being flushed. That wasn’t a surprise since the water had been shut off to the building. She pulled her shirt up to cover her nose and mouth.
Note to self: buy gloves, and bleach. And a Hazmat suit.
The emerald-green blouse she’d worn to impress stuck to her sweaty skin. Heels had been a bad choice to wear, especially when her “business meeting” took place ass-up over a horse.
Had she really thought she could change her stripes so fast? As much as she’d dreamed about owning her own bar, her own place, and running a business…it meant nothing when faced with cold, hard reality. And reality was a bitch.
Allie had no idea what she was doing, and it wouldn’t be long before everyone else knew it too. She’d given up her old life in Miami, driven across the country, and drained her savings… for this.
“I’m screwed.”
Chapter Five
‡
ALLIE SWALLOWED HARD, a trick she’d learned to keep from letting how upset she was show on her face. It didn’t always work. At least Bill wasn’t there to witness how freaked out she was by the apartment she now owned.
“‘Good condition, needs TLC,’ my ass,” she muttered.
She’d been counting on the apartment to be in at least livable condition. She didn’t need anything fancy. In fact, when Bill had told her that she could stay in the apartment above the bar once she fixed it up, she’d been under the impression that if she were willing to live in a less-than-ideal place, that she’d be fine to stay there.
You know, now.
Ugh. He’d even told her she’d probably want to find someplace better to stay for the first couple of weeks, until she’d made her apartment suited to her liking.
How could she not have listened to him, or at least not been so fixated that she couldn’t hear what he meant?
“I have nowhere to sleep tonight,” she whispered, her voice bringing some normalcy to the eerie silence in the room.
Allie traced her steps back out of the bathroom, through the living room and took a quick look into the kitchen: a refrigerator, a tiny stove, and an empty spot where a microwave had once been. She didn’t dare open the refrigerator—there was no telling what she’d find (or smell).
Hey, at least there’s still a fridge. Small blessings, right?
Behind her, the floor creaked…a painful sound, as if old bones grinded against each other.
Allie froze, all of her senses on high alert.
There was something in the room… a presence. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end; a chill ran down her spine.
“…Uncle Freddy?” she whispered.
“It’s me,” Bill’s low voice said from behind her.
She whirled around, staring at his silhouette in the living room. “I didn’t really think you were your uncle,” Allie said quickly, embarrassed. “I just got confused in the dark.”
Confused enough to think he was a ghost, apparently.
Bill shrugged. “You’ve been up here for a while.”
Allie looked around the place in desperation. Tears filled her eyes, and she tilted her head back so they wouldn’t fall down her cheeks. Not in front of Bill—it was too unprofessional to let herself be so vulnerable in front of him.
Her whole day with Bill she’d been the epitome of unprofessional.
But she couldn’t stay here. Even with electricity and water turned on she wouldn’t be able to stay at her apartment until it was at least up to code—she could tell even with her untrained eye that it was uninhabitable.
“There’s quite a bit of work to do up here,” she said. Understatement of the year.
Thank goodness it was dark; hopefully he wouldn’t see the tear that rolled down her cheek—the one that got away from her. She felt helpless and stupid enough as it was.
The flashlight app on her cell phone crashed, and the phone went dark.
She cursed under her breath. The battery had died. Without any light, and the main window boarded over, the room was thrown into pitch black.
“I want to go back downstairs,” she said. Something scurried past her. “I want to go downstairs now.”
“All right,” Bill said softly. It was the most gentle thing he’d said yet, the tone of it.
Bill reached out for her in the darkness and took her hand in his. The unexpected contact made her breath catch. His hand was large, his fingers warm.
“I’m right here,” Bill said.
His hand on hers was a welcome anchor in the sea of darkness. The stairs, she knew, were only a few feet in front of her, and went down quite steeply. Would she fall?
Bill gave her hand a slight tug. “Come on,” he said. “I’ve got you.”
Allie stumbled forward, right against Bill’s broad, muscular chest.
“I’m sorry!” she gasped. “I’m all over the place today.”
“Follow right behind me,” Bill said. “If you fall, y
ou’ll fall on me.”
He almost made it sound like a good thing.
She shuffled closely behind him, her hand gripping his.
“First step,” Bill warned.
They went down the stairs at a snail’s pace. At the end at the landing, Bill pushed open the door into the bar.
Allie was so grateful to be out of that apartment, she could’ve kissed the dirty cement floor at her feet. Instead, she turned around and looked at him, unable to hide her anger.
“Y-you’ve misled me,” she said, her voice shaking. “I can’t believe I actually paid money for this dump. A lot of money. All my money.”
The long hours in the car, the humiliation of falling on her ass and having Bill toss her over his saddle—combined with sheer disillusionment—came to a head. Tears that had been building up in her all day finally fell, and she leaned up against the dusty mahogany bar in exhaustion.
“Whoa, there.” Bill took a step back, crossing his arms as if to barricade himself from her. “I didn’t ‘mislead’ anyone,” he said firmly. “I sent you pictures of everythin’ in detail. Complete descriptions. You signed a contract that said AS-IS.”
“I never saw pictures of that! It looks like it was taken over by a group of heroin addicts or something!” she said, her voice rising. “I thought I could stay here while I was fixing everything up. Clearly that is not the case.”
The muscle in his jaw hardened.
“You should have warned me,” she added.
Each verbal jab at Bill made his jaw clench even tighter. Well, he could just be as pissed off at her as he wanted to be. It was a free country. But he’d better not dish out more than he could take, because right now, Allie was about two steps away from saying screw it—forget the whole thing.
“I can get the water and electricity back on,” Bill said. “I can have the guys come in and take out the furniture that’s no good. We’ll call the plumber if we need to. It won’t be pretty, but you could live here if you want to.”
“Are you kidding me?” This time she didn’t bother to moderate her volume. “I can’t live here. And don’t look at me like that—”
Cowboy 12 Pack Page 68
