by Maisey Yates
“That’s not what I want for you,” she said, her tone all sad and desperate.
“I can’t... I can’t.” She looked down, blinking rapidly. Great, he had made Liss cry. “Don’t cry for me, Liss. I don’t even cry for myself.”
“Then somebody should cry for you,” she said, looking back up at him, her eyes shining.
“No way. Cry over something that’s worth it. Cry over puppies that are left in the pound, and ice cream scoops that fall off ice cream cones. But don’t cry over me.”
“I can’t make any promises. Connor, the money is going to come soon now. Promise me that you’ll get the barn rebuilt. Or go to Hawaii.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “No, get the barn rebuilt.”
“Why, because Jessie wanted it?”
“No, because you wanted it.”
He had wanted it, though he could barely remember wanting much of anything. Could barely remember being the man he’d been three years ago, ready to start a new phase of his life, everything stretching ahead of him all bright and sunny and new. Instead of a wasteland of routine, of loneliness and grief that never seemed to ease no matter how much time passed, no matter how much he drank.
“It’s hard to remember back that far. Or at least it’s difficult to remember why I cared.”
“You cared because this ranch is in your blood. It still is, Connor. I know it is.”
“Right now the ranch is just under my skin. I spent hours trying to get damn cows back into their pens. Not coincidentally I want to eat a hamburger.”
Liss clapped her hands together. “Right. So let’s make the hamburger happen. The question is, do we want to go to Ace’s? Or the diner?”
“I sort of feel like throwing sharp things at a corkboard. So I vote for Ace’s.”
This was good. If they went out, there would be no more chance for talking. Because there would be too much laughing, and drinking and interacting with people who weren’t him. So Liss wouldn’t be able to hold him under the microscope to the same degree she just had. Their conversation had gone to way too much of a navel-gazing place.
Liss pulled a bright pink rubber band from around her wrist and quickly swept her hair up into a ponytail. “I should just go put some makeup on.”
“What do you need makeup for?”
“If the barn needs painting, you have to paint it, right?”
He stood and stared at Liss, standing there fresh-faced, and damn pretty in his opinion, and puzzled over why she would need painting. “Natural wood is good, too,” he said, somewhat lamely. He was bad at complimenting people. He was out of practice. Not that he’d been all that good at it even when he was in practice.
“Thank you,” she said, her cheeks coloring a little bit. “I think I will at least add a little bit of stain, though. I don’t know. This metaphor has gotten weird.”
“Okay, you go paint. I’m going to hop in the shower because I smell. I’ll only be about five minutes.”
* * *
THE BAR WAS CROWDED, as per usual on a Sunday night. It was very likely most of the town had gone from church straight to drinking. But likely it was needed to get them through the workweek that lay ahead.
But in spite of the impending doom of Monday, the atmosphere was exuberant. Country music was playing over the jukebox, almost every table filled, a small crowd gathered by the dartboards. Some people were still in coveralls, wearing the evidence of the day’s labor, while some were still in suits and ties, evidence of labor of a different sort.
All the bits and pieces of Copper Ridge collided here, and it was easy to see why.
The whole bar had a rustic feel to it, knotted wood on the floor and on the walls, exposed beams on the ceiling. There was half a red rowboat mounted to the ceiling, old fishing nets spilling out of it. It was everything a coastal hole-in-the-wall needed. And, in defiance of its hole-in-the-wall appearance, it had darn fine food.
“You know what you want?” Connor asked.
“Fish-and-chips. Tartar sauce and malt vinegar.”
He nodded once. “Snag a table, will you?”
“Sure. Just a Diet Coke to drink.”
He nodded again, walking over to the bar. She couldn’t help but watch him go. He had put on a plaid button-up shirt, pushed the sleeves past his elbows, revealing that tattoo that fascinated her so much, and the muscles that fascinated her equally.
Only Connor knew what the tattoo meant. He’d come back home one Saturday with the start of it and finished it over the next few weeks. But he’d never said anything about it. And she had never asked. Because the omission was so glaring, it had to be purposeful.
So she let him have it. But after today, she was starting to think she let him have a few too many omissions.
She’d been livid when she’d discovered the paperwork. But then he’d said all those things, and her heart squeezed tight, and all the anger had sort of leaked out and drained away.
And it was impossible to be mad at him now, as he was ordering her food and standing there with his broad back filling her vision, slim waist tapering down to slim hips and... Well, there was no use denying the fact that it was a damn fine ass.
Her cheeks got hot, and she looked down at her hands. She was not going to keep staring at him. Not like that.
She looked up again when he pulled his chair out and sat across from her. He set her Diet Coke down in front of her, his own hand wrapped around a dark brown beer bottle. “Food will be up in a minute.”
“Good,” she said, “I’m starving.”
She looked up, behind Connor, and saw a group of three women, all bleached blonde, all much more made up than she was, staring Connor down. Blonde number one leaned over and whispered something to blonde number two, who then turned her focus to Liss, her frosted-pink lip curling upward into a sneer.
Well, Liss had clearly been measured and found wanting.
Blonde number three tossed her hair over her shoulder and stuck her chest out, as if she was gearing up to go on a mission. And her mission seemed to pertain to Connor.
Oh, dammit. They were headed this way. All of them were headed this way. They made their way up to the table, one moving to Connor’s left, the other two standing on his right. “Hi.” The one Liss had arbitrarily dubbed number three spoke first. “My friends and I had a question.”
Connor looked up, a crease between his brows, his lips pulled down into a frown. “Yes?”
He looked so confused, it was almost cute.
“We were just wondering if your table mate here is your girlfriend or your sister?”
Liss sputtered.
Connor’s frown deepened. “You came all the way over here to ask me that?”
Number three, whom Liss clearly should’ve named number one, reached out and touched Connor’s forearm. Ran her manicured fingertips over the vines of his tattoo. Rage burned in Liss’s chest. She’d never done that. She had never touched his tattoo, and some random woman was trailing her fingertips over the ink on his skin.
“It seemed important,” she said, winking at him. Her eyelashes were fake. Liss was certain.
“She lives with me,” he said, turning his attention back to his beer.
“Doesn’t really answer my question,” Blondie said.
“I don’t see why I should,” he said, his tone uncompromising.
The woman rolled her eyes and gestured to her friends to move on. “Sorry you aren’t in the mood to play, honey,” she said, her parting shot as she wiggled back over to the other side of the bar.
Liss snorted. “Can you believe that?”
“What?”
“Obviously, they did not think I was pretty enough to be your girlfriend.”
“I don’t see why they cared.”
She arched a brow. “Do you
really not see?”
He shook his head. “Not really.”
Liss looked closely at his face to see if he was being serious. “Because she was hitting on you. Now, I don’t think my being your girlfriend would’ve deterred her, but I think she wanted to insult me first.”
He waved his hand. “I doubt she was hitting on me.”
“Yes, she was. Women must hit on you all the time.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged, the gesture more uncomfortable than casual. “I don’t really care.”
She should not be happy to hear that. She should be concerned. “You don’t care at all?”
“I’m not in the market for anything.”
“That woman was not in the market for a relationship, Connor. She just wanted...you know, naked stuff.”
“I’m not really in the market for that right now.”
She should not be happy about that, and she should not be interested in exploring the topic further. “Not at all?”
“No. And don’t try to change my mind. You said that you were going to support me being where I wanted to be. Eli has already pushed me about it. Jack won’t shut up about it.”
“I just... I figured...”
One of the new waitresses, someone Liss didn’t know, set their food down in front of them. Both in red baskets, piled high with french fries. “What did you figure?” Connor asked, eating a fry.
“Well, I figured at this point you would be in the market for that. If you had not...gone to market already, so to speak.”
“I don’t have enough energy to fill out my insurance paperwork. Why would you think I had the energy to screw somebody?” He took the top bun off his hamburger and started squirting ketchup on the patty.
Her stomach twisted, and she did her best not to examine it. “Because, typically, it’s something people make time for.” She should talk, since she’d been single for two years, and there had been no screwing.
Connor shrugged and took a bite of his hamburger. “I didn’t come here to get a psychological evaluation. I came here to take out my rage on the cows by eating their brethren. So we can drop the subject now.” He set the hamburger down and looked at his thumb, which had a spot of ketchup on it.
He raised his thumb to his lips and licked the red sauce from his skin. The sight of his tongue moving over bare flesh, even his own flesh, sent an arrow of longing straight down between Liss’s thighs.
“Okay, fair enough.” Yes, she was more than happy to abandon this line of conversation.
“Hey, guys.”
Liss looked up, and Connor looked behind him, to see Jack standing there. “Mind if I pull up a chair?”
“Please,” she said. Anything to break the weirdness of this moment. Why were things weird? Was it because she had moved in?
“Glad you’re here, Jack,” Connor said. “As soon as I finish eating, I’d love to kick your ass at darts.”
“You’re welcome to try.”
Jack joining the group added an air of familiarity, of normalcy. A much-needed injection of it, after the roiling jealousy she’d experienced watching Connor get hit on, and the flash of heat that had assaulted her only moments later.
She had to get a grip. Because, like Connor said, he was in no place to hook up. And even if he were, it wouldn’t be with her.
She wouldn’t want it to be her, anyway. Some things in life are too important to screw up with sex. Her friendship with Connor was one of them. She had decided that years ago, and other than one brief lapse, a few months where she had thought things might be changing between them, she had always thought that.
It was true then; it was true now.
Connor was the best friend she’d ever had, and she would do anything to protect that friendship. Anything.
CHAPTER SIX
CONNOR WAS GETTING a late start to the day. Fortunately, his team was good, and he knew that the animals would be taken care of. Still, he hated oversleeping. But he, Jack and Liss had stayed way too late at Ace’s last night, flinging darts at the board, laughing about stupid stuff and in general ignoring the reality of life.
Reality that had slapped him in the face pretty hard this morning when his alarm had gone off. It wasn’t just the fact that they had stayed at the bar late. Once they’d made it home, Connor had had a hell of a time sleeping. It had been as if something was sitting on his chest, making it impossible to breathe, impossible to do anything but lie there, sweat beading on his brow, panic rising in his throat.
Not for the first time, he wished he had accepted medication for his anxiety.
But when the doctor had offered it a couple of years back, Connor had just laughed it off and said he didn’t need a pill when a beer would do the job. But he was getting tired of the hangovers. He was tired of the anxiety, too. Hell, he was tired of all this shit. He would never have thought he’d be the kind of guy to become a head case over a little grief. Or a lot of grief.
It seemed as if he might be, though.
I don’t have enough energy to fill out my insurance paperwork. Why would you think I had the energy to screw somebody?
A flash of last night’s conversation popped into his mind. Had he really said that to Liss? Yeah, he had. He didn’t suppose it was normal to still be this tired. To still be this overwhelmed by what was left. But then, there was nothing normal about losing your entire future. All of your plans. Everything you were.
The finality was the worst part. It just happened. Unexpected, fast. Jessie had gone out to visit with her friends. A normal night, nothing unusual at all.
And she hadn’t come home.
Just like that, every plan for the future gone.
And he was sort of stubbornly sitting here in the present, afraid to plan for a future he’d never wanted in the first place. One where he was alone, single. But here he was, and now... He couldn’t readjust, not again.
He let out a heavy breath and walked to his dresser, jerking open the bottom drawer and digging for some underwear. And there were none. Because he didn’t keep up on his laundry, because he sucked. He sucked at taking care of himself, and he had sucked at taking care of his wife.
Of course it was too late to fix a marriage that had been put asunder by death. But it wasn’t too late to fix the situation with his underwear.
He walked downstairs—wearing nothing but yesterday’s underwear—and headed toward the laundry room. Hopefully there was something in the dryer. He was not the best at keeping up on laundry. Because laundry was terrible. But sometimes he ended up with one or two baskets full of clean clothes, just sitting in there, because he hated to put things away.
Liss had accused him of being a man-child on more than one occasion. He was starting to think she might be right.
It was a pretty sad-sack thing, now that he thought about it. A grown man not being able to see to his own household. But Eli had always done that when they were growing up, after their mother had left. And then Connor had married Jessie, and she had handled all of it. It wasn’t a great excuse. He had always expected for it to be taken care of, and it had been. While he had spent his days working himself blind on the ranch.
He’d intended to change. Because Jessie had asked him to. And because she deserved for him to.
Only then it had been too late.
So he’d gone right back to how he’d always been. Because there was no one to be different for. No one to be better for.
And because of that, he had no clean underwear.
He opened up the laundry room door and saw two baskets filled with clothes on the floor. He opened up the dryer door, and there was a full load in there, too. Okay, he was bound to come up successful in this pursuit.
He started to dig through the dryer and realized pretty quickly he wasn’t looking at his own clothes. He grabbe
d a basket and stuck it underneath the opening to the dryer, pulling the clothes that were inside out and into said basket.
His hand got caught around something lacy and flimsy, and he looked down and froze. Well, he had found clean underwear. They just weren’t his.
For a full ten seconds he sat there and looked at the mint-green panties that were in his hand. They were delicate, feminine. And very, very tiny. He had never imagined that Liss wore underwear like this beneath her rather sensible outfits. Well, in fairness, he had never thought about Liss’s underwear before.
But he was thinking about them now. He couldn’t stop himself from running his thumb over the soft, flat waistband. He swallowed hard, lifting them up so that he could see the shape.
It was a thong, which was very unexpected. Even more unexpected was the quick image that flashed through his mind of what Liss must look like wearing them. A shadow of copper curls beneath the flimsy lace, and the round, shapely ass that would be displayed to perfection.
He dropped the panties back into the basket and stood up, taking a step back as if there was a rattlesnake in there amid the clothes. Since when did he imagine Liss in her underwear? More important, since when had he noticed that her ass was shapely?
He never had, not consciously. It must be something his subconscious had absorbed. Some kind of male instinct he had thought long destroyed busily cataloging desirable feminine attributes even while his conscious mind was shutting it out.
He reached into the basket next to the one containing Liss’s clothes, stripped off his old underwear and quickly pulled on a new pair, before jerking the laundry room door open and walking out into the kitchen.
Unfortunately, just as he walked in, so did Liss.
Her eyes flew wide, and she took two steps backward, her cheeks turning bright pink. “Sorry.” She turned and walked out of the room as quickly as she had just walked in.
“Dammit,” he growled, stalking back to the staircase and heading back to his room as quickly as possible.
He put on a pair of tan Carhartt pants and a black T-shirt, before going back downstairs to do some damage control. Although, really, there should be no damage to control. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen him in various states of undress over the years. It just felt more inappropriate, because he had just been handling her panties.
