by Jeannie Watt
“Did you?”
“No.”
He didn’t believe her. It had been a small incident, years ago. One that he would have filed under “Failed Missions/Lost Bets” if it hadn’t been for his shock at being pegged as a loser by a woman who’d not only meant it, but was able to outline the reasoning behind her conclusion as well. In front of his friends, who never forgot anything. It had kind of changed his life…and maybe it had changed hers, too.
“It didn’t bother you at all?”
She moistened her lips. “It bothered me.”
“I apologize. That was a swaggering teenage boy speaking.”
She gave a short nod, not quite looking at him. “Accepted. And I apologize for…” Her voice trailed as she searched for words, so he helped her out.
“Ripping me a new one?”
“Yes.”
He pressed his shoulder against the cool glass of the window as he studied her. “Are you going to freeze me out on the drive?”
“I’ll try not to.”
“If you do, I’ll drop you at the nearest truck stop.” He was only half-kidding.
“Noted.” She spoke with a straight face, disappointing him in a way, but he was sore and tired and needed to get some sleep. A few hours anyway. Verbal antics could wait. Time to cut to the chase.
“Give me your phone.” Kristen handed it over more easily than he’d expected and he entered his number in it, then sent himself a text. His phone chimed and he handed her phone back and put the truck in gear. Her car was one of the few still left in the spectator part of the lot.
“I thought you sold your car?”
“This is my roommate’s car.”
He stopped close to the little Ford and Kristen opened the door. “Better give me your address.”
She rattled it off and he entered it in his map app. “Okay. Tomorrow. Five-thirty sharp. Pack light.”
*
Kristen unlocked Lynn’s car and got inside. Once the engine started, Austin pulled out of the lot, but he waited at the four-way stop until she came up behind him. She followed him as far as the Legacy, then continued on to south Reno.
She had her ride to Salt Lake City. Now all she had to do was to pack light and be ready to go at five-thirty, which was about six hours away. Lynn was already in bed when she let herself into the apartment, but her roomie padded out into the living room in bare feet not long after she closed the door. From inside Lynn’s room, her boyfriend snored softly.
“Did everything work out?”
Kristen tried to look upbeat as she said, “It did. I have a ride to Salt Lake and I can catch the bus there. He’ll pick me up at five-thirty tomorrow.”
Lynn brushed back her hair. “Early.”
“I know. But…” she gave a small shrug as if traveling with Austin was her preferred method of travel “…he’s on a schedule.”
“I looked up your bull riding friend while you were gone.” She pretended to fan her face. “He’s something. In fact, every guy on that tour is something. Kind of makes me want to come along.”
“I’d love to have you along.” The words were heartfelt. A buffer would be a godsend, but it wasn’t going to happen. It would be just her and Austin—and his ranch friends, of course—for the next day or two.
If he could take it, so could she.
She said good night to Lynn and headed to her room, where she pulled out her suitcase and started packing. She hadn’t brought a lot to Lynn’s place, so it didn’t take long to throw clothes she’d need for the trip into the bag. Her work wardrobe hung untouched in the narrow closet and Kristen stood, hands on hips, studying it. Investment pieces. High-end skirts and jackets. Crazy expensive shoes. Dress for the level of employment you want to attain, she’d been taught, so she had.
And gotten laid off.
She stroked the pale gray silk and wool blend blazer hanging in front of her. Her last major splurge/investment. Her mouth flattened for a moment, then she pulled it out of the closet along with the shell pink skirt and white silk top that went with it. Nothing saying she wasn’t going to interview in the near future. The firms in Reno might be ignoring her, but that didn’t mean there weren’t firms in Montana hiring.
She rolled the suit in a dry-cleaning bag and made room for it in her suitcase, along with her Christian Louboutins. With a defiant twist of her lips, she closed the suitcase. She was not going to feel guilty about investment pieces. Poor planning, yes. Shoes that would last forever, no.
Even if she now wished she’d put off buying them until she’d been just a wee bit more secure.
The last thing she dealt with was her Silver Bow ‘uniform’, the cost of which would be deducted from her first paycheck, leaving her with next to nothing, except for her tips. She wadded it up and stuffed it into a plastic bag. The bootie shoes that killed her feet went in on top. Waste of money, but what could she do? Regrets weren’t going to help her move forward.
She tiptoed out of the room and set down her suitcases next to the door and dumped the plastic bag with the costume into the trash. If she went to sleep right now, she’d get close to five hours.
If she went to sleep right now.
Fat chance, that.
*
Kristen knew she looked like hell when Austin parked in front of her apartment complex early the next morning. She’d tried to brighten her overly pale face with blush, ended up looking like a feverish clown, and scrubbed it off just before he arrived. She didn’t need to impress him, or be intimidated by him, so she was annoyed that her heart beat faster as she let herself out of the apartment.
It wasn’t the prospect of sparring with Austin for the next few of days that had her feeling edgy—it was the unknowns in her future. She had no job, a big confession to make, a branding with people she didn’t know.
Right.
Austin got out of the truck, came around the back and then held out his hand for her suitcase. Kristen scowled at him. He didn’t budge and she couldn’t place her suitcase into the bed of the truck unless he moved. Apparently, he couldn’t help doing the guy thing, so rather than make a point by walking around him, she relinquished the case and he set it in the bed of the truck.
She got into the cab, taking care when she stepped on the tubular steel running board, and found her safety belt. The truck smelled of leather and oil, rosin and guy. A heady mixture that stirred something in her that she didn’t want stirred. Not one little bit. She settled her hands in her lap and stared straight ahead as he put the truck in gear, wondering if this felt as unreal to him as it did to her. And if every muscle in his body was as taut as hers.
Every muscle of his very hard body.
His shirt sleeves were rolled up and the sinews in his bare arms stood out. Judging by what she could see, there wasn’t an ounce of fat on the guy. Just solid muscle. There was probably a six-pack under his T-shirt.
Big deal.
Except that he smelled good.
You are in control.
Yeah. Right. Totally in control.
Okay—you can fake being in control.
Exactly.
Austin navigated through town like he lived there, thanks to the phone app that talked him onto the freeway. As they merged with the early morning traffic, heading to I80, which would eventually take them to Salt Lake City, he rolled his shoulders as if taking the kinks out.
“Sore?” She surprised herself by speaking. Surprised him, too, if the look he gave her was anything to judge by.
“I’m pretty much always sore in one way or another.”
“I see.” Because talking to him made her feel self-conscious, she sounded stiff. Formal. Cold. Exactly the way she didn’t want to sound, because she didn’t want him to call her on her attitude again.
“You get used to it.” He glanced over at her. “Did you much sleep last night?”
She assumed he was commenting on her pale face and tired eyes, but she decided to take the comment at face value. So much easier th
at way. “Not much. I packed. Then I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling.” She glanced over at him. “How was your evening?”
“I slept.” His inflection was dry, but there was no trace of irony in his expression.
“How long to your friend’s ranch?”
“Four hours give or take.”
She directed her gaze forward, doing her best to ignore him, but that was impossible. It was as if the cab of the truck was growing smaller by the second. She stared out the window, watched the river go by, worried her hands together in her lap, then stopped when she realized what she was doing.
“Is this how the entire trip is going down?” Austin finally asked.
She felt herself start to flush. “I’m not good at small talk.” Which should have been obvious to him by now.
“Maybe you should practice.” She shot him a startled look and was rewarded with a bland smile. “What could it hurt?”
“If you have to ask, then you don’t have a shy bone in your body.”
“Don’t you mean a socially anxious bone?”
Her mouth tightened briefly. “Yes. That’s exactly what I mean.”
He gave her a wicked smile. “Guilty.” He brought his gaze back to the road, making Kristen feel relatively safe until he said. “Name a topic.”
“What?”
“Name. A. Topic.”
Kristen gave Austin a pained look. “I apologized. Do you have to torture me, too?”
He gave her another look, but this one wasn’t so much wicked as hard. “Yeah. I think I do.”
Chapter Five
Kristen kept her mouth stubbornly closed as they rounded a series of corners. She probably thought he was making a point about who was in the figurative driver’s seat as well as the literal one with his insistence on talking, but he wasn’t. There were things he wanted to know. Questions he wanted answered, and he wasn’t going to take social anxiety as an excuse.
“Here’s a topic,” he said, once the road straightened out again. “Did you really think you could get away with pretending not know me at the saloon?” More than that, pretending to be someone else.
Kristen sat straighter in her seat, but didn’t attempt to dodge the question, possibly because she sensed what a lost cause that would be. “I’d hoped.”
“Did you think I was that stupid?”
“I was banking on drunk, actually. And pretending not to know you seemed so outrageous, I thought I might get away with it.”
“You didn’t get away with it.”
“You weren’t drunk.” She smoothed the hem of the flowery shirt she wore.
“The situation bothered me.”
“Enough that you came back to the casino. I noticed.”
“I don’t like being lied to.”
“I don’t like being ratted out.” Kristen started pleating the fabric of her shirt between her fingers again, then stopped. “Would you have told my sister?”
“Maybe. What you did was kind of crazy.” He glanced her way. “But I wouldn’t have told her out of revenge.” It still ticked him off that she thought he operated that way.
“Did you ever think of revenge?” she asked.
“No.” His fingers tightened on the wheel as he thought back on his reaction to their public face-off. “But I did kind of hate you for a while. You shocked the hell out of me. I thought I was a prize until then.” True story. He’d been good at bronc riding—not as good as his brother, but he was close. And the girls seemed to find him attractive. All but one.
“Guys who are prizes go to class.”
He frowned at her. For an alleged shy girl, she was holding her own. He’d expected her to try to clam up. “Do you have a guy in your life?”
Her chin lifted ever so slightly. “I do not.”
“Have you ever?” He was curious as to whether anyone had managed to battle through her defenses. If there were guys out there, unlike him, who recognized the difference between what she called social anxiety and arrogance. He still wasn’t totally clear on what the difference was because the result seemed to be the same. People got put off.
“None of your business.”
And there’s a limit. “Fair enough.”
There was a note of challenge in her voice as she asked, “How about you? Women?”
“I’m not shy.”
“Well, bully for you.” The telltale color was once again staining her cheeks, giving her a vulnerable look that belied the cool note in her voice. This was the high school Kristen he’d caught intriguing glimpses of. A touch vulnerable. A touch uncertain. After she’d taken him down, he’d decided he’d been imagining things. Maybe not.
“Actually, there is no woman in the picture.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“Because you did.” She turned her attention to the side window as they emerged from the canyon, watching the scenery with such intense focus that she had to be developing a crick in her neck. She was shutting down, drawing into herself.
Not going to happen.
He waited until they passed the town of Fernley before asking, “Why did you get fired from the casino?”
Kristen let out a soft snort. “You have no mercy, do you?”
“Not much.”
She turned her gaze toward him and calmly replied, “I got fired from the casino because I shirked my duty with your table because I was afraid to come back and because I didn’t smile.”
He shot her a frowning look. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope. I was polite, but apparently too distant with the customers.” Kristen pushed her hair back from her face with both hands. “Ice princess, remember?” Austin lifted his eyebrows, surprised at the reference, but before he could speak, she said, “It’s hard to break a lifelong habit.”
“You’re trying?”
She nodded. “In college, I discovered that people avoided me because they thought I was judging them. I’m trying to be friendlier.”
“How’s that working out for you?” Because in his view, she had a ways to go, although being aware of the problem was a big step forward.
“I got fired from the casino. Remember?” She gave him a look. “Maybe we can talk about you for a while.”
“I’m an open book.” He slowed as he spotted a highway patrol vehicle parked in the median, then sped up once he was around the corner. “Nothing about me that you can’t find on a fan site or Wikipedia.”
“Does that mean we’re done with small talk? I can just silently research you on my phone?”
“We’re talking to ease the tension.” Halfway true. Kristen was still tense, but in a different way than before.
“What tension?”
He met her wide green eyes. “Tell me you didn’t just say that.”
“I said it.”
He reached out and lightly touched her hand, which was resting on the console. She jerked it into her lap. “That tension. It’s not healthy to be that wound up all the time.”
Her eyes flashed. “I appreciate the ride, but enough, okay?”
She was serious and he felt a twinge of regret for pushing to get a reaction from her. “All right.”
“You make me jumpy, Austin.”
It always surprised him when she was candid. “Because you’re shy?”
“Because you’re you.”
He didn’t know how to take that and the closed-off expression on her face wasn’t giving him any clues. “I apologize for touching you.”
She let out a breath and once again stopped her fingers from working the edge of her flowy shirt. “Don’t.”
“Why not?” he asked on a note of surprise.
Her jaw set before she said, “Because I don’t hate it. I just…don’t know how to handle it.”
Austin gave his head a small, bemused shake. “I’ll watch myself.”
“Thank you.” With that she turned to stare at the passing scenery, shutting him out once and for all.
&
nbsp; Austin let her be.
*
Kristen had fully intended to control the situation—and her mouth—as they drove to Salt Lake City. Unfortunately, Austin had a way of short-circuiting her strategies. How was it that she’d said things to him that she’d never said to anyone else? Not even her sister?
She’d spoken the truth about not hating it when he touched her—and not knowing how to handle it. And these were just small innocent touches. What would it be like if he really touched her?
She shifted her gaze sideways, watched his profile as he drove. He was a million miles away. Thinking about bulls? Or the road? Or maybe her?
She didn’t know. Wouldn’t know. She pulled out her phone, went to the news app and started to read. It wasn’t until they pulled into the Callahan Ranch that service faltered. She set her phone aside and Austin finally spoke. “If at all possible, be nice to my friends.”
Her eyes widened, but he simply stared at her, showing no sign of remorse for his bald statement. Which made her wonder just how much of a bitch he thought she was.
“What I’m saying is don’t take out your feelings about me on them.”
“No worries,” she replied coolly as she reached for her door handle.
Half a dozen trucks were parked near the barn and a group of five or six people were gathered near the chutes.
“Austin!” A small woman with a thick blonde braid, dressed in jeans, a flannel shirt and a canvas vest, started toward him, clipboard in hand.
“Ellie.” Austin caught her in a tight embrace, lifting her feet off the ground.
Kristen folded her arms over her middle, staying rooted next to the front bumper of the truck and feeling awkward. Nothing new there.
“Unhand my bride,” a tall dark-haired man demanded as he broke away from the group. He also pulled Austin into a hug, only he lifted Austin off his feet.
“Easy,” Austin said on a choked laugh. “Hard Landing gave me a hard landing last night.”
“But you won! Congratulations.” Ellie gave him another hug before looking over at Kristen. “And you brought a friend.”
“I did. Kristen and I went to high school together. We bumped into each other in Reno, and I’m giving her a ride home.”
