by Maisey Yates
“When you stop lying about it, sure. You’re worried about what people will think. Because you’re worried that they’ll think you’re slumming it with a guy like me, right? Because I’m a no-account from nowhere and you’re Olivia Logan. But that’s the point, isn’t it?”
“My mother is going to get phone calls.” She scrubbed her hand over her forehead, as if that could remove the worry lines that had appeared there at the mention of her mother.
He shrugged. “So what? Let her get phone calls. There are worse things. You can explain it to her. You can tell her the truth, or you can tell her our lie. Either way. But you’re a grown-up, Olivia. And nobody gets to tell you what to do.”
“Right.” She sighed. “That’s not how life works when you care about people, Luke. You don’t just...do whatever you want and leave someone to worry.”
“Why not?” he asked. “You can’t control what someone else feels.”
She made a frustrated noise. “That’s not...you’re missing the point. And I don’t care if you miss the point. You and I just don’t see eye to eye.”
“We don’t need to see eye to eye. We just need to work together for a bit. Now, do you trust me, or not?”
Her brown eyes narrowed into suspicious slits. “Not as far as I could throw you.”
“Good. You shouldn’t trust me. I’m not a gentleman.” Right now he felt like a particularly hungry fox sniffing around the henhouse. “But, I do have the best idea running for how you can get Bennett’s attention.”
Olivia took a deep breath, shaking those stiff shoulders out, then looking up at him. “Okay.”
“Okay.” He took a step ahead of her and grabbed the handle on the door, pulling it open. “After you.”
She walked in ahead of him, and he was struck by just how small and delicate she was. The top of her head wouldn’t graze the underside of his chin if she walked under it. It made him want to pick her up, carry her over a threshold or some shit. And that was a weird impulse. Except, he supposed not really all that weird. Since what he really wanted was to throw her down on a big bed and spend the rest of the night exploring every inch of her.
Damn. Things were escalating. She had always been an itch to him. From the minute that girl had turned eighteen she’d been a problem.
Pretty. Remote. She’d been far too young. So far off-limits that he’d never allowed his fantasies to get this graphic.
But he’d touched her now. Untouchable Olivia Logan. He’d felt her skin beneath his fingertips and it was like those chains he’d put around himself had dissolved. Now all that resolute control was getting strained.
Which wasn’t a difficult thing to do considering he didn’t have a whole lot of practice with control. Except for with her. With her, he had certainly tried over the years.
This was making it damn difficult.
He walked in behind her, pressing his fingertips against her lower back, again in defiance of that need rocketing through him. He clenched his teeth, wondering silently if he was a masochist and didn’t know it.
“Why don’t you go get us a table?” he asked, scanning the room to see if Bennett, Wyatt and Grant were already in residence.
Bennett and Wyatt were. Grant was unsurprisingly absent.
He wished the guy would get his ass in gear and get out more, he really did. But Grant was like a difficult burrowing animal. Certain times of the year, particularly in the winter, it was tough to get him out to do anything. He seemed to do better later in the year. Some people might attribute that to seasons on sunshine and whatever. Luke figured it had to do with the fact that his wife had died in February. The lead-up to the month was always tough.
He wasn’t the most emotionally enlightened guy, that much was for sure, but he knew a little bit about loss.
About the way dates burned themselves into your brain. The way they seemed to exist in the back of your mind, eternally in your consciousness even when you weren’t trying to be aware of them.
“Hey.” Luke sidled up to the bar and signaled Laz as Olivia looked around the room, bewildered, clearly trying to decide which table to select. She was not good at subterfuge, that much was certain. It was kind of charming to watch her try. “I need a couple shots of whiskey.”
“Olivia doesn’t drink whiskey,” Laz said, picking up a shot glass.
“All right. What does she drink?”
“Diet Coke.”
“I’ll still take the extra shot of whiskey. But, add the Diet Coke to it. In case she wants to mix the two.”
“She won’t,” Laz said.
“She might before the evening is up,” Luke said, confident. “You can just put that on my tab.”
Olivia had finally made a decision, and was sitting at a table near the dartboard, looking lost. Luke acquired their drinks and went to join her. He slid the Diet Coke in front of her as he took his seat, then placed both shots of whiskey in front of him.
“Am I that trying to hang out with?” she asked, looking pointedly at the two glasses of alcohol. There was a hint of humor in her eyes and he found that more surprising than anything.
“The other shot is for you. In case you’re feeling crazy.”
“No. On a very rare day sometimes I feel regular soda crazy, but not so much hard liquor crazy.”
“Do you not drink at all?”
“No, I do. I mean, I have. I just don’t usually.”
“Any particular reason?” he asked.
“I like control,” she said simply.
“Well,” he said, lifting the shot glass to his lips and knocking it back. He grimaced. “That’s a shame. Because so do I.”
She looked at him and blinked slowly, her expression comically bland. “Good thing this isn’t a real date, then.”
“Good thing.” He stood up. “Because then you would be obligated to let me win at darts.”
She huffed out a laugh. “I would do no such thing.”
“Really?”
“Really,” she returned. “Any man who needs to beat a woman at darts to feel good about himself is no kind of man in my book. I would rather see how my date fared in the face of defeat.”
“So confident.”
“With good reason.”
“Okay,” he said, “show me how it’s done.”
* * *
OLIVIA FELT LIKE she’d had alcohol, and she absolutely had not. But she felt bubbly, fizzy, and her blood felt slightly overheated. It was a strange turnaround from a few moments before when she had been certain that she was going to pass out. It was just that when Luke had held her hand like that...
She’d held hands with two men in her life. Which was lame and silly, and probably completely ridiculous to get worked up over, but her level of experience was what it was.
She had very briefly dated one guy before Bennett, and it could hardly even be called dating. They had gone out a couple of times. They hadn’t even kissed.
But she had held his hand. And then she had held Bennett’s. Often, obviously, as they had dated for more than a year.
Holding hands with Luke... It had been unexpected. It had been one thing for him to help her out of the car, although, even that small bit of skin on skin had felt significant. But once he had woven his fingers through hers her entire body had gone tight, like fencing wire, and she had found it almost impossible to breathe.
And it wasn’t like when he shocked her, when he said things that made her blush. No, this was different. It had made her hot, then cold; it had set off a chain reaction that she could hardly figure out even now. It was just... Such intimate contact to make with a man she had known for so long, but never like that.
She had known Luke since she was a kid. Since he had been a kid, too, honestly. Even though he had always seemed like a grown man to her, because that was a child’s perspective on teenage boys. And
that had always put him in this other realm, as this other thing, separate to her. But she wasn’t a child anymore; she was a woman. And he was a man. And that was very... Alarming to fully realize. That there was no longer this invisible wall between them, something that kept them on separate sides of that divide. It made this game they were playing feel far too stark. Far too dangerous and real.
It felt like something different all of a sudden than what it had felt like when they had conceived it a bit earlier. Far different than that vague itch that usually rested beneath her skin when she dealt with Luke.
But now they were in the bar trading barbs, and getting ready to play darts, and that felt familiar somehow. And she was ready to jump into it with both feet. To do something to get herself back on balance, because she could not go back to that place she’d been in when his hand had touched hers. No, that, she did not want to contend with. Not at all.
So darts and good-natured banter it would be.
She was far better at darts than she was at banter, but you couldn’t have it all, she supposed.
“Are you really that good, Liv?” he asked, his voice huskier than normal, and strange, the roughness abrading places inside of her she would rather it didn’t.
She was back to feeling slightly dry of throat and out of her comfort zone.
“I’m better,” she said. “Haven’t you seen me play before?”
“Sure,” he said, “but I’ve never played you. For all I know Bennett let you win. Usually, you just play Bennett.”
“Bennett never let me win,” she said. “He didn’t have to.”
“I wonder what he’ll think of another man getting to play with you,” he said.
Okay, this Luke she could deal with. Cocky and arrogant, throwing out innuendo expecting that it would make her blush. And yes, it often did. But at least that was a comfortable pattern. “That’s what we’re here to find out,” she said.
She went over to the dartboard and collected the darts from where they were stuck into the cork, and then she carried them back to the line, steeling herself for her first shot.
“You’re really not a bar girl,” Luke said. “So how is it exactly that you are the most notorious dart player in Gold Valley?”
“I like to have a bit of mystery about me, Luke.”
“Fine. You have to get a bull’s-eye on this next shot, or you have to tell me how you learned to play darts.”
She laughed, then she straightened her posture, cocked her arm back and let the first dart fly, effortlessly sticking it in the center of the bull’s-eye.
“No shit,” he said, slightly annoyed, slightly in awe.
“I told you I was that good,” she said.
She liked darts. She had ever since she’d outgrown the little wooden dollhouse she’d played with when she was young. If there was one thing Olivia had done a lot of, it was playing by herself. Because Vanessa always wanted to push the boundaries, and Olivia never had. So she’d played with dolls. And then when she was a teenager, it had been darts.
She had spent hours fiddling with them down in her dad’s man cave in their house. Countless times when Vanessa had decided that she was too cool for Olivia and all of her rule following, when she had gone out with her other friends. When she had decided that drinking and sex were far more important than having a bond with her sister.
When Olivia had ended up grounded because she’d come home a few minutes too late, or her grades had slipped and it had caused her parents to tighten their restrictions on her, while Vanessa ran absolutely wild, uncaring if she was grounded or not.
Olivia had thrown any kind of silent frustration she had felt into sticking that sharp pin into the corkboard. Into watching that dart fly straight and true and land exactly where she wanted it. Control. Even in all those muddled, mixed-up feelings, she had found control. Had found a way to channel them. And God knew that had to be better. Better than simply exploding and getting messy emotion all over the people that you were supposed to love and care about. Better than going off and doing whatever you wanted.
Her parents had been hard on her. Harder, in the end, than they were on Vanessa. But hadn’t she turned out better for it?
Olivia hadn’t disregarded their parents’ warnings.
Olivia had played darts.
“Okay,” he said. “Now you have to tell me where you learned.”
She tossed her hair, shooting him a smile. “I don’t have to tell you anything, cowboy. Because I hit the bull’s-eye. And I’m going to keep hitting the bull’s-eye. All night long.”
A strange crackle of tension arced between them and she felt as though she was electrocuted by her next breath.
She looked away from him, and her eyes automatically went to Bennett’s table. He was looking at them. He really was. He was looking at her and Luke and he was not happy.
Their eyes caught for a moment and her breath hitched. It wasn’t the same kind of tension that she felt standing there with Luke, but it was a strange adrenaline rush. That she was accomplishing this. That she, Olivia Logan, who was quite possibly the polar opposite of a femme fatale, was somehow managing to draw attention. To cause friction. Make a man jealous.
She noticed then that Kaylee was looking at Bennett, and then that she looked up at Olivia. The look was filled with so much anger that it made Olivia’s breath catch in an entirely different way.
She flicked her attention back to Luke. “I’d say that we’re drawing the focus of the crowd,” she said softly.
“Good,” he said, not looking over at Bennett’s table at all. “That’s what you wanted.” He leaned back against their table, resting his forearms there, his hands dangling loosely over the sides. His green eyes were fixed on her. “You going to go again?”
“Of course,” she said. She whirled around and faced the dartboard and brought her arm back one more time, zeroing in on that bull’s-eye. Letting go of everything except for the target. She threw the dart and it landed satisfyingly right where she wanted it.
If only life were like darts.
“Good,” he said, “one more, and then it’s my turn.”
“Yes, I do know how it works, Luke. Thank you.”
“Bull’s-eye,” he said, “or you have to tell me how you learned to play.”
She snorted. “I’m not even worried.”
She turned away from him, facing the dartboard. And suddenly, she felt heat at her back. And then a large hand resting on her hip. He leaned over her shoulder, his lips near her ear. “I just want to see how it’s done. How exactly you’re standing. You know, I’m not anywhere near as good at this as you are. So, it would help if I could observe. If you could teach me.”
She froze completely, her whole body going rigid like a board. The place he was touching her, on her hip, felt like it was on fire. So hot, the press of his palm against her so heavy that she could hardly breathe. That was reasonable, right? That it was the weight of it on her hip... Affecting her ability to breathe?
Her heart was thundering erratically, and when she lifted her hand again, it was unsteady. Her pulse was fluttering hard at the base of her throat, and more disturbingly there was an answering pulse between her thighs.
“I’m not distracting you, am I?” His breath was warm on her neck, and that was a very strange sort of intimacy. His breath against her skin. She could honestly say there was only one man whose breath she had ever felt. And it was not Luke Hollister.
“I’m fine,” she said, not willing to admit that he was affecting her at all. She didn’t want to give him that satisfaction. But then, she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to throw a dart when her entire person was trembling like she was an overly excited rat terrier.
Olivia had never been accused of being overly excited in her life. She was hardly going to start behaving in such a way now.
She took a deep breath,
her stomach twisting sharply. Then she lifted her arm, raising the dart back. She tried to zero her focus in on that little red dot at the center. To block out everything around her. But there was his heat. His lips so very close to her ear, his hand resting all proprietary and possessive on her hip.
Possessive.
What an odd word, except it was the one that fit. That’s what it felt as though he had done. As though he had walked up and claimed possession of her in some way. And she should be okay with that. It should be what she wanted. The kind of display she was after.
But it felt terrifying and somehow outside the bounds of the game she knew they were playing. Somehow different than what they were trying to accomplish. She didn’t like it at all.
And if she showed him that he was affecting her, if she missed the shot, there was going to be a lot more of it and she knew it. He might be claiming to help her out, but somewhere underneath all of that, she had a feeling that it was more of Luke messing with her. Why, she didn’t know. She only knew that he seemed to take joy in it. And if nothing else she wanted to deprive him of a little bit of joy.
She let out a long, slow breath and ignored the fact that it was a bit shuddery. A bit shaky.
Then she drew the dart back and let it fly. She gave out a whoop of triumph when it hit the bull’s-eye, even though it was resting just on the edge of that red, it was definitely there.
She whirled around without thinking, and brought herself nearly nose to nose with Luke.
“I hit it,” she said, all the breath leaving her body as she stared into those green eyes. As the nerves in her face lit up like a power grid, every part of herself feeling electric and bright with him right there. She was conscious again of those whiskers that covered his face, just evidence of a long day spent working, a shave that had happened some twelve hours before.
And the shape of his lips.
The way the top lip dipped sharply in the middle, and the lower was fuller.
“I played darts in my father’s basement,” she said in a rush, taking a step backward from him.
If she didn’t tell him he was just going to keep pestering her. She didn’t know how much more of it she could take.
