by Maisey Yates
“Really?” he asked, his eyebrows shooting upward. “By yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Not with friends?”
She frowned. “I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up, if you must know.”
“Why?”
“Because nobody likes a tattletale, Luke,” she said, not meaning to echo her sister’s words. Not meaning to reveal so much about herself. But echo them she did.
Her stomach sank, her hands getting a little bit clammy.
“Were you a tattletale, Olivia?” he asked, humor in his voice. Clearly, he didn’t understand that they were treading on very bad memories for her.
When everything she had wanted had been at odds with everything she had been. When she had tried so hard to be both good and accepted, and found that she could only be one.
“Yes,” she said, her teeth locked together. “I was. And so I played alone a lot, so I spent time at my parents’ house in the basement playing darts. And I threw them and threw them and threw them until I could hit a bull’s-eye every time. So you’re never going to beat me. You’re never going to throw me off my game, Luke Hollister. It’s going to take more than invading my personal space to throw me.”
“You were pretty thrown, darlin’. I just think you’re that good at darts.”
“I wasn’t,” she insisted, “not at all.”
“You sure about that?”
Ugh. That cocky smile of his. It made her want to... It made her want to something, and she didn’t know what. That was Luke in a nutshell for her. He made her feel restless and strange. Made her feel like her skin was too tight. And she had no idea what she was supposed to do with any of it.
Worse, she had no idea how to ignore it.
“Yes. I’m completely sure.”
“Want to place a wager?” he asked, his grin getting that wicked bent to it that never failed to make her stomach a bit tighter, never failed to send a little shot of adrenaline through her.
She couldn’t predict him, that was the problem. Because as they’d discussed earlier, he didn’t answer to anyone.
This was dangerous, and she knew it. He was playing games with her, and she felt as though they were the kinds of games she might not actually know the rules to. But she was also angry that he had affected her, and angry that he had stepped on vulnerable places inside of her.
That anger propelled her forward.
“Sure.” She tried to sound casual. Unconcerned, even.
“All right,” he said. “We are going to do a little experiment. And then you’re going to throw the dart, and try to hit the bull’s-eye.”
“Fine.”
He held up the shot of whiskey, extending it to her. “You want me to throw the dart after I take a shot?” She laughed. “First of all, are we in high school? Are you peer pressuring me to drink? And second of all, that’s not even a challenge.”
“Oh, kiddo.” He lifted his glass and pressed it to his lips, tilting it back, taking the whiskey down in one swallow.
She gaped at him, confused.
His mouth turned up at the sides in a smile she was sure was meant to be an answer, but only raised more questions inside of her.
“You’re a lightweight, I assume,” he continued, “since you claim you don’t drink often. It wouldn’t be very sporting of me to expect you to throw a dart after you take a whole big bad shot of whiskey. But I do think you should have a taste.”
And before she could protest, before she knew what was happening, Luke had wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her up against his body, where she was staring at those lips again. And then, he was closing the distance between them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LUKE HOLLISTER WAS kissing her.
He was only the second man to kiss her. The second man to ever put his mouth against hers. But at the moment, she couldn’t even compare the two experiences. She was frozen, and Luke was still, too, but he was... Him.
He tasted like Luke. Like sunshine and hard work. Like whiskey that lingered on his lips. And like a whole lot of trouble.
It was more than just taste, more than just the strange sensation of a mouth that was an unfamiliar shape pressed against hers. It transcended those physical things.
And it went somewhere deeper.
She was on fire. Melting. Her legs were weak, her stomach trembling. It was as if she had never been kissed before at all. That’s how different it was.
His hand was so big, and it was pressed against her lower back, like he owned her. His other hand came up to cup her face—rough, callused—skimming over her cheekbone. He didn’t take the kiss deeper. Didn’t part her lips.
It was over in less than a second.
A chaste kiss. A simple kiss.
That left nothing chaste or simple remaining in her entire body.
There was a pulse pounding insistently between her legs, a slick wetness that had built up in defiance of everything she knew about herself. Her heart was pounding, her breasts heavy, her nipples tightened into painful points.
It was over. Over long before she was able to move or think or react at all. Over long before she realized they were still standing in the middle of the Gold Valley saloon, rather than in some moment that existed outside of space and time.
Luke Hollister had just kissed her in front of everyone.
Bennett was there. She remembered that too late. She remembered everything too late. Including why they were doing this. Of course. He was making a show, as he had promised he would do. And he was definitely trying to get a rise out of her, which she expected, because he was Luke.
All of that made sense. Except none of it made sense. Not inside of her anyway.
“Throw the dart,” he said, his mouth so close to hers it would take nothing for her lips to touch his again. Nothing at all.
Then he withdrew, taking a step back and leaning against the table again, all cocky arrogance and that kind of masculine swagger she hated. She did. She hated it. And right now she was pretty sure she might hate him, too.
She turned away from him, drew her arm back and threw the dart. And it missed.
She hadn’t missed a bull’s-eye without meaning to in more than ten years.
Hot, angry tears pricked her eyes but she refused to let them fall. Because that was just stupid. This was a game. That was all. It was supposed to be a game where they made Bennett jealous. Where they made him think that he was in danger of losing her.
It was supposed to make Bennett feel wild and unpleasant things; it was not supposed to make her feel wild and unpleasant things.
Too late she remembered to look over at Bennett. And when she did, she had to force herself. He was facing away from them. For all she knew, he hadn’t even seen the kiss.
“He saw.”
She blinked, feeling numb. “What?”
Luke was looking at her, his expression grave. “Bennett saw the kiss,” he said.
And just like that, she felt about two feet tall. Because not only had he read her mind just now, it confirmed to her that Bennett was all he had been thinking about during the kiss. She hadn’t thought of Bennett until after. Much, much after. But Luke had been aware the entire time. And then, when she had been standing there feeling vulnerable and reduced, desperately trying to remember the purpose behind this entire interaction, he had read her. Unerringly.
Meanwhile, she couldn’t read him or Bennett or anything. She couldn’t even read herself.
“Good,” she said, as if it was all she cared about. As if there was nothing more conflicting inside of her than whether or not they had managed to affect Bennett.
To say nothing about how she had been affected.
Except, she had missed the target. And there was no pretending that hadn’t happened. She bit the inside of her cheek. “He’s never seen me m
iss a bull’s-eye,” she said. “At least, kissing him certainly never made me miss a bull’s-eye. That will give him something to think about.”
She could tell by the particular curve of his smile that Luke didn’t believe her. But he didn’t say that. This, quite possibly, was the first time he had ever been a gentleman to her in any way that counted.
“You sure you don’t want another drink?” he asked, taking a step backward, toward the bar.
She sniffed. “I don’t like whiskey.”
His smile widened. Why was his confidence so impenetrable? Why was he so... So much? “Really?”
“Really,” she confirmed.
“I’ll get you a refill on that Coke,” he said, turning away from her and heading back toward the bar, leaving her to ruminate by the dartboard.
She chanced another look at Bennett’s table. And he still wasn’t looking at her. But she caught Kaylee’s eye again. The other woman was clearly unamused with Olivia. Well, at the moment, that made two of them. Olivia felt like she had taken a step into a river, only to find that there was a drop-off sooner than she had anticipated. And that she had scrambled to find her footing, finding instead only algae. Now she was being swept downstream. As analogies went, it was both unpleasant and apt.
She wanted to run. She wanted to run right out the door of the saloon, down the main street, all the way back home. She wanted to abandon this mission, wave a little white flag of defeat, start over tomorrow morning and pretend that nothing had happened.
The only thing that kept her there was that sheer goal-oriented, stubborn nature of hers. She had started down this path, and she had to see it through.
Well, more accurately at the moment, she had started swimming in this river, and at this point she just needed to see where the current would carry her. She couldn’t undo what everyone had just seen. Couldn’t pretend she hadn’t just kissed Luke in front of God and everybody in the bar.
There was no taking that back. Sure, she could offer up handwritten notes to everyone in attendance explaining what she had tried to do, that she was very sorry and that it wouldn’t happen again. Sure, she could stand up on a chair and make an announcement, that she and Luke had been engaged in a little bit of improv, and hadn’t that been a great scene? But it definitely hadn’t been real.
But that would be silly, and she wasn’t going to do that.
Which meant she had no other choice but to allow the current to continue to sweep her along. And hope there wasn’t a waterfall waiting for her at the end.
She beat Luke soundly at darts, which was the only expected thing to come out of the evening. Thankfully, she managed to get herself solid again, and didn’t miss another shot for the rest of the night. Luke, on the other hand, was actually fairly terrible.
“Don’t you know how to shoot a gun?” she asked when they had finished tallying the score, which had been more of a formality than anything else, because she had so obviously beaten him.
“Yes. With a scope. That’s a little bit different.”
“Pretty pitiful, Hollister,” she said, feeling bolstered by the win and momentarily forgetting what had happened a half hour earlier.
“I know my talents. I’m okay with the fact that they don’t lie at the dartboard.”
“Really. Where do they lie exactly?”
“The back of a horse, out on the ranch and in the bedroom.
Heat flared through her body, bleeding out toward her cheeks, down her neck, lower. To all those places that had been affected by the kiss.
“If a man has to boast,” she said, knowing her tone sounded clipped and stiff, “then it sounds a little like just that. Boastfulness with nothing behind it.”
“I don’t boast,” he said. “I’m terrible at darts, and I never claimed any different. One thing you should know about me, Liv. What you see is what you get. I don’t lie.”
“Except now. What Bennett’s seeing isn’t real. Don’t go claiming perfect honesty when you’re in the middle of treachery.”
“I’m being honest where it counts,” he said. “You know what I want.”
Something about the way the heat shimmered in his green eyes when he said that made her stomach tighten. Made her question if she actually did know what he wanted. If this really was all about Bennett and some property her father owned, or if there might be something else. But that was ridiculous. A man like Luke wouldn’t want anything from a woman like her. A woman who barely knew how to kiss, much less anything else.
And if he did, it wouldn’t be about her specifically, but about the fact that he was a man, and they had needs, and all of that. Particularly men like him, who didn’t practice any kind of restraint.
At least, she had never witnessed him practicing restraint of any kind. He was about as different from Bennett as a man could be.
“I have to get up early,” she said. “We should probably go.”
But first, she really needed to use the restroom, because ultimately she had ended up having three Diet Cokes to keep her focus on something—anything—other than Luke.
“All right,” he said, grabbing his jacket off the back of the chair.
“Just a second,” she said.
She scurried across the bar, the sound of her footsteps swallowed up by the noise of the people around them and the music playing over the speakers.
She grimaced when she saw that there was a line outside the little single-use room. Strangely, she didn’t want to talk to anyone. Strange, since what she and Luke had been doing had definitely been designed to draw attention. But she didn’t want to actually contend with that attention in real time. She wanted to deal with it on her terms. When she was good and ready to deal with it. And that would be when she had been given a lot more time to process everything herself.
She looked up at the scarred, wooden wall and frowned when she saw a list of names carved into it.
Second to last was Luke Hollister. She put her fingertips against his name, a strange kind of energy zipping through her as she did.
“Found me,” he said.
She looked up, startled. Luke was standing right next to her, his hands shoved into his pockets, his black cowboy hat positioned firmly on his head.
She jerked her hand back as though the wall was on fire and in danger of scalding her skin. “What is it?”
They were all men’s names. She recognized a couple of them, but no one she knew very well. And she couldn’t figure out what they might have in common.
Luke lifted a shoulder. “Dumb shit.”
“What dumb... Stuff?” Now her curiosity was getting the best of her.
“They don’t do it much anymore. This,” he said, tapping his hand against his own name, “is from a long time ago.”
“What? Did you... Drink the most beers or something?”
“When a guy hooked up in the bathroom they used to carve his name on the wall.”
Her stomach plummeted down to her toes. “What?”
“Yeah, Laz put a stop to that. He didn’t much care for people carving into the side of his wall when he bought the place.”
“You... You...”
Just then, the bathroom door opened and a woman walked out, barely glancing at her and Luke as she breezed past.
“Looks like it’s vacant.” He gestured toward the bathroom.
“You’re not going to wait outside for me, are you?” That was all she needed. Luke timing her bathroom break. While she was in there it would also probably be unavoidable to imagine him in there with that woman...
“Yes,” he said. “Because I’m waiting for you.”
“You’re awful,” she said, rushing into the bathroom and shutting the door firmly, locking it behind her. She pressed her palms against her face and realized that it was hot.
She looked around the small room and tried to imagine
how on earth a person would... Do that. With everybody outside fully aware of what was going on.
She took care of her necessities, her heart thundering hard the entire time. Then, when she washed her hands, she went ahead and splashed some cool water on her face and her neck.
When she exited the bathroom, he was standing there, leaning against the wall, his head down, his black hat concealing his face. Then he looked up, revealing all that stunning masculine glory. Strong chin, square jaw, those lips that she had kissed. Lips that had kissed another woman and more in the bathroom she had just exited.
That thought was even more effective than the cold water she had literally just splashed on herself.
She walked past him without saying anything and he followed behind her.
“Hang on,” he said when they got to the bar. “I have to settle my tab.”
“You couldn’t have done that instead of loitering outside the bathroom door like a pervert?” she muttered.
“I waited for you,” he said. “You can wait for me.”
She realized, dimly, somewhere in the back of her mind, that this all served the purpose that they had come here for in the first place. She wasn’t here with him as a date. She wasn’t. They were here so that they looked like a burgeoning couple. Which made him waiting for her, and them walking across the bar together, look romantic or something.
Of course, had she actually been here on a date with him, finding his name carved into the wall like that would have been even more upsetting. No. It would have been upsetting. It wasn’t upsetting at all as it was. She didn’t care how much of a whore he was. That was his business—and the woman’s. Whatever woman was crazy enough to try and get involved with him with any actual sincerity.
He paid Laz, and then put his hand on her lower back as they headed toward the door. She gritted her teeth, trying her best to keep her expression neutral until that first blast of night air hit her in the face as they walked out onto the street.
Then, she pulled away from him. She shoved her hands in her pockets and walked down the sidewalk, looking for the first crosswalk before making her way across toward the truck. He was already there. Because he had just gone directly across the street.
