by Tawny Weber
“Bottom line, Cowboy, is if you want something, you make it happen. If it matters, you make it happen right.”
Laramie blew out a breath, wishing he could expel the nagging doubts as easily. Or, better yet, he’d like to ditch the insane thoughts about making a long-distance...thing—he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the word relationship—work. Yeah, he knew it was crazy to think that there was a way to make a long-distance thing work between him and Sammi Jo.
But the alternative was not seeing her again.
Ending the call with their usual volley of insults, Laramie walked into the bar, still pondering the idea of life without Sammi Jo. No matter how he maneuvered the images in his head, he didn’t like the way it looked.
As he wended his way through the bodies, he turned down two offers to dance, one for something a little more intimate, ignored the pats on his ass and offered a deadly stare to a cowboy who looked as if he was going to start a fight.
Leave it to Blythe Horton to pick a place like this to throw her best friend a bachelorette party. Three floors of space dedicated to getting drunk and hooking up, the floors were cement, the booths were Naugahyde and each floor boasted a horseshoe-shaped bar. The noise level on the first floor was loud but not quite loud enough to drown out the painfully twanging chords of the band upstairs. Upstairs or down, the name of the game was grab-ass, cowboy style. Boots and hats were the only consistent part of the dress code, with women in cutoff shorts and others in dresses, a few sporting overalls and others in slacks.
Laramie ran his hand over his bare head, feeling a little exposed without his own hat. His gaze scanned the crowd until he found it, then commandeered a booth with a view of the mechanical bull just in time to watch Sammi Jo step up to the motorized beast.
He smiled at the look of nervous determination on her face as she carefully removed his hat and hung it from the peg next to the bull. She smoothed a hand over her wavy hair, then wiped both hands on her jeans, lifted her chin and mounted the beast.
She took a deep breath. For a second he thought she was going to be sick, then she took another, deeper breath. Then, one hand in the air, she nodded.
Laramie’s grin widened.
Damned if she wasn’t something. Desire and pride mixed it up in his belly as she handled the bull as if she’d done it a dozen times before. He couldn’t wait to tease her about hitting the rodeo circuit.
Her body swayed gracefully, swinging to the left and then to the right. Her hair flew around her head in a deep russet halo. But his eyes were fixed on her breasts as they bounced in time with the motion of the bull.
She looked like that when she straddled him. The same focused concentration on her face, the same deliciously tempting moves of her body.
As she finished her ride to a cacophony of cheers and catcalls, Laramie readily acknowledged that he wanted her like he’d never wanted anyone else. But watching her now he had to admit that want was only the tip of an iceberg called need. And the need, he was pretty sure, was grounded in love.
Damn it all to hell.
“Well, well, lookie who graced our little town.”
His body tensing even more, his senses on full alert, Laramie simply glanced to the left and arched his brow when an older woman slid into the booth opposite him.
“You keep watching my little girl like that, people are gonna talk.” Cora Mae tapped an unlit cigarette on the table between them as she tossed back what looked like whiskey.
From the deep wrinkles around her eyes to the silver roots of her long blond hair, the woman had aged. She was so skinny that her ribs were visible beneath the tight black T tucked into a skirt no longer than the span of a man’s hand. Her scrawny legs were crossed beneath that swatch of denim, the harsh bar lights emphasizing every inch of craggy cellulite. Red nail polish matched the backless stiletto dangling from her toes as she swung her foot to and fro.
Under kinder lighting, her face might be attractive. She had the same big green eyes and full-lipped overbite as her daughter; time had not been kind to the older woman.
“You’re looking for Sterling Barclay,” she stated, her cigarette-roughened words barely above a whisper and the urgent tone at odds with her bored expression. “What’s it worth for a little help finding him?”
Laramie didn’t say a word. He simply leaned back, letting his arm rest along the back of the chair. And waited.
The simple intimidation tactic worked quicker than he’d expected.
“Look, this new guy dropped by my trailer a couple nights ago. He got a little drunk and let it slip that he and his buddy gonna be rolling in the dough and all they have to do is sit on some rich schmuck for a couple of weeks.”
“Barclay?”
“It’s not like he named names.” Cora Mae’s sneer didn’t have a chance against Laramie’s steely stare.
“He said the guy was a local and that he was figuring on getting a new car out of the deal.” She shrugged one bony shoulder as if to say who else could it be?
Laramie simply waited. The woman tried to wait him out, but after a handful of seconds, her face tightened. She huffed, her hand fisting at her side.
“Fine. So maybe he thought it was funny that they were holding him on property the guy played on as a kid.”
Some of the tension leaving his shoulders, Laramie considered her words. No question that Cora Mae would likely run with the types of losers involved in kidnapping a dumbass like Barclay. Those types tended to be stupid.
The only part he wasn’t buying was that she’d put any effort into helping her daughter. That she’d put out effort and take a risk? That stepped over the line from doubtful to impossible.
Still...
“How about you tell me the rest,” he suggested quietly, finally unbending enough to take a drink of his beer.
Cora Mae poked out her bottom lip on a move surprisingly like her daughter before sighing.
“After a few drinks he started bragging about how he was gonna be making double what he’d haul on any other job because the whole thing was a setup.”
Laramie gave a ghost of a nod. That jibed with the info Mr. Wizard had mentioned.
“I made a joke about him leaving the country after it was over, you know, cuz the rich guy had seen his face.” Cora leaned closer, hunching her shoulders so she looked a little like a blonde vulture. “He patted his gun and said rich boy talking wasn’t gonna be a problem.”
Laramie’s spine stiffened at the ominous insinuation. Now that was new information.
Still...
“Why are you telling me this?”
She rocked, leaned back in her seat. Just for a second, her gaze shifted toward Sammi Jo’s side of the bar, then she gave Laramie a bored look and shrugged.
“Word is you’ve got the skills to find rich boy.”
Laramie inclined his head.
“And if I don’t want to?”
She slammed her glass down with enough force that the ice cubes bounced. She glanced to the left, then to the right before hissing the words across the table.
“You need to back off Sammi Jo before you ruin her reputation. If word gets out that you’ve been hanging around, she’s gonna lose everything. Her rich husband, her fancy-ass job, all of it.”
“Like you give a damn?” Laramie asked with a sardonic laugh.
Cora Mae’s eyes shifted across the bar toward the laughing knot of women surrounding her daughter. For a brief moment her expression folded into something that looked like regret, then she shrugged it off with the same ease she’d shrugged off everything else about her only child.
“What difference does it make if I give a damn or not?” She swirled her glass, what was left of her whiskey sloshing over the clanking ice cubes. “Bottom line is you’re going to screw up her life if you keep horndogging around here. You think she’s gonna throw over rich boy for you?”
She gave him a cynical once over, then arched one penciled-on eyebrow.
“Maybe she
will. But you are going to take off soon enough. What do you think’s gonna happen then? What do you think Sammi’s going to do? Sit around waiting for your yearly visit?” Cora Mae’s snort of a laugh made it clear that she figured the answer was a resounding Hell, no. Elbowing her glass of melting ice aside, she planted her forearms on the table and leaned forward until she was right in Laramie’s face. “Word about the two of you is going to ruin her rep. That girl doesn’t deserve to have her life ruined like that.”
“Word about her being involved with me would ruin her life?” Even as Laramie rolled his eyes, Cora Mae was nodding so hard a long hank of blond hair landed in her glass.
“You think that old butt pirate, Barclay, is going to let her keep her job when he hears about the two of you? You think he’s gonna let her live in that dump of a garage he stuck her in?” Cora Mae snorted. “That jackass pays her a chump change, so it’s not like she’s got a fat savings account to fall back on. And you know he’ll give the beady eye to anyone who even thinks about hiring her. So what’s Sammi Jo gonna do then, smart guy?”
Taking in those truths and new realizations, Laramie lowered his gaze to his beer bottle and frowned. He hadn’t realized how tight a hold old man Barclay had on Sammi Jo’s life.
Then again, he had to consider the source.
Laramie speared Cora Mae with sharp look as she slid out of her seat.
“Why?” At her blank look, he expanded. “Why the tip? Why the warning? Why’d you bother?”
The look that flashed over the older woman’s face was all the answer he needed. Vulnerable pain and quickly masked loss said that no matter how lousy a mother—or human being—she was, she cared about Sammi Jo.
But Cora Mae being Cora Mae, she quickly buried that redeeming emotion with a sneer. She cocked her bony hip to one side and gave him a hard look.
“You screw up her life bad enough, she’s going to end up having to move back in with me. And there just ain’t room enough in my trailer for two women.” She slapped her hand on her hip and gave him an arch look. “So don’t you go messing up my life just because you can’t keep your dick in your pants.”
With that and a practiced toss of her hair, Cora Mae gave her shoulders a little wiggle and slid right back into the hard-edged bitch she’d always been. She pressed her hands onto the tabletop and bent down, the move leaving her shirt gaping enough to show Laramie and every man behind him that her bra matched her high heels.
“Sammi Jo is rooted here. She’s got a chance at a better life than I could have ever gave her. So you do right by her, hotshot. You do right and get the hell out of her life.”
With that and another toss of her smoke-scented hair, Cora Mae sauntered out of the bar. Leaving Laramie feeling like he’d just been kicked in the balls.
* * *
“GO, BABY, GO!”
Waving the hat she’d claimed as her own in the air, Sammi Jo cheered as Clara showed that mechanical bull who was boss.
Was it okay to have this much fun at a bachelorette party when she intended to stay a bachelorette? Sammi Jo had no clue, and thanks to her second margarita, she didn’t care. She was simply loving every second of doing what felt good.
Dancing with her girlfriends without worrying about looking stupid.
Riding a mechanical bull without caring that it wasn’t ladylike.
And best of all, Sammi decided as she settled her jean-clad butt onto a bar stool, wearing a man’s hat in public as if it were her own, especially when the man was notorious for his bad cowboy ways. Not that she expected anyone to actually recognize Laramie’s Stetson. Nine out of ten men in town wore similar hats.
But she knew.
It felt so sexy. Just as the fact that Laramie was here in the bar, somewhere, waiting to take her back to his cabin later felt sexy. She shifted on the stool, trying to find a position that didn’t challenge thighs made sore from riding the bull—and Laramie.
“Sammi Jo, you’re glowing with so damned much happiness, you’re gonna blind us all.” Blythe sidled up to the bar, bumping her shoulder against Sammi’s. “Everybody’s talking about it. They’re saying you’re acting mighty happy.”
“Don’t most brides-to-be glow?” Sammi asked, surreptitiously looking around to see who might be doing the talking and wishing she didn’t care so much.
“Sure they do. They glow a little brighter when the hottest guy to ever grace our town is staring at the bride-to-be as if he were the big bad wolf and she was about to get eaten.”
Sammi’s lips twitched as she wondered how Laramie would like being compared to the big bad wolf.
“Be careful,” Blythe added in a low whisper. Her expression was festive, but Sammi could see the worry in her eyes. “They’re gonna remember because this is the first time he’s set foot in this bar, added to the first time you’ve been here. Throw in those hot stares and you breaking off your engagement and the gossips are gonna have a heyday.”
“I can’t live my life worrying about what people are going to say,” Sammi decided.
“Your lust for Laramie is going to get you into trouble if you’re not careful,” Blythe warned before heeding the call that it was her turn on the bull.
It wasn’t just lust, Sammy mentally corrected as her friend hurried away.
She felt a lot more than that for Laramie. Fascination and delight. She was attracted to his mind and his strength as much as she was to his body. She admired his dedication and his focus on being the best.
And maybe was in love with him.
But what did she know about love?
What if this was just infatuation instead?
And even if it was love, what if it didn’t last?
Blythe’s words, sparked by Sammi’s own fears, flamed hot with the nerves in her belly. Maybe she just needed some ice water, something to cool those nerves and her thoughts.
Before she could wave over the bartender, a hand skimmed down her back.
“Laramie?” she exclaimed, twisting in her seat to give him a horrified look. “What are you doing?”
“Asking you to dance,” he gestured toward the corner where the music was loudest and people were boot scooting. “How about it?”
“You’re supposed to be staying away from me,” she hissed, peering over his shoulder, trying to see through the crowd to make sure Blythe wasn’t coming back with another lecture.
“Its just a dance, Sammi Jo. I wasn’t going to strip you naked and show the crowd what you look like riding me instead of that bull.”
“Don’t say things like that. Not in here.” Color washed her cheeks as, shoulders hunched, she looked left, then right. Then behind her for good measure.
“So what’s the deal? Are you ashamed of me?”
“No, but I have to live here, remember.”
Laramie’s expression barely changed, but a chill ran down Sammi’s back, making her shiver.
“You’ve got plenty of girlfriends here, right?” he asked in a neutral tone.
Not sure why she felt a sudden foreboding, Sammi didn’t take her eyes off him as she nodded.
“Catch a ride home with one who hasn’t been drinking, okay? I’ve got to go.”
Before she could ask where, before she could even respond, he turned on the heel of his cowboy boot and disappeared into the crowd.
“Whoa, wait.”
Sammi slid off the stool and hurried through the wall of bodies, chasing after him. The clashing scents of perfume, cologne and booze made her head spin a little, so that she gratefully sucked in gulps of fresh air the minute she hit the door.
There was a crowd out here, too, milling between the outdoor tables, leaning against the railroad tie fence. But at least here, she could breathe.
“Wait,” she called again, not caring who saw her as she hurried to catch Laramie before he hit the parking lot. “Just hold up a damned second.”
It must have been the damn that did it, because he not only slowed, he stopped, turned and faced her with t
hat same blank expression.
“Aren’t you worried about what people are gonna say, seeing you chase me down like this?”
“Why are you acting like this?” She threw her hands in the air before planting them on her jean-clad hips. “What is wrong with you?”
“I heard something that didn’t sit right with me.”
“What?” What could have him acting so cold and unreasonable?
He wasn’t saying, though. Instead he looked back toward the bar, then at her.
“What about your reputation? You want it getting back to the Barclays that you’ve been seen with me?”
Yes. But she was afraid telling him that would just make him angrier.
“I think that it’d be wrong to sashay around, flaunting the fact that I’m with someone else before I have a chance to tell Sterling myself,” she said carefully. “And I think that’s the sort of thing I need to tell him face-to-face.”
“Right. But it’s okay if everyone knows that he’s screwing around on you as long as you’re not kidnapped?”
As shocked as if he’d shoved her on her butt, Sammi could only shake her head as she tried to catch her breath.
“Why are you doing this? Why are you being so ugly all of a sudden?”
Laramie raked his hand over his head, closed his eyes and sighed.
“Its hard, okay. It’s hard realizing that I’m breaking my own rule with you and having an affair with a woman committed to someone else. So committed,” he said before she could respond, “that despite whatever has happened between us, she’s going to marry someone else.”
Ohhh. Awareness poured through her, quickly followed by relief. Her stomach unknotted enough that Sammi was able to smile.
“I’m ending my engagement,” she said quietly, ignoring the stares probing her back like lasers and reaching out to take Laramie’s hand. “I thought you realized that. I thought you knew.”
“You’re not going to marry Barclay?”
“No,” she said with a relieved laugh. Whew. Now everything could be okay again.
“Then leave. Let Barclay deal with his own mess. Come with me to San Diego.”
Seriously?
