by Andrea Allen
His bedroom was filled with new furnishings, a large oak closet holding a series of casual clothes that better suited Remlow Creek than the crisp black suit he had worn on the way down. Normally he would have changed before traveling, but last night had been a busy one.
It had also been a fun one, no doubt about that. The bar he had attended had been filled with good times, laughter, and a particularly attractive raven-haired woman that Nate had spent his time with, pale skin wonderful in the nighttime dark, little red dress flowing around her as they got drunker and drunker together, and then closer and closer. He could still smell her perfume on his jacket, the scent of flowers clinging to his collar, reminding him of the softness of her body pressed against him, the sound of her voice rising in ecstasy.
Ah, Mona…
It was possible, Nate supposed as he pulled on a pair of jeans, that this was not her real name. Plenty of people, both women and men, went to bars like the one he had been at for the anonymity after all. The idea was somewhat troublesome, but Nate pushed it out of his mind with relative ease. It wasn’t like he would ever see the woman again, as fetching as she was. He finished dressing, throwing on a plaid shirt and a flashy buckled belt, the kind people in the South seemed to really appreciate, for reasons that Nate had yet to truly fathom. Now more appropriately clothed, he headed back downstairs, thinking wistfully of the taste of Mona’s lips against his, the way she had bounced in his lap with youthful energy. He was only thirty-three, but the rigors of his work sometimes made Nate feel unreasonably old. It had been nice, with that in mind, to be with some cute twenty-something again.
Somehow, the floorboards at the bottom of the stairs retained their characteristic creak, despite having been replaced in their entirety. The sound was a familiar companion, had been with Nate through much of his childhood, there at every morning creeping down the stairs, teenage nights sneaking back into his room after being out far longer than he should have, and now adult days spent occupying this space as a getaway from his life in the city. That sound signified home, to him.
There were other noises too, issuing from within the main ground floor room that served as the shop floor, the sounds of someone moving within. Nate slipped around the corner and into the main room just in time to see a taller, lanky man slide into the seat behind the counter, a cup of steaming coffee in his hand. He rapped a rhythmic little series of taps against the lacquered wood, then shot Nate the finger-guns.
“Morning, guy,” Leo said, grinning. Nate nodded as he passed, swinging around the side of the counter toward the back room, eyeing shelves as he went to see what needed restocking out front. Leo could be relied upon for much, but keeping the shelves filled with merchandise had never been one of them; Nate had always felt this was okay. The younger man was largely here for companionship, anyway.
Leo was a transplant from New York in a more complete way that Nate himself was. Where Nate had the benefit of having grown up in Remlow Creek, Leo just liked being here, having been taken with Nate on one of the latter’s many trips out that way to spend some time running the store. Something in the rustic surrounds, the simplicity of purpose that went with life away from the big city, appealed to Leo on some deep level even beyond what Nate himself felt. After a few more trips tagging along with his friend, Leo eventually asked if he could simply set up shop in Remlow Creek full-time, running the Hard Tack while Nate was away.
The idea had been a surprising one to hear, but it wasn’t exactly a bad one either.
After all, Leo’s own business interests were largely self-sustaining, requiring little from the man himself in order to generate income. He could afford to sit out in a small town if he wished, providing basic ranch supplies to people he could come to know on a first-name basis and simply luxuriating in the open spaces and fresh air that one simply could not get in the confines of New York. As far as Nate knew, Leo had not told anybody here where he had come from. He had left the past in New York so that it was his own choice to what extent he would dip in and out of it. As a consequence of this, he hadn’t left Remlow Creek since he had first come to stay there, nearly two years earlier.
He had simply walked away, as Nate never could have. It was very possible that Leo hadn’t even done so much as place a phone call to his family back home; they knew he was out here, but his suddenly newfound lifestyle apparently rubbed them the wrong way, such that neither party particularly desired to spend much time around the other. He had made a clean break with his past, and was now a fixture at the Hard Tack even as Nate flitted in and out. In some ways, he wished he could have some of Leo’s conviction regarding the place, but in others, well, Leo didn’t get to go off and have anonymous sex with cute girls in bars, now did he?
This was not, however, because he wouldn’t be able to. Though Nate was thoroughly heterosexual, even he could recognize that Leo was, in a word, devastatingly handsome. At twenty-seven, he still harbored much of the energy of his youth, proud and leonine features sitting atop a body that bounded and gestured vibrantly when excited, ropes of muscle easily visible at every moment. His penchant for tight shirts and pants did little to make Nate, at thirty-three, feel any more secure. It was like he was sharing his shop with a younger, photo-negative version of himself. Even his blond hair contrasted with Nate’s own darker locks. Between the two of them, it was clear who the eye candy was.
But then, Leo hadn’t spent the previous night with luscious little Mona in his lap, now had he?
The morning passed them by, with Nate’s thoughts running roughly along that line for most of it. It was hard to keep his mind from straying back to the young woman he had slept with the night before. The tastes and sounds and sensations of her, her body, her voice, everything, filling his imagination from end to end, dragging Nate back into the recent past whenever he began to draw himself forward into the present. Stocking the shelves became a pleasant, drifting thing, less of a chore and more of an opportunity to fantasize. Talking with Leo became a distraction from that, and Nate found himself pausing noticeably when he should have been replying, letting sentences drop and words draw themselves out into silence without meaning to. Debauchery had not made him a good conversational partner.
You’re never going to see me again after tonight, she had said. Fuck me however you want to…
The words rang through Nate’s mind, the sheer freedom inherent in that anonymity threatening to make him blush; he really had done some things that night he would not have without the consequence-free atmosphere that Mona had made for them. Things had gotten wild, a previously unknown dominant streak running through him had surfaced and… well, suffice it to say that he knew he would be nervous if ever forced to recount the events of that night.
As luck would have it, Nate would be put in a position of having to do this sooner than he would have thought.
As evening settled over the quiet town— a few customers, not precisely the greatest business day the Hard Tack had ever had— and the sun moved past its zenith, a familiar face bustled through the double doors, clad in clothes easily more fashionable than anyone in town had ever seen before. Pegging her immediately for a newcomer, which was in itself no great feat since everyone knew everybody else already, Leo rose from the counter, smelling a sale. The distinctly feminine voice that filtered into the back room drew Nate’s attention, as did the slick sound of Leo’s voice; the man could certainly flirt, but Nate couldn’t imagine a one of the women in town who would appreciate that. The majority of them were married, something that Leo surely knew by now.
Poking his head through the door to see who had come in, Nate blinked.
“Mona?”
Chapter 2
“Hoo, man!” The woman’s eyes were wide, her hands flying upward into a vague, helpless gesture around her chest. “That is not my name! Hello! Stranger from last night, hi! Nice seeing you here. Again. Huh.”
“That was an awkward series of words,” Leo said, an eyebrow raised.
“Well,
it’s an awkward situation,” Nate shrugged, looking into the eyes of the woman he had spent a great deal of time together naked with just a few hours earlier, and who had just confirmed that, in fact, he did not even know her name. That was one of the new facts he discovered about her then. As he took in her features again- blond hair dappled with brown, which had been done up in pigtails the night before. Achingly perfect big, blue eyes. Full lips and a prominent, round nose— Nate began to see more. She was, perhaps, older than he had taken her for in the bar; mid to late twenties, rather than early.
She was also a good deal more pregnant than Nate remembered.
Her large bust and prominent hips were neutral signifiers overall, but the swelling of her belly was a definite giveaway. Even beneath the baggy shirt she wore it bulged, the dark fabric creasing around the tight roundness of her stomach. Nate stared openly, a small voice at the back of his mind wondering how he could have missed that, before yet more voices, far more critical than the first, pointed out a series of reasons. He had been more than a little drunk, they had both stuck to dark corners, places where they could hide, where their anonymity could be maintained as much as possible.
The truth was, at the time he hadn’t been terribly interested in noticing the fine details of her, beyond how good she felt on his dick.
“What are you doing here? Actually, yesterday was my last day in New York for a while,” ‘Mona’ cut in, her words just slightly too fast, syllables jumbling with agitation borne of memories of last night. The two of them were still staring, a fact that Leo did not miss, and though it was plain to Nate that he wanted to say something, discretion proved the better part of valor for him, and the younger man quietly extracted himself from the room, not even bothering to make an excuse before doing so.
“So, this is all one big coincidence?” Nate spoke into the silence that followed, but not before it had dragged on far too long for comfort.
“I guess so,” the woman he knew as Mona replied, shrugging. “My family was coming out this way so I figured I’d join ‘em for a vacation. What we did… well, that was my one last night on the town before I left. You know—”
“Consequence free,” the pair of them said together, Nate nodding solemnly. Of course, he had taken more than a few such nights of revelry in his time, the opportunity to escape to the little town too much temptation to bear. He could hardly fault ‘Mona’ for doing the same, but he had never been in the situation of seeing one of his prior partners in the light of day before either, much less so different than they had been at night. His gaze kept straying to the woman’s abdomen, to the swelling there and what it represented; had he known last night, would he still have taken her back to his place?
Yes. Nate found himself rather resolute that he would.
“Well, it’s what happens. Did you enjoy yourself, at least?”
She blushed at this, an expression that Nate found immediately, disarmingly fetching. For a moment, her gaze refused to meet his, sweet blue eyes darting along the hardwood floor, eventually making their way up Nate’s body and back to his face. Words seemed to pile up on her tongue, her lips pursing, the muscles around her mouth drawing tight as she considered what to say, then:
“Oh yes. I think I can safely say that I did. Are you asking if I regretted it? I was out for fun, not self-destruction. You were a good time, man.”
“Nate, and I’m glad.” He found himself smiling, for whatever reason, actually being in front of his anonymous hook-up again made him care about her opinion of their time together, the reality of her turning him somewhat needy. “Don’t suppose you’ve got a real name you’d like to share, Mona?”
“Like to?” The woman winced. “No. Will I? Yeah. I’m Barbara.”
“And what can I get you, Barbara?” Nate asked, noting that she had clearly been waiting for some form of laughter, laughter that would never come. Not from him, at least; evidently others in her life had not been so cautious. “Welcome to the Hard Tack, by the way.”
“Hey, yeah, this place is yours?” She looked around, gesturing expansively at the polished shop floor. “What were you doing in New York then? Also, it’s Barb, please.”
“It’s my side business, Barb. My partner, Leo, runs most of the day-to-day operations. I just come out when I need some time in the country.”
“Your… partner?”
“My business partner and friend, not… I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I didn’t mean it in that way,” Nate waved a hand vaguely. “He stays out here most of the time while I dart off where I’m needed for my other concerns. I’m from around here originally, and I bring money into Remlow Creek from outside, so it’s a pretty nice deal all around.”
“So, wait. You commute from the city to here?”
“I do. It’s more of a recreational thing for me than a strictly business venture.” Nate glanced sidelong at the woman. “Is there something I can get you, by the way? You didn’t know I would be here when you came in, after all.”
“That must be nice, to be able to do that. I’m here for… horse… things?” Barb shrugged, the gesture flowing down from her shoulders through the rest of her body and communicating a great deal of dissolution in the process. “My grandpa owns a little ranch out here, there are horses that don’t have whatever tools we’d need to ride them, and… to be honest, I probably should have brought along a list. Not that I’d even be riding them like this….”
Trailing off, Barbara gestured down her body, her palm running over the swelling of her belly, that little detail that changed everything about how Nate saw her.
“Baggy clothes and dim lighting do a lot of favors for a pregnant lady,” Barb said, looking him full in the eyes as she answered the question he was very pointedly not asking. “Yes, I was hiding it from you, but you seemed awfully down for some fun and I needed that. Are you constantly going to look at me like we actually met months ago and it’s yours? Because I’ll stop coming back of that’s the case.”
“No! Sorry, it’s just distracting me a little,” Nate said, shaking his head and smiling apologetically. “Please consider the Hard Tack for all your future horse needs. How about I just show you some basic riding gear and we’ll go from there? You can come back later if you need anything more.”
“After all,” Leo said, poking his head around the corner, from where he had to have been at least partially listening, “We are sort of the only game in town.”
“It’s a small town,” Nate nodded in agreement.
Chapter 3
In the end, Barb did come back, many a time, though perhaps not for the reason of acquiring more “horse things.” She came to chat as much as she came to shop, a state of affairs that both Nate and Leo found themselves amenable to. Outside of the noise and gloom of a bar or club, the blond woman proved to be a delight to talk to, an energetic person whose sheer newness filled the Hard Tack with a degree of positivity that it hadn’t seen in a long while. It was too easy to get into a rut with just the two men at the helm; another recurring face varied their routine just enough to engender a quick-forming, rapidly deepening friendship between the three.
When there came a day when she and Leo were alone together in the shop, perhaps what happened next was inevitable.
Nate left early that day, heading down the sloping hills toward the town of Remlow Creek proper to visit the post office, where a number of specialized stock deliveries awaited. In the quiet morning that followed, Leo found himself at something of a loose end, the Hard Tack largely stocked and ready to go. With no other customers to deal with, Barb’s appearance was a welcome distraction, something that Leo leaped at. As they spoke, Leo found it hard to get distracted further, the woman having opted to show off a little more skin than she usually did. His eyes strayed, no matter how he tried to keep himself focused on the conversation, to the heavy curves of her breasts, only grown larger in the weeks she had been coming to visit.
Judging from the deliberately low dip of h
er neckline, Leo sensed that perhaps this was intentional.
So, by the way, did the slight, consistent edging closer to Leo that Barbara did, drawing further into his personal space whenever the opportunity arose. Slowly, the words began to come further apart, trains of thought dropping away in favor of lingering looks, the occasional speculative glance around the store to confirm that, indeed, they were both still alone. When Barb’s hand stayed just a moment too long on Leo’s arm, he reciprocated, placing a hand of his own upon her hip.
“I was wondering how long it’d take you,” Barb’s mouth slipped into a crooked smile, one that spoke of mischief and fun. It was a smile that made Leo reflect on the fact that here in Remlow Creek, the woman was just as unmoored from consequences as she had been the day before she had come here. Whatever they did here, she would eventually flit away from here, and Leo would be left behind. There would be no great challenges to whatever fun they wished to devise.
“Nate’s gonna be away for a while yet.” The dreamy note in Leo’s voice did not go unnoticed.
“Enough time for a little fun?” Barb crooked one immaculately groomed eyebrow. For a moment, her mouth crooked down. “Because that’s all it would be, guy. You’re cute and all, but let’s not have any illusions.”
“Fun is good for me,” Leo answered quickly, then grabbed Barb by the hand. Without so much as a gesture he hustled them toward the door and locked it, flipping the sign from “open,” to “closed.” From there, he pulled her to the stairs and up to the second floor, through a series of back rooms toward the bedroom he kept in one of the rear corners, the one with a pleasantly big bed. In the back of his mind, he questioned how clean it was, before bringing a girl to it.
