by Maisey Yates
“You said you barrel race,” he said, heading toward the front door, hoping some of the fresh air would dispel some of the tension between them. “You doing much of it now?”
“No,” she said, walking onto the porch just ahead of him, taking the steps two at a time down to the driveway. And yeah, he watched her ass.
“Why not?”
“My horse is at my dad’s house.”
“And you aren’t.”
She looked over her shoulder, her blond curls bouncing. She was eternally bouncy, even when she was annoyed. “Right. Because, massive falling-out.”
“So you said. So what happened? He cancel your credit card?”
“Do you honestly think that’s the only thing I could possibly worry about? My fingernails, a credit card. Some rich bitch must’ve screwed you over good.”
That stopped him in his tracks. “Why would you say that?”
“Come on. You didn’t just wake up one morning deciding that girls like me are ridiculous. Someone taught you. I’m rich, but I’m not stupid. You’re right, my life has been pretty easy. And a lot of people are nice to me because of where I come from. A lot of it’s fake, and I’m aware of that. But being wealthy doesn’t automatically mean people are nice to you. A lot of people resent you for it. You think you’re the first person to hate me on sight? I already told you, you aren’t that original.”
He wasn’t in the mood to talk about Denise. But then, he never was. Still, the path of least resistance in this case was to tell just enough of the story to satisfy her curiosity. “My ex-wife.”
That stopped her in her tracks. “You were married?”
“Yeah. For a couple of years.” Three years. Closer to four. He remembered every single one, because it was easy to mark them with Callie’s age.
He gritted his teeth.
“To a rich girl. Who had daddy and credit card issues, I take it?”
“Pretty much.”
“Predictable.”
“You keep saying I am.”
“It has nothing to do with a slashed credit card,” she said. “I don’t... My father isn’t who I thought he was.”
“I know how that goes.”
“Your ex-wife?”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and nodded, bringing himself into step with her. “The very same.”
“You know what it’s like. And you know that sometimes you have to leave.”
Except he wouldn’t have left. “That’s true,” he said, even though in his case it absolutely wasn’t.
“It was pretty bad,” she said, kicking a rock.
“Are you going to hint around about it, or are you going to tell me?”
“Why would I tell you?”
He treated her to his best smile, the kind that got him laid more often than not. “Because I’m the bartender. Everyone tells me their secrets.”
“When they’re drunk. I’m not drunk. Unless you spiked my coffee.”
“I don’t give out free alcohol. Plus, I don’t let my employees drink on the job. You are technically on the job.” Which he said more as a reminder to himself. Because he also didn’t allow himself to check out his employees’ asses.
“I don’t think I can tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” she said, “you hate me. Why should I trust you with my secrets?”
“I don’t hate you.”
He didn’t like her. Not beyond the look of her anyway. But he’d hired her, and he was taking her to see his horses. So, obviously he didn’t hate her.
“Well,” she said, “you are not Team Sierra.”
“In fairness, if I’m team anything, I’m probably just Team Tits and Beer.”
“They appreciate your support, I’m sure. Not enough love happening for boobs and brew.”
“I have all the love in the world.”
She upped her pace, walking a few steps ahead of him. “My dad had an affair.”
“That sucks.” It did. He could barely have a conversation with his dad these days, mostly because he didn’t know how to talk to him. Didn’t know how to pick the undesirable words out of his vocabulary anymore, didn’t know what topics to bring up. His dad had no idea what Ace served at his bar, but in fairness, Ace had no idea what his father’s latest sermon was about.
Or any of his sermons for the past seventeen years.
“Yeah. It sucks,” she said. She stopped, turning to face him. “It really sucks.”
“Were you close to him?”
“I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to be close to my dad. Which I guess is kind of a red flag when you think about it. But...” She paused, angling toward the mountains. She closed her eyes for a second, the breeze catching hold of her hair and tangling it around her face. “He was my hero.”
She opened her eyes, turning back to Ace. “I don’t suppose he can be that anymore. And I don’t know how to talk to him when he’s something else. He was Superman. To me. He couldn’t do anything wrong. I remember hugging his leg because it was the only thing I could reach. And even though I grew, he stayed this giant. Really, he’s just a man. And I... I don’t really know how to deal with that.”
He tried to imagine that there was a bar top between them, and a little more alcohol on her end. And then he tried to figure out what he would say in that situation. Well, he probably wouldn’t say much of anything. He would just nod and pour another drink. But that wasn’t an option here.
Apparently, he counted on alcohol being a crutch even when he wasn’t the one drinking it.
“People surprise you,” he said finally. “In terrible ways.” He’d said as much to her the night he’d driven her home. That people were liars and couldn’t be trusted. A grim life motto, maybe, but it kept him grounded.
“Thanks, Ace. I feel like I should really get that put on a T-shirt.”
“Don’t put it on a T-shirt. You can’t read it when you’re wearing it. Maybe mount it to the wall.”
“I’ll keep that under advisement.”
They approached the barn and he pulled the door open, the motion kicking up a cloud of dust and the scent of hay. It was a good smell to him. A strong one. One that rooted him back to a simpler time in his life. Before marriages and custody battles and breweries.
When he’d loved to ride, and that was all he’d needed.
There had been a whole lot of clarity in the ring. Other people might find it crazy. That he’d found a kind of calm on the back of a bucking bronco, but he had. Pounding hooves, flying dirt and people cheering faded into one indistinct blur, until it shrank, receding into total silence.
One wrong move on his end or the horse’s made the difference between glory and getting your ass stomped into cowboy dust beneath angry hooves.
That had been the clearest he’d ever thought. His body, his brain...his soul—if he had one—all worked together in those moments. One unified machine. It was something he could never go back to, because the man that had saddled up for the rodeo back then was a completely different man.
He had to settle for flashes of memory that broke through him sometimes, clean and bright like lightning, on the heels of a tailwind carrying the smell of dirt and hay.
They walked into the barn and Sierra followed him. The expression on her face was what he imagined it might look like to bring a woman into a castle or something. Apparently, a barn was a castle to Sierra. Of course, for a woman like Sierra West, raised in a ranch positioned high above the town, luxury was an everyday kind of thing. He wondered if that allowed her to see the beauty in dirt and hay and horses just a little bit clearer.
He gritted his teeth, not liking his line of thinking. It was giving her a little more credit than he wanted to give. He didn’t need to give her credit. Theirs was n
othing more than a boss-employee relationship. Banter notwithstanding.
“What are their names?” she asked, walking in front of the stalls that contained his three horses.
“Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot.”
“That’s random.”
“Not really.” He waited for the meaning to hit her. He waited until it was clear that it wouldn’t. “WTF.”
She whipped her head around, looking at him, her eyes wide, her mouth open. “That is a very...internet-oriented joke. I thought you didn’t own a smartphone.”
“I know my way around the World Wide Web, Sierra. It has porn.”
“Ah, yes. We’re back to that.”
“I’m a simple man. With simple needs.”
“I seem to recall you reciting a list,” she said, turning back toward the horses.
“I probably did. That sounds like me.”
She put her delicate fingers through the slats on the stall, reaching out and stroking Whiskey’s nose. “This is simple,” she said, her words an interesting echo of his earlier thoughts. “I like this. Horses aren’t lying assholes. That really helps with the simplicity.”
He crossed the barn, coming to stand beside her, leaning up against the wall. “No. They can be assholes, certainly. But they can’t lie.”
“I prefer an asshole to a liar. And I’m not sure I would have said that a few weeks ago. But it’s how I feel now.”
“Well, then, I suppose that’s why you’re working at my bar and not living with your family. Because I’m one of those things, but not the other.”
She smiled, ducking her head, a lock of blond hair falling into her face. He wanted to brush it back. Then tilt her face upward and take a taste of that perfectly edible mouth of hers. If he did that, they couldn’t talk anymore. He wouldn’t be tempted to spill any more secrets about his marriage. She wouldn’t feel compelled to keep untangling the mystery that was her father and all of his lies.
He wouldn’t, though. That was just another fantasy, twisting around the familiar barn smell and the rodeo memories.
A bunch of things he couldn’t have.
“You wouldn’t consider yourself a liar?” she asked.
“No.”
“I think you were right that night in your truck. Everybody lies. Little ones. The kind that you tell quickly to convenience yourself. To keep from getting in trouble. The kind that grow more elaborate the more you have to water them and feed them and care for them to keep people from finding out about the first seed.”
“Do you think that’s what your father did?”
“Maybe. But then, maybe I’m just justifying.”
“I can’t say as I blame you.”
“You don’t know...”
“Right. I can’t possibly know your pain, and all that.”
She shifted, crossing her arms, resting her hip against the wall. “I’m sorry. That isn’t what I meant.”
“That’s okay. But I’m serious. When I say everyone lies...I guess my parents are exempt. My dad is great.” He cleared his throat. “He’s... He doesn’t get mad easily. He always tells the truth, even when it’s painful. He’s been loyal to his wife for forty years.”
“Your dad is the pastor at Copper Ridge Baptist. Right?”
“The very same. I guess not everyone connects us. Thompson is a common enough last name, and I was gone for a long time. Then I came back and opened a bar. And I don’t exactly make a habit out of going to church.”
“I suppose you don’t.”
“Not really my scene.”
“They have some dim views on drunken debauchery, so I can see why.” She smiled again, but this time there was something complicated in it. She looked at him, looked at him like she was trying to unravel his mysteries now.
“Don’t,” he said.
“What?”
“I already told you, I’m not a liar. So don’t look at me like you think I might be interesting. Or complicated. I have secrets, but I’m not a mystery. You’re not going to scratch beneath a layer and find something worth having.”
“I didn’t say I was looking.”
“You look at me like that... Yeah, I think you were looking.”
She pushed away from the wall, a crease appearing between her brows. “It isn’t your layers I was checking out. I promise.”
“So it was just my body?”
“Don’t pretend that you haven’t checked out mine.”
“Are you ready to beg yet, Sierra?”
He hated himself for asking that question. For being the one to bring it up again. He hated his voice for sounding so raw, so rough. It was supposed to be simple, it was supposed to be easy. Because he had declared that she had to make the move. But that wasn’t stopping him from bringing it up as often as possible.
Stupid restraint. He blamed that. He blamed the complicated bullshit of testosterone that seemed to like nothing better than mixing anger with desire. He blamed anger for making desire so much better. Anger that had originated with Denise, so he blamed her, too. Most of all, he blamed Sierra, for being so blonde and bouncy.
For being some kind of reimagined fifteen-year-old fantasy that he couldn’t seem to shake. He knew better. Sure, back when he’d been young and dumb, something about the soft, glittery rodeo queen thing had fired up his libido like nothing else. But back then he’d been existing in a world full of men, and dirt, and tobacco. And the shiny, sparkling women who stood in opposition to that presented a temptation he hadn’t been able to turn away from.
He knew how that ended now.
But you’re not stupid enough to think that Sierra is Denise.
No, he wasn’t. He was also smart enough to know that there were a lot of women out there. So avoiding one type wasn’t the end of the world.
His dick seemed to think that it was.
“You seem awfully invested in my hypothetical begging.”
He was. He couldn’t deny it. If she did, he would break every rule he’d laid out since he had left Austin. Smash them to pieces and barely even feel bad about it.
“Just reminding you to be careful. If you don’t want me to answer the question in your eyes, don’t ask it so loudly.”
“What question do you think I’m asking?” she asked, angling toward him.
She was supposed to back down. She was supposed to be intimidated by all of this. She was supposed to slap him, call him a name and flounce away.
But there was a grit to Sierra; there was the fact that her spine was shot through with steel. Those things made her unpredictable. And made her so much more than the fragile rich girl he constantly accused her of being.
And he had to keep up those accusations. Without them it would be too easy to forget. Too easy to forget and kiss the hell out of her the way he had been imagining doing for the past week.
He reached out, grabbing hold of her chin and gripping it tightly. Desire and anger were quickly becoming identical twins that he could hardly tell apart. “You know. Don’t play the part of innocent. It doesn’t suit you. It doesn’t suit either of us.”
“Then stop. Say it,” she said, blue eyes meeting his. “Tell me what you want. Tell me exactly what you think I want. Tell me what you want me to beg for. Because you bring it up often enough that we both know you wish I would.” She angled toward him, her full breasts brushing against his chest. Desire burned through him like a shot of whiskey down his throat. Exhilarating, painful. “How am I ever supposed to beg if I’m not sure what you think I should be begging for?”
He turned, backing her up against the wall of the barn, closing the distance between them as he wrapped his arm around her slender waist and pulled her tightly to his body. They were both breathing hard, her eyes glittering with that same mix of anger and lust roaring through him. Apparentl
y testosterone didn’t have the monopoly on that one.
“You don’t want to take a guess?” he asked, lifting his hand and tracing the outline of her full lower lip with his thumb.
Her lips parted and she moved, her teeth grazing the edge of his thumb lightly. “Do you want to lose a finger?”
He chuckled, dropping his hand down to his side. At least this was comfortable, in that it was so uncomfortable it made him want to peel off his clothes to escape the heat and to ease the tension that was arcing between them like an electrical storm. It was more comfortable than talking about his divorce. Than talking about her father. More comfortable than remembering the rodeo and getting her mixed up in those strange, calming memories that belonged to him and only to him and didn’t need another person in them.
It was wrong. But it was easy. Which was pretty much the story of the past nine years.
And she deserves to get caught up in that?
Great, now his conscience decided to speak up. Right when he didn’t want it.
He released his hold on her, backing away. She just stood there, as if she was still being pinned against the wall, her hands at her sides, her expression all wide-eyed and openmouthed and full of emotion he didn’t want to try to decode, because he wasn’t in the business of decoding female emotion.
“Not interested in losing a finger,” he said.
She closed her eyes, resting her head against the wall. “Please don’t fire me,” she said.
“It would be a pretty dick move for me to fire you when I was the one who started that.”
“I was complicit.”
“I’m not going to fire you,” he said, gritting his teeth. Mostly because firing her would be giving in to temptation. Firing her would be proof that he couldn’t handle what was happening between them. It was just a little bit of attraction. Not for the first time, he considered that he needed to find another woman to expend his pent-up sexual energy on.
Just the thought made him feel like someone was grabbing hold of his stomach and twisting it tight. He didn’t like the thought. Not simply because he couldn’t imagine being attracted to anyone other than Sierra right now, but because he wasn’t sure quite when he had started thinking about women and sex like that. And when it had stopped registering that he did. The only reason he felt anything about it now was because she was looking at him. Still looking at him like she was trying to figure him out.
