by T. S. Joyce
Raven was all over the dancefloor, and all three girls were wearing huge grins. The other bull shifters crowded the dance floor and tore it up with them. The crowd in the bar started cheering and whistling about that time. Train Wreck took her hand in the freestyle and spun her like a pro. He incorporated her into his line dance after that, just went off-grid, but she knew they looked good. That man could dance. He was full of good surprises.
And when the next song came on, he pulled her in and straight into a two-step. This dance, she did know how to do. Grandma had taught her. She couldn’t stop grinning as he guided her backward. She trusted him, so she didn’t even look where he was taking her, just stared into his eyes and let him lead. She danced blind except for when she would get a glimpse of the girls being two-stepped around the dance floor right along with her. The crowd was getting loud and rowdy, and the positive vibe of this place had her happy heart drumming out of her chest.
“Come on,” he said suddenly. He scooped her up like she was light as a feather, and that was a feat in itself. She was the proud owner of some serious curves. Dang, he was strong.
He set her up on the bar and, for a second, she stayed squatted there, feeling like she was breaking the rules. Up until she looked to her right where Two Shots was setting Cheyenne up there with her. And then her and Cheyenne grinned at each other and stood up together.
The bartender yelled, “Yeah, girls!” as he poured a long line of shots. He looked up at the men crowding the bar and barked out, “You’ll give them space, or I’ll let that one have you.” He twitched his chin toward Train Wreck, who was moving a basket of food out of the way. He looked like a tank in here, standing next to the humans.
“You’re good,” he told her from below. “I’ve got you.”
And for a moment, that stole her breath. The way he’d said “I got you” with such conviction, she knew he had her. She was safe to have fun here.
“Ready?” Annabelle yelled from over near the jukebox.
“Ready for what?” Amber asked as she helped another woman up onto the bar with her and Cheyenne. Dead was lifting Raven up at the end.
“Ready to help me serve these shots?” the bartender answered for Annabelle over the noise of the cheering bar.
The first notes of an old school rap song rang out. “Oooooh!” the crowd sang out. Even the cowboys would know this one.
“Haaaaa, this is awesome!” she rambled out as one word. Then she hit a goofy robot move and threw it to Cheyenne. She picked it up fast and did a little booty wiggle down the bar top and gestured to the other woman. Raven was up next as Amber just moved to keep the beat.
She looked down at Train Wreck, and he winked up at her. “Give it to them.”
He had so much faith in her, she loved this. Time to win over the crowd. She dropped it down with that first big beat of the chorus and then coordinated a dance for the next eight-count. As the bar went crazy.
Cheyenne was cheering louder than anyone else, and near the bar top, Train Wreck was looking up at her with a hungry look in his eyes. He looked so damn proud. A guy got a little too close as she and the girls broke it down, and he pushed them back with a warning glare that had them keeping their hands off the counter. Smart boys.
The bartender, Trevor, his nametag read, handed up two shots at a time to her and the girls, and she helped pass them into the crowd, keeping the beat as she did. Had she ever had more fun in her entire life? Had she ever? She couldn’t recall a night she smiled so much. Here, she felt perfectly safe to be her exact self. Train Wreck wouldn’t let anyone mess with her or crowd her. She was okay to just have fun, and it was the best feeling ever.
She’d been so fiercely independent for so long she had forgotten this feeling. Having someone strong at her back made her feel even stronger.
When the song was done, Train Wreck reached up and pulled her down easily, settled her on her feet and murmured against her ear, “Sexy girl.”
She beamed up at him. “Really?”
He leaned in and kissed her good, and she could practically taste his smile. “Your confidence is so damn attractive.” He swatted her ass and then slid his hands to her waist, walked behind her as he guided her toward the restaurant side.
When she twisted around to check that Cheyenne and Raven got off the bar okay, the herd was all following them out.
“They’ve got a table ready for us,” Train Wreck murmured as the noise of the crowd faded away behind them. “I already closed our bar tab.”
“Okay, yay! I’m starving.”
“Yeah, I noticed you didn’t eat any of the fried mushrooms the girls ordered. Figured you weren’t a mushroom fan.”
“You noticed that?”
“Woman, I couldn’t take my eyes off you. I notice everything.”
“Like what else?” she asked, fishing for compliments.
“Like the way your hair moves when you dance, and the way you smile with your whole face when you talk to someone you like. The way your laugh pitches up at the end and how you rub your hands together before you take a drink, like you have too much built-up excitement and need to release the tension. This little scar across your cheek.” He rubbed the old scar with the pad of his thumb.
“I fell off a bike and hit a tree when I was eleven. The scar never went away.”
His smile was so tender. “I love it. I don’t want it to go away.” At a long table, he held out a chair for her, and she sank into it. As he took his seat beside her, she said, “I like the way your hair curls up when you run your hands through it. And the way you take your hat off and put it on, like it’s a nervous habit. I like how you take quick shots at pool and the confidence you have in every movement. I like that you have one eye on what you’re doing and one on me, but not in an overprotective, suffocating way. That’s a hard balance, but you do it well naturally. And you take two sips of beer at a time. And one side of your mouth is a little crooked when you smile.”
“You watch me, too,” he murmured softly.
She nodded. “It’s hard for me, too.”
“What’s hard?”
“Looking away from you.”
Train Wreck leaned in close. “The girls adore you. I can tell.”
Indeed, Raven and Cheyenne were playing rock-paper-scissors for dibs on the seat next to Amber. Train Wreck slipped his hand over her thigh and relaxed back in his chair, comfortable as a cat in a sunny window.
When the server came around, she ordered chicken fried steak, black pepper gravy over mashed potatoes, and zucchini spears. When she looked up to Train Wreck, his eyes were the dark chocolate color of his bull’s. “I like that you eat,” he told her. “The more I learn about you, the more I like you.”
“Awww!” Raven and Dead said at the same time.
“Annoying,” Train Wreck muttered.
The banter at dinner was fun, and the conversation flowed easily. They didn’t talk about Uncle Sloane anymore, and she was thankful. Tonight was just about hanging with the herd.
And when dinner wrapped up, they sat around chatting still. She liked that no one was in a rush to end the night.
“You should come watch Train Wreck buck,” Cheyenne said.
“Oh, that would be a dream. I’m a fan of the circuit,” Amber assured them.
“Gasp!” Dead said dramatically to Train Wreck. “You’re hooking up with a fan? The scandal.”
Train Wreck narrowed his eyes onto the big, bearded titan. “Didn’t you meet Raven in an autograph line?”
“She’s my number one fan,” Dead said.
“Mmm,” Raven said, shaking her head in disagreement. “Number two fan. No one can love you as much as you love you.”
Quickdraw belted out a booming laugh. “That’s true.”
“Whatever,” Dead grumbled. “Onto the most important part of the night.”
“Desert?” Annabelle asked.
Without missing a beat, Dead corrected himself. “The second most important part of the night.”
Gallantly, he presented two bracelets in his hand. One was brown with a little sperm charm on it. The other was hot pink with a little heart charm. “A pair of Dead’s famous friendship bracelets, custom-made for the two of you.” He bowed his head and offered them in the palm of his hand.
“He’s now selling them online,” Raven told them.
Train Wreck didn’t look amused. “Which one is mine?”
“Whichever one you want,” Dead said. Even with his face downturned, Amber could see his cheeks swollen with a smile, and a little chuckle escaped him.
“My options are a bracelet with a sperm on it or hot pink?” Train Wreck asked in a dead voice.
Pursing her lips against a laugh at the exhaustion in Wreck’s voice, she reached forward and plucked the pink one from Dead’s hand. “Pink is my favorite color.”
The girls were all cracking up with her as Wreck sighed heavily, yanked the sperm bracelet from Dead, and put it on. “You’re an asshole.”
Dead gave him a mushy look. “You’re welcome.”
When dinner was done, she went to the bathroom with the girls, then said her goodbyes as she walked out with them to meet the boys in the parking lot. They were all leaned on the bed of Wreck’s truck, talking low. He wore a frown at something Quickdraw was saying, but they all plastered smiles onto their faces when she and the girls approached.
“So serious,” Cheyenne said.
Okay, so she wasn’t just imagining the tension. “Are you okay?” Amber asked Wreck.
“I’m catching the boys up on what happened today.”
She didn’t know why, but it made her feel better that the other bucking bull shifters knew about the bugs planted in her house. They were all badasses. She really wasn’t alone in this. Train Wreck was making a team.
After hugs and goodbyes, he opened her door for her, and when she was settled into her seat, he hesitated there in the doorway. He looked so handsome in the glow of the parking lot lights. “I meant what I said earlier. I’ve really got you.”
This felt so big, those words. “Really got me, how?”
“Sometimes things happen fast for a shifter. Sometimes we just know.”
Amber frowned and shook her head, wishing she understood.
“No matter what happens,” he murmured, “I’m going to make sure you’re okay.” There was a promise in his words.
And that right there was the most meaningful oath that had ever been made to her.
Chapter Thirteen
“This is yours?” Amber asked softly.
Train Wreck set an upended dusty old table upright. “It ain’t much, but I have plans for it. I mostly bought it for the property. It’s fifty acres, and most of it is fenced. I want to breed bucking bulls and train riders here someday, but it needs some work first. I figured I would tear down the whole house, but then when I started looking deeper at it, it has good bones.” His eyes softened as he looked around the cabin. “And if something has good bones, it’s redeemable.”
So she took a deeper look, too. The floorboards were old and grayed and dusty, and some of the floorboards were missing or broken. Most of the windows were cracked or broken. The kitchen had never been updated and still had the white tile farmhouse look, paired with an old brown sink and white appliances that probably didn’t work anymore. Cabinets were dangling off hinges, and pictures were crooked on walls. Some animal had made a nest out of the ancient blue couch near the fireplace, but Amber was good at imagining end products.
The floors were level, and new flooring would do wonders. Some elbow grease to clean this place, remove all the old furniture, clean up the fireplace, reattach the cabinets, maybe put in a farm-style sink, and upgrade the appliances. Clear the cobwebs from the rafters and sweep the loft. New decor and furniture and light fixtures, and this place could be stunning. The open layout gave it a homey atmosphere already. The living room was huge, and the loft was massive and covered the sizable kitchen. The single bathroom right off the living room could use an update, but Train Wreck was right. The bones were good. And if the bones were good, the house would stand. And from the way Train Wreck was looking at this place with such possibility in his eyes, this was going to be his castle someday.
Amber already loved it.
“Will you send me pictures when it’s done?” she asked.
“Nah. Come see it instead.”
Her heart fluttered at the invitation. He wanted to see her again. That’s what he meant, right?
“Maybe tomorrow I could help you clean it up. I’m pretty good at cleaning. I cleaned hotel rooms for a few years.” She bowed. “That’s a brag.”
“You are more and more interesting to me,” he growled, rushing her. He lifted her up easy, and she giggled as he turned her in a slow circle. “You would really spend a day cleaning an old shack with me?”
“It’s not just a shack,” she whispered, letting the seriousness settle onto her face. “It’s your home. A home is an important thing. It’s a safe haven. It’s a place where you can be your exact self, and no one in the outside world can say anything about it. There’s no flashing cameras or interviews here. Just you, building your life.”
“Just me,” he murmured.
She couldn’t read the emotion on his face. He was thinking something much deeper than she could decipher on the surface, and a surprising little part of her hoped that someday she would know him well enough to read his expressions. All of them. A silly part of her wanted to know everything about him.
“Tomorrow, eight a.m., you take me out to breakfast as a thank you for helping you clean. You buy me pancakes with powdered sugar and strawberries on top and some strong coffee. Then we go to the store and pick up cleaning supplies. I’m a genius at this stuff, so I will guide you.”
“After that,” he played along, “we will schedule a flooring estimate for new wood floors and window replacements for the broken ones, maybe stop in at a home décor store to get ideas because I’m awful at that stuff.”
“You can’t be that bad.”
“I have a vision board for this place, and the only thing it has on it is a futon.”
“Oh, sweet baby Jesus, no.”
Train Wreck pointed to the wall across the room from the fireplace. “I was going to put it there and then, you know, if I was too lazy to go up the loft stairs to my bed, just sleep on the futon.”
Amber’s eye twitched.
Train Wreck pursed his lips against a laugh. “This is why I need your help.”
“Is your bed up there now?” she asked, squinting up at the dark loft.
“No. But I think there is an old owl nest up there. Did you know they poop in pellets? I didn’t. I learned that when I went up there.”
“Eewwww,” she said around a laugh. “So where do you sleep?”
“Oh, we will be camping tonight.”
“In a tent?” She hadn’t meant for her voice to pitch up an octave like that, but she was inside the house and on the verge of shivering. She would freeze if they tent-camped out here.
“Come on. I have something to show you.” Train Wreck took her hand and led her out the back door.
He didn’t bother to lock it, but she supposed if someone wanted to get in, they could crawl through one of the broken windows. And, besides, there wasn’t much to steal. Just a raccoon-infested couch and some dust-riddled pictures of cows.
Out back, there was an RV. It looked new, if the sale stickers still taped to the window were anything to go by.
“Whoa!” she exclaimed as he led her up the small steps and held the door open for her. “I went camping in one of these with my grandma when I was younger, but it wasn’t as fancy as this.”
She was in awe of the granite countertops and pretty gray backsplash in the kitchen. The floors looked like they were made of barnwood, and there was a full bedroom on one side, complete with a queen-sized bed and end tables on either side. A leather sofa and flat screen television made up the living area, and on the opposite side of
the bedroom was a bathroom with a shower and everything.
“You don’t have to sleep in your truck anymore when you tour,” she uttered.
His eyes were watchful and soft on her. “I bought it the morning I came out to Two Thorns Ranch, hunting Sloane. I haven’t even slept in it yet.” He cleared his throat. “You wanna stay in it with me tonight?”
“Well, what if I get addicted to RV living?” she asked.
“It’s a risk. You may be begging me to stay.”
She could see that happening. “Or what if you decide you don’t like me?” she asked softer. “Then you will always remember me in here on your first night in your RV.”
For a three-count, he didn’t move a single muscle. He only stood there, still holding the door open, staring at her with an unfathomable expression on his face. Then he released the door, and it swung shut as he closed the distance between them.
She thought he would kiss her. She really did. But he gripped her by the waist and dragged her against him and rested his cheek against hers. His beard tickled her jaw. He swayed them gently four times before he whispered against her ear, “I can’t get tired of you if I try. You would run if I told you what you are.”
“What am I?” she asked on a trembling breath.
“You’re who I choose. You can thank the animal in me for that, and you can thank the man in me, too. I want my first night here to be with you.” She could hear his swallow, and back and forth they swayed. “Now, I’m not going to push you, Amber. You’re human, and your kind chooses more slowly. I’m fine with slow. You set our pace, and I’m good with that. But for me? You can have it all.”
“H-have what?”
He lifted her hand to his chest and pressed her palm against his drumming heart. “That.”
She didn’t know if she wanted to cry from joy and relief or laugh at the field of four-leaf clovers she’d clearly fallen into somewhere along the way. But she did know one thing—this was big. Wreck was big. To the outside world, yes. He was making his legacy with his career, was famous, and growing his fan base. But that’s not what she meant by “big.” Here, in his RV, pressing her hand to his heart, he was big to her, too.
