Asking for Trouble

by Amy Andrews

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Discover more Amara titles… Hooked on You

  The Two-Date Rule

  Royal Bastard

  The Truth About Cowboys

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Amy Andrews. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  Entangled Publishing, LLC

  10940 S Parker Rd

  Suite 327

  Parker, CO 80134

  rights@entangledpublishing.com

  Amara is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

  Edited by Stacy Abrams and Candace Havens

  Cover design by Bree Archer

  Cover photography by Wander Aguiar

  Flownaksala/GettyImages

  karandaev/GettyImages

  ISBN 978-1-68281-483-3

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition April 2020

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for supporting a small publisher! Entangled prides itself on bringing you the highest quality romance you’ve come to expect, and we couldn’t do it without your continued support. We love romance, and we hope this book leaves you with a smile on your face and joy in your heart.

  xoxo

  Liz Pelletier, Publisher

  To the authors in the Kiss and Tell group who are always there to answer questions and cheer me from the sidelines. Big love to all you fabulous women xxx

  Chapter One

  Della Munroe hadn’t known it was possible to become a virgin again. And then she’d moved to Credence and discovered just how wrong a woman could be. Between her overprotective brother and every single citizen wrapping her in Bubble Wrap, she was going to die in this town with her hymen fully regrown.

  Yes, a few years ago she’d have been happy to never have sex again. Yes, the three years since had been an emotional roller coaster of recovery. And yes, she was probably always going to have some hang-ups.

  But…didn’t people with hang-ups also deserve a sex life?

  At twenty-five, being horny was a revelation. She vaguely remembered what it felt like before her libido had turned to dust. But ever since the Credence municipal council had sent out a nationwide invitation, via Facebook, to single women to come and set up home here last summer, there was just something in the air.

  She’d been in Annie’s on New Year’s Eve when local rancher Joshua Grady had declared his feelings for New York artist Suzanne St. Michelle. They’d looked at each other with so much love—but also so much heat—it had stirred something long forgotten inside her body.

  A crushing kind of yearning for something she’d never had but she wanted.

  Something more primal.

  She’d wanted a man to look at her like that. Like he wanted to devour her and it was only the rules of polite society that were stopping him from sweeping her up in his arms and taking her somewhere private.

  Della’s ex had guarded her like a junkyard dog. Like she was property. She wanted a man who treated her like she was number one on his to-do list.

  Which is why she was joining Tinder.

  She needed to cast a broader net, and going to Denver every other week for her shrink sessions gave her the perfect opportunity. There were plenty of men in Denver, so Tinder made sense. Because one thing was for sure, she wasn’t going to find anyone here in Credence. Thanks to Arlo—said overprotective brother—who also just so happened to be the local police chief, nobody in this town, where men dramatically outnumbered women, was looking in her direction.

  In Credence, Colorado, her hymen, it seemed, was holy.

  Arlo brought her to Credence because she’d been lost and hadn’t known where to go, who to turn to, or who to trust. She’d had no money, no family or even friends to speak of. She’d had nothing but the clothes on her back. She’d been scared and alone, and she’d wanted as far away from her old life as possible.

  But three years later, things were so much better. She was so much better. Thanks to therapy, she’d come a long way. Was it so wrong to want to lead a normal life?

  Pushing open the heavy doors to The Lumberjack—or Jack’s, as it was known around town—Della took a moment to let the warmth seep into her bones. It might be bright sunshine out there, but they were having a bitterly cold February in eastern Colorado.

  Shutting her eyes, she let the familiar glow of neon and that wonderfully beery smell she’d come to associate with Jack’s envelop her like a great bit ol’hug. Every bit of her was cold, but this place felt like a hot tub on the ski slopes.

  On a satisfied sigh, she opened her eyes, only to meet the whiskey-gold depths of Tucker Daniels’s gaze taking her to another place entirely.

  To the jungle. To the equator. To the center of a volcano.

  To hometown hero and ex–Bronco quarterback Wade Carter’s wedding a few months ago, when Tucker had been in a dark suit and tie and so damn…she didn’t even know what…everything, and she’d been thinking about Tinder ever since.

  He was behind the bar, as usual, and for a few beats suspended in time, their eyes locked. Tucker Daniels was a looker, there was no denying. He was tall and broad and built. Not in a gym-junkie way or in the lean athleticism of a runner. The kind of build that comes with big bones, a large frame, and lugging around kegs of beer. Solid slabs of muscles packed in around arms and thighs and the scaffolding of his torso.

  More lumberjack—appropriate, really—than Mr. Universe.

  His sandy-blond hair was short all over with a slight crinkle. It was usually longer—shaggier and less kempt—the crinkle tending to curls. But he’d cut it for the wedding and kept it that way, and she couldn’t decide which way she liked it better. Short was hot in a first responder, Action Man, yes ma’am kind of way. Longer was hot in a Greek god, you-know-nothing-Jon-Snow kind of way.

  On another man it might have looked girly. But on this guy it worked because, basically, he was all hot. Especially his mouth. Just looking at that mouth made her ears warm. And when he smiled, it was punctuated on either side by two perfect dimples.

  Not that he was smiling now.

  He tended to be more contained around her, circumspect and polite—teeth-achingly polite—whenever she pushed through his doors. Also, a little guarded. Despite that, he, of all Arlo’s friends, had been the one to treat her most like a fully-grown adult with complete agency over her life. Especially that first difficult year, when she’d sat herself down on his barstool—a little too often—looking for some alcoholic fortification.

  He’d poured but hadn’t pushed, as if he understood there were many ways to slay demons.


  Which made the fact she had a…crush on him even more sad and pathetic. They were never going to happen. He was one of her brother’s closest friends. That made him so far out of her orbit he might as well have been Pluto. The man just didn’t look at her like that.

  Tinder. She really needed to go on Tinder.

  Della started the de-layering process, dragging off the bright pink pussy hat that had been knitted for her by Mrs. Winchester from the old folks’ home. Della had tried to tell the skilled knitter that the hats were more about protest than warmth, but she’d insisted, and Della hadn’t had the heart not to wear it to and from work every day.

  No wonder her head felt like a block of ice by the time she’d walked home.

  She stuffed the hat in her coat pocket, along with the thick lamb’s wool–lined gloves. Her scarf was next. It had been knitted by another one of the oldies, a Mr. Curran, who only knew how to knit one, purl one but was prolific with it because he appreciated how the activity kept his arthritic old hands warmed up.

  Della unwound it, then shrugged out of her jacket, hanging it and the scarf on the rack just inside the door. All that remained was the dark green scrubs she wore to work and the white Henley she wore underneath her top to keep her arms warm. She wouldn’t ordinarily wear her work clothes to Jack’s, but it was on her way home and it’d been too damn cold to continue, especially when she was coming straight back to meet her friends Molly and Marley anyway.

  Yeah, she was a little early, but she had things to be getting on with—like Tinder.

  Jack’s was pretty much deserted at three on a Thursday afternoon. There were some people out back playing pool, because she could hear the click of the balls over the low croon of Zac Brown Band on the jukebox, but no one was at the bar or in the booths.

  It was just her. And Tucker.

  Her stomach gave a little flip, and, for a nanosecond, Della contemplated grabbing a booth, but she dismissed the idea immediately. Making him walk over to her when the place was completely empty would be weird.

  And besides, Tucker could help her with the Tinder thing.

  He acknowledged her presence with a head nod as she sat, his gaze flicking to her hat hair for a quick moment. It probably looked like she’d been attacked by a flock of angry birds, and Della patted it self-consciously.

  “What’ll it be?”

  For some reason—maybe the fact she was thinking about him in that suit again or his quick, dismissive once-over of her hair—his polite facade ticked her off more than it had ever done.

  His polite, brotherly facade.

  The man looked at her like she was some distant cousin that he tolerated because she was family. Whereas her heart always beat just a little bit faster whenever Tucker was nearby.

  Exactly like it was now.

  “Strawberry daiquiri.” Jack’s never used to serve pink froufrou drinks, but Tucker had put them on the menu when the women had come to town thanks to that Facebook campaign.

  With no further comment, he set about fixing her drink, and Della was tempted to watch and enjoy the shift of pecs and biceps beneath the firm stretch of his shirt and the way his worn, faded Levi’s hugged his hips. But she didn’t need to add any more fuel to the bonfire of horny raging in her loins.

  She opened her phone and downloaded the Tinder app instead.

  By the time Tucker had returned with her drink, Della was trying to decide on her profile picture. She wasn’t exactly flush with choices. She was probably the only millennial on the planet who wasn’t on Facebook, and she wasn’t much of a selfie taker. There were a few she could use, but she didn’t think any of them were Tinder-worthy.

  Which begged the question—what was Tinder-worthy? What kind of picture interested guys? Something that showcased her big, friendly smile, or something sultry? Lipstick and tumbled-down hair with the top two buttons of her shirt undone? She didn’t have one of those, but she supposed she could take one. Or get Marley or Molly to take it, anyway? After they’d magicked up some kind of Fairy Godmother makeover.

  Even the thought of posing for something like that gave Della a delicious kind of thrill in places best not thought about while in the company of Credence’s hottie bartender.

  “One strawberry daiquiri.” Hottie bartender set the creation down.

  Della glanced at him speculatively. Tucker was a guy. Ignoring the drink, she scrolled to the images stored in her camera. “Which picture do you prefer?” She held up the phone. “This one?”

  The picture on the screen was a selfie that Arlo had taken of both of them mucking around. She was mid–belly laugh. After giving him a couple of seconds to view it, she scrolled to the second choice. “Or this one?”

  It was a candid shot snapped at work. She’d been feeding Mr. Weiner his lunch and had obviously zoned out for a moment, her stare fixed somewhere in the distance.

  It was very…Mona Lisa.

  “Why?”

  “I’m using it as a profile pic,” she said, toggling between the two.

  “What for?”

  Della sighed, exasperated. “Does it matter?”

  “Of course. If it’s for an employment profile, I’d go for number two. If it’s for Instagram, I’d advise number one. Maybe crop your brother’s ugly mug out of it, though.”

  He sent her a wisp of a smile, and Della’s mouth curved upward, despite her annoyance at his complete indifference to her as a woman. “It’s for Tinder.”

  “Tinder?”

  His voice was carefully neutral, as were his features, but Della had studied Tucker’s face often enough to know when he was alarmed. She nodded. “I’ve just joined.”

  “Oh, okay…” He nodded with a forced kind of casualness. “How’d Arlo take that?”

  Della stiffened. She’d cut Arlo a lot of slack since that terrible day he’d found her three years ago. Thanks to family secrets, they’d only met for the first time a few days beforehand, but he’d swooped in and taken charge of the situation. Given the state of her and what had gone down, she’d been grateful for her newfound brother’s intervention and protection. Grateful for him providing it every day since.

  Arlo’s steady shielding had given Della the space and time she’d needed to work through all her stuff, of which there had been a mountain. But now that her wings were aching to stretch? It was becoming a bit too much.

  And she really needed to have a conversation with her brother.

  “You let me worry about Arlo.” She waggled the cell phone at him again. “Which one.”

  He frowned, obviously uncomfortable with the situation. “They’re both fine.”

  Della blinked. “Gee…thanks.” She’d gone from feeling invisible to feeling like a sack of potatoes.

  “What do you want me to say, Della?”

  He sounded crotchety, which made Della crotchety. “I want to know what you think. As a man. Would you swipe right on this face?”

  He sighed. “Della.”

  “Tucker.” She stared him down because he was giving her that you-know-I-don’t-think-of-you-like-that look and it made her madder. “You are a man, aren’t you? Surely you have an opinion?”

  Saying Tucker Daniels was a man was like saying water was wet. He was the very definition of a man. He was a man’s man. He was a manly man. Della would bet her last nickel that if she opened the dictionary to the word man, Tucker’s face would be there.

  “Why do you want to join Tinder?”

  “To meet men. To get a life.”

  “Okay, sure.” He nodded. “But have you thought about another platform? Like eHarmony, maybe?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m twenty-five, not fifty-five.”

  “Yeah, but you’re probably not going to find a guy to get serious about on Tinder. It’s for people who want to keep t
hings more…casual.”

  Yes. Exactly. She didn’t know if she could pull it off, but she sure as hell wanted to try.

  “Well, that’s good, because I’m only after casual.”

  “Oh.” His brows drew together. “You are?”

  “Yes.” Della didn’t bother to hide her exasperation. “Look…I got married young, and that was…well, you know what that was. I missed out on a lot. I didn’t get to date and experiment and just have some fun playing the field. I’m not after anything serious. I’m not after a relationship. I don’t want to settle down. Ever. I’m done with all that.”

  The truth was, she was just too…damaged for happily ever afters. She’d been working with Selena, her psychotherapist, to slay her demons, but there were some things that were too big. How exactly was she going to settle down, maybe have a family, when she couldn’t even turn the light out to go to sleep? What man was going to want to be with a woman who needed a night-light?

  She’d already come to terms with the fact that a serious relationship wasn’t in her future. In fact, she was fine with it. So Tinder was perfect.

  “When I say casual, what I mean is…well, basically, it’s a…hookup app.”

  He was looking at her like she was a particularly dense toddler to whom he was teaching the alphabet. “I know that. I’m not an idiot.”

  “Okay.”

  Della snatched the phone back at his okay, which sounded a little too judgy for her liking. “What business is it of yours if I want to hook up with every man in the continental United States?” She clicked on the Mona Lisa picture, and it uploaded. “I have needs, too, Tucker.”

  His whiskey eyes searched hers for a long, drawn-out moment. He looked like he wanted to clap his hands over his ears and chant la-la-la-not-listening. Damn it. She hadn’t meant to be so…forthright, but she did have needs.

  “Of course.” The way he swallowed betrayed the calm in his voice. “But you know there won’t be anybody around here on Tinder, right? Folks in these parts believe in old-fashioned courting. Dinner and a movie. Opening car doors. Holding hands. Chaste good-night kisses on the cheek. Not hookup apps and one-night stands.”