What If: A Small Town Big Love Novel

by Collins, Kelly

  Chapter Two

  John

  John’s Lamborghini hugged the curves of the road back to Main Street. He hit the pedal with a lead foot, hoping Kevin would come after him to give him a ticket. He couldn’t believe he’d almost been staring down the barrel of a gun tonight.

  He rarely threw his weight around, but he would make sure that cop had his ass handed to him. Kevin wouldn’t come out of this unscathed. If he played his cards right, he was going to meet up with an off-duty Kevin, in the dark, on the side of the road.

  He left Lucy’s house frustrated for more reasons than Kevin. Everyone else he’d approached about selling had been interested or at least listened. She was wounded.

  Like she had been at first, people were pleased to meet him. The way she’d pushed him out the door, just shy of cursing him, made him feel dirty, but he would win her over if it was the last thing he did. He didn’t want to have this deal ruin people’s lives or make them sour. He recalled how she’d been incredibly sweet at first, and when he left, she was bitter and angry.

  When he’d driven up in front of the house, the house he’d grown up in, it was strange seeing other people there, but Lucy looked like she belonged. She made it feel like a different structure, simply by her presence. When he walked inside, he was so surprised at how she’d decorated. It was like walking back in time.

  There was something terribly tragic about the fact they were at odds, because under other circumstances, he would have been interested in her. He found her incredibly beautiful. That amazing hair.

  So many things surprised him about her. The way her hair had fallen in his way when he let the air out of the tires and how she’d pulled it back like it was in trouble. He laughed out loud, reliving that moment and feeling better.

  However, he’d left feeling like the house she rented from him wasn’t his to sell. Somehow she’d made it hers.

  With a head so filled with Lucy Shoemaker, he almost missed the turn onto Main Street. He nearly spun out when he veered his roadster into the gravel parking lot of Blackwood’s Saloon. He would have been better off with a truck—but it wouldn’t have been as much fun.

  It was dark out when he breezed into the western style bar unrecognized, except by his brother Caleb. The place hadn’t changed at all. Lots of wood. Lots of mirrors. Lots of booze. On any given night, the same people gathered year after year to socialize and listen to music.

  John remembered when the corner stage had held live entertainment. Now a jukebox stood where the band would have once been. Had it been that long since he’d visited?

  He and his brother had planned to grab a beer and dinner after they met with the last people on their lists. He slid into the booth made of smooth knotty pine and stared at Caleb, who was busy flipping through his phone.

  “You tell her?” his brother asked without looking up.

  “Yes.” John’s reply was forced and tight.

  The discussion reinvigorated his bad feelings. He wished things had gone differently.

  “So, what does a ‘Lucy Shoemaker’ look like?” Caleb had not picked up on his sour mood.

  “She’s not a ‘what,’ she’s a person. She’s a hottie.” His voice was riddled with tension. “A firecracker too. Got a set of lungs on her.”

  “Lungs?” Caleb asked mischievously, finally looking him in the eye. He pointed to his chest. “You mean lungs, right?”

  John arched his eyebrow, warning his brother. He was in no mood for his antics. Caleb tilted his head as soon as he figured that out.

  “What happened?” He finally seemed to notice John’s uncharacteristically bad disposition. “You’re mad.”

  “A local cop threatened to pull a gun on me.” He texted as quickly as his fingers would let him. “I’ve never come so close to violence in all my life, but I keep reliving the moment when he reached for his weapon. I want to go back in time and squash the asshole. I’m texting his boss right now. He works in our town, which means he’ll fall under the town council.”

  “What did you do?” Caleb asked, suddenly serious.

  “What could I do? There was another person present. I should have called another officer, but I have no idea how many this town has. He may be the only one.” He laughed at the irony. “He certainly was the only one with a gun at the time.” John shrugged. “I threatened his job. That was the best I could do.”

  “No, I mean why would he pull a gun on you?”

  “I interacted with the object of his desire,” he said. “I think he’s hot for Lucy, not that I can blame him, but she doesn’t appear to reciprocate.”

  “Hmm. Maybe I should check her out.”

  John reached across the table and put his hand on his brother’s arm, not violently, but with enough pressure to give Caleb pause.

  “Leave her alone. It’s not a good time. On top of that, she’s upset about the sale. The woman threw me out of the house.”

  Caleb shuffled the papers in front of him.

  “She’s entitled to be upset. She’s a double dipper.” He pointed to Lucy’s name on the list. “The house and her office are rented, but she’ll be okay. It’s a fresh idea, and she needs time to acclimate. We’ll throw extra money her way and make her sign an NDA so no one knows we paid her more.”

  “I don’t know.” He leaned forward and rested his chin on his knuckles. “I’m not feeling great about this. I don’t think I want to talk business right now. It was easy when everyone was on board, but I met the one person who cares more about the town than money.”

  His phone buzzed and he stared at the screen.

  “Oh great,” he said with frustration. “This day gets better and better.”

  He rarely experienced this kind of tension, and wasn’t handling it well. He decided he didn’t like the stress.

  “What?” Caleb leaned forward to glance at the lit screen.

  “She’s texting me.” He read her message out loud. “I’m contacting my lawyer, Deena Grace.”

  “Deena Grace,” mocked Caleb softly. “We have a Lucy Shoemaker and a Deena Grace. Both mystery women. We’ve been away from town too long.”

  Caleb pulled out his phone.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I wanted to see what Deena looks like. It’s a cute name, but you never know with these things.”

  He watched as his brother’s face transformed. The furrow between his brows softened and his lips curled into a smile. Caleb turned his phone so he could see.

  “Beautiful, right?” Caleb declared. “Your firecracker and her lawyer. There’s one for each of us. I think we hit the mother lode.”

  “No gold mining jokes tonight, okay?” He pressed his eyes closed.

  Caleb had a super annoying habit of laying on the Old West references whenever they were in Blackwood. John had reached his limit for the evening.

  “Okay, okay,” Caleb said defensively. “Relax. Let’s have that beer and a burger. I’m hungry anyway.”

  “I know. We’re only a minute from home and I feel like we’re in another universe. A couple days of red meat and too many carbohydrates sounded great at first, but I’m feeling it.”

  The brothers were clean eaters. They preferred light meals, a little red meat and lots of greens. After days in a bar, negotiating over fries and grilled cheese, they’d had it.

  “What do you think Lucy eats?” Caleb teased. “You think she’s a meat eater?” He gave him a salacious look. The kind that said his mind was in the gutter.

  John fired a scowl at him that made Caleb bust up laughing. A few heads in the saloon turned.

  “I’m being serious now, Cal. Don’t tease me about her. We can’t mess around with these women,” he grumbled. “It’s not fair. Lucy has her business and the house to deal with. On top of that, she has to put up with that cop. The last thing she needs is the two of us hitting on her and her lawyer. Let’s keep this all about business.”

  “I’m looking and thinking,” protested Caleb. “No harm. I read D
eena’s bio. I was preparing to make fun of her, but she’s pretty impressive. I say we recommend her as the local counsel in exchange for helping us get Lucy on board.”

  He cut his eyes to his little brother and shook his head.

  “We need to run ideas like that by the board before we use it as a pickup line. Besides, I think Lucy will come around. Like you said, she’s justifiably upset. She’ll sleep on things, and we’ll talk in the morning. It was a stressful evening for all of us.”

  His phone buzzed again. He read the message to Caleb. It was from the councilman, indicating that Kevin would be let go. It was definitely a who-you-know kind of world. Being a Blackwood had its privileges.

  “Well, that’s that,” John said with satisfaction. “Kevin with the itchy trigger finger is now terminated. He won’t be bothering me or Lucy Shoemaker anymore.”

  “Yeah, that poor, sweet, hot little woman with an admirer.” Caleb smiled a wicked smile. He stared at John and waited.

  “What?” He raised his hands in question. “How many beers have you had?”

  Caleb ignored him. “So how hot is she?”

  “Lucy?”

  “No, asshole, the other woman whose name you keep mentioning.” He rolled his eyes. “We saw at least five different people today, yet this one is on your mind. She’s on your tongue.”

  Someone started up the music and started a line dance. Caleb joined in while they waited for dinner. While John waited alone, the waitress appeared with a beer and stayed a minute to flirt, leaning over until her lungs almost fell out of her shirt.

  He let his eyes walk across her. She was a beautiful woman. Technically she was as pretty as Lucy, but she was far too young for his taste.

  Ordinarily, her age wouldn’t bother him. She was at least twenty-one and legal. If he didn’t think he’d eventually leave town and not come back, he might be interested. Maybe his lack of interest was because he was tired. Lucy was the only negative experience he’d had delivering the news, but he couldn’t get her out of his mind.

  He wanted to run his fingers through her long, blond-streaked hair. It reminded him of the wild horses of the Rockies. She was petite and perfectly proportioned. Her hands were so delicate and yet she appeared strong and mighty.

  Now he was bummed they were going to sell because he would have enjoyed getting to know her. Talk about bad timing.

  Chapter Three

  Lucy

  Lucy had big plans for the evening. Right about four, when the work she’d expected didn’t come, she daydreamed about sitting on her comfy couch under a blanket in front of her computer, zoning out on internet videos. She had leftover mac and cheese calling her name, and now she was so upset by both John and Kevin that she wasn’t even hungry.

  She locked the front door to avoid unwanted visitors and texted John Blackwood a warning that she would notify her attorney of his visit. She then tossed his card into her purse as if getting it out of sight made him go away as well.

  She pulled the leftovers from the fridge and set them on the kitchen counter, got out her giant pitcher of iced tea and placed it next to the food. She unwrapped the bowl of pasta but the plastic stuck. She jerked at it, hit the pitcher, tipped the bowl, and spilled the tea directly into it. It was a perfect accident.

  She nearly cried. The food wasn’t ruined—it was wet—but the tea was gone. She dumped the liquid out of the bowl of mac and cheese, took a deep breath and mopped up the spill with a wad of paper towels.

  Not paying attention, her elbow hit the bowl on the table and knocked it face down on the floor. Now the mac and cheese was ruined. She stood paralyzed by this turn of events. It was like she was possessed with bad luck that was going out of its way to destroy what was left of her night.

  She took stock of the evening, each part of it, from Kevin who wouldn’t leave her alone to the gorgeous guy who’d started out flirting and ended up destroying her day.

  Despite his plan to sell her house, there was some consolation when a good-looking man noticed her and found her attractive. She stared at the mess around her and sighed. There was no way to salvage the past, and no way to save her dinner. It was a good thing she’d lost her appetite. She did the only thing that made sense. She swept everything into a dustpan and headed to the bar for a beer or maybe three.

  As soon as she landed at the Blackwood Saloon, she texted her lawyer Deena Grace to let her know what was going on. Deena was a nuts-and-bolts lawyer who helped her with everything from taxes to the lease she’d signed with the Blackwood Corporation. She didn’t have the money to have Deena review the binding documents again to see if she had a leg to stand on against John, but she didn’t feel like finding the answer herself. Didn’t feel qualified to sift through the jargon in search of a solution.

  She went straight to the bar. Before her butt hit the stool, Damon uncapped her favorite beer and set it in front of her. She’d taken one sip when someone fired up her favorite line dancing song. Despite her bad day, her mood lightened with the catchy tune. She turned around and looked at the dancers lining up.

  “Come on, Lucy,” a regular named Fred called to her.

  She hesitated. Though she was still cranky, it wasn’t Fred’s fault she’d had a bad day. She wondered if he too was going to get caught up in the big sell-out. She slipped off her seat and joined the line, becoming sandwiched between Fred and a gorgeous man she’d never seen before. That was twice in one day where she was close to a drop-dead sexy guy.

  She danced through that song and the next. She got into the music, grooving and swinging, putting her heart, soul, and body into it. She attempted to make her moves as fluid as possible, exorcising the frustration she felt by the facts of her life. She liked that line dancing involved everyone and she wasn’t in it alone.

  She’d been getting into the dance when she lifted her head and noted that John was there. So tall. So damn good looking. His longish dark hair set off nicely by his impeccable dark clothes. If sin had a look, he’d be the model. He leaned against an empty two-top, watching her.

  He seemed transfixed, his hazel eyes glued to her, a deep, haunted expression on his face. His gaze reached her like a ghost, causing a shiver to travel through her. He inspired a longing in her that she couldn’t shake. Thoughts of him made her fantasize about sex in every possible way. Something she hadn’t had in forever. She was lonely, and for a second wished she could be stranded on a desert island with him. The song ended, the fantasy disappeared and she bowed out of dancing.

  She picked her beer up off the counter where it had been waiting and headed to the pool table. It was empty, so maybe she’d find her alone time in the crowded bar. Everyone in Blackwood knew she was the best player. They’d play her if the game was friendly, but if there was something at stake, they didn’t bother her.

  Despite seeing John again, she felt better. She got a dance, connected with the locals, and would knock out a couple of games before she went home.

  Painstakingly, she racked the balls, making sure they were tight and even. She twined her ever-spilling hair behind her. She would tuck it in the neck of her shirt like she often did, but it was not a move she would make in front of John. No sense in calling attention to herself.

  She’d carefully lifted the rack off of the balls when John appeared before her. She’d been half-expecting him. Probably would have been disappointed if he’d left her alone. She selected a cue and chalked it. He wrote his name on the board, putting himself next in line to play and appeared to wait for an acknowledgment.

  “Thanks, but I don’t want to play with anyone,” she said.

  He shrugged like he didn’t care. She wished she could drop the adversarial position she had taken and start anew, but on top of being upset because he was selling her place, she felt like she had dug herself in and corrupted her chances for anything pleasant with him, be it a conversation or something more. Her stubborn streak forced her to continue her onslaught of disappointment and disagreeable behavior.

>   “I know where to reach you if I want to,” she said. “That is, if you’re here to ask me if I want to talk.”

  “No, I’m here to play pool. The way it works is I put my name on the board and play the first available person. That would be you,” he said evenly.

  She was so frustrated. She didn’t want to hang out with this man—and yet she did.

  “I don’t want to shoot pool with a Blackwood. So far, your appearance hasn’t brought me anything but trouble.”

  “You recently danced with one.” He pointed to the good-looking guy who was behind her in line. “That’s my brother, Caleb.”

  She studied the stranger who had been so close to her on the dance floor. He had exactly the same coloring as John—rich dark brown hair the color of bitter chocolate and a warm complexion. Somewhere in the Blackwood line was a tribe native to Colorado.

  She noted the similarities but also the differences. Caleb was a shorter, more bullish version of his brother, with a hint of mischief in his eyes. They both wore their personalities on their faces, but Caleb acted like he was always the life of the party. A perpetual frat boy. He seemed too much and she guessed he could get on a person’s nerves. John appeared calmer, more reserved—in control. Certainly persistent and no less annoying.

  She rolled her eyes and swallowed her impulse to growl. She felt like she had been made a fool of, almost tricked. He’d watched her dance knowing she had no idea she was dancing with a Blackwood.

  “Might as well add balance and play with me,” he pressed softly.

  “Well, Mr. Blackwood, when I’m done, you can go play with yourself.”

  He laughed hard at her slight. She had to admit it was a good one, almost as good as when he’d told her he could come in her. While he meant her house, it didn’t come out that way. She joined him with a chuckle. The next thing she knew, he had smoothly moved in close and reached past her for a cue of his own.

  She caught a faint whiff of his cologne. Its hints of cedar and amber aroused her. She imagined breathing him in while they kissed or made love. He picked up the chalk that she’d used and coated the tip of his cue in the slow, measured motion. The whole time he gazed at her with his deep, dark eyes like she was the only person in existence.