Czytaj książkę: «The Maisey Yates Collection : Cowboy Heroes»

One

When Anna Brown walked into Ace’s bar, she was contemplating whether or not she could get away with murdering her older brothers.

That’s really nice that the invitation includes a plus one. You know you can’t bring your socket wrench.

She wanted to punch Daniel in his smug face for that one. She had been flattered when she’d received her invitation to the community charity event that the West family hosted every year. A lot less so when Daniel and Mark had gotten ahold of it and decided it was the funniest thing in the world to imagine her trying to get a date to the coveted fund-raiser.

Because apparently the idea of her having a date at all was the pinnacle of comedic genius.

I can get a date, jackasses.

You want to make a bet?

Sure. It’s your money.

That exchange had seemed both enraging and empowering about an hour ago. Now she was feeling both humiliated and a little bit uncertain. The fact that she had bet on her dating prowess was...well, embarrassing didn’t even begin to describe it. But on top of that, she was a little concerned that she had no prowess to speak of.

It had been longer than she wanted to admit since she’d actually had a date. In fact, it was entirely possible that she had never technically been on one. That quick roll in the literal hay with Corbin Martin hadn’t exactly been a date per se.

And it hadn’t led to anything, either. Since she had done a wonderful job of smashing his ego with a hammer the next day at school when she’d told her best friend, Chase, about Corbin’s...limitations.

Yeah, her sexual debut had also been the final curtain.

But if men weren’t such whiny babies, maybe that wouldn’t have been the case. Also, maybe if Corbin had been able to prove to her that sex was worth the trouble, she would view it differently.

But he hadn’t. So she didn’t.

And now she needed a date.

She stalked across the room, heading toward the table that she and Chase, and often his brother, Sam, occupied on Friday nights. The lighting was dim, so she knew someone was sitting there but couldn’t make out which McCormack brother it was.

She hoped it was Chase. Because as long as she’d known Sam, she still had a hard time making conversation with him.

Talking wasn’t really his thing.

She moved closer, and the man at the table tilted his head up. Sam. Dammit. Drinking a beer and looking grumpy, which was pretty much par for the course with him. But Chase was nowhere to be seen.

“Hi,” she said, plopping down in the chair beside him. “Bad day?”

“A day.”

“Right.” At least when it came to Sam, she knew the difficult-conversation thing had nothing to do with her. That was all him.

She tapped the top of her knee, looking around the bar, trying to decide if she was going to get up and order a drink or wait for someone to come to the table. She allowed her gaze to drift across the bar, and her attention was caught by the figure of a man in the corner, black cowboy hat on his head, his face shrouded by the dim light. A woman was standing in front of him looking up at his face like he was her every birthday wish come true.

For a moment the sight of the man standing there struck her completely dumb. Broad shoulders, broad chest, strong-looking hands. The kind of hands that made her wonder if she needed to investigate the potential fuss of sex again.

He leaned up against the wall, his forearm above his head. He said something and the little blonde he was talking to practically shimmered with excitement. Anna wondered what that was like. To be the focus of a man’s attention like that. To have him look at you like a sex object instead of a drinking buddy.

For a moment she envied the woman standing there, who could absolutely get a date if she wanted one. Who would know what to wear and how to act if she were invited to a fancy gala whatever.

That woman would know what to do if the guy wanted to take her home after the date and get naked. She wouldn’t be awkward and make jokes and laugh when he got naked because there were all these feelings that were so...so weird she didn’t know how else to react.

With a man like that one...well, she doubted she would laugh. He would be all lean muscle and wicked smiles. He would look at her and she would... Okay, even in fantasy she didn’t know. But she felt hot. Very, very hot.

But in a flash, that hot feeling turned into utter horror. Because the man shifted, pushing his hat back on his head and angling slightly toward Anna, a light from above catching his angular features and illuminating his face. He changed then, from a fantasy to flesh and blood. And she realized exactly who she had just been checking out.

Chase McCormack. Her best friend in the entire world. The man she had spent years training herself to never, ever have feelings below the belt for.

She blinked rapidly, squeezing her hands into fists and trying to calm the fluttering in her stomach. “I’m going to get a drink,” she said, looking at Sam. And talk to Ace about the damn lighting in here. “Did you want something?”

He lifted his brow, and his bottle of beer. “I’m covered.”

Her heart was still pounding a little heavier than usual when she reached the bar and signaled Ace, the establishment’s owner, to ask for whatever pale ale he had on tap.

And her heart stopped altogether when she heard a deep voice from behind her.

“Why don’t you make that two.”

She whisked around and came face-to-chest with Chase. A man whose presence should be commonplace, and usually was. She was just in a weird place, thanks to high-pressure invitations and idiot brothers.

“Pale ale,” she said, taking a step back and looking up at his face. A face that should also be commonplace. But it was just so very symmetrical. Square jaw, straight nose, strong brows and dark eyes that were so direct they bordered on obscene. Like they were looking straight through your clothes or something. Not that he would ever want to look through hers. Not that she would want him to. She was too smart for that.

“That’s kind of an unusual order for you,” she continued, more to remind herself of who he was than to actually make commentary on his beverage choices. To remind herself that she knew him better than she knew herself. To do whatever she could to put that temporary moment of insanity when she’d spotted him in the corner out of her mind.

“I’m feeling adventurous,” he said, lifting one corner of his mouth, the lopsided grin disrupting the symmetry she had been admiring earlier and somehow making him look all the more compelling for it.

“Come on, McCormack. Adventurous is bungee jumping from Multnomah Falls. Adventurous is not trying a new beer.”

“Says the expert in adventure?”

“I’m an expert in a couple of things. Beer and motor oil being at the top of the list.”

“Then I won’t challenge you.”

“Probably for the best. I’m feeling a little bit bloodthirsty tonight.” She pressed her hands onto the bar top and leaned forward, watching as Ace went to get their drinks. “So. Why aren’t you still talking to short, blonde and stacked over there?”

He chuckled and it settled oddly inside her chest, rattling around before skittering down her spine. “Not really all that interested.”

“You seemed interested to me.”

“Well,” he said, “I’m not.”

“That’s inconsistent,” she said.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” he said, regarding her a little more closely than she would like. “Why are you in the mood to cause death and dismemberment?”

“Do I seem that feral?”

“Completely. Why?”

“The same reason I usually am,” she said.

“Your brothers.”

“You’re fast, I like that.”

Ace returned to their end of the bar and passed two pints toward them. “Do you want to open a tab?”

“Sure,” she said. “On him.” She gestured to Chase.

Ace smiled in return. “You look nice tonight, Anna.”

“I look...the same as I always do,” she said, glancing down at her worn gray T-shirt and no-fuss jeans.

He winked. “Exactly.”

She looked up at Chase, who was staring at the bartender, his expression unreadable. Then she looked back at Ace.

Ace was pretty hot, really. In that bearded, flannel-wearing way. Lumbersexual, or so she had overheard some college girls saying the other night as they giggled over him. Maybe he would want to be her date. Of course, easy compliments and charm aside, he also had his pick of any woman who turned up in his bar. And Anna was never anyone’s pick.

She let go of her fleeting Ace fantasy pretty quickly.

Chase grabbed the beer from the counter and handed one to her. She was careful not to let their fingers brush as she took it from him. That type of avoidance was second nature to her. Hazards of spending the years since adolescence feeling electricity when Chase got too close, and pretending she didn’t.

“We should go back and sit with Sam,” she suggested. “He looks lonely.”

Chase laughed. “You and I both know he’s no such thing. I think he would rather sit there alone.”

“Well, if he wants to be alone, then he can stay at home and drink.”

“He probably would if I didn’t force him to come out. But if I didn’t do that, he would fuse to the furniture and then I would have all of that to deal with.”

They walked back over to the table, and gradually, her heart rate returned to normal. She was relieved that the initial weirdness she had felt upon his arrival was receding.

“Hi, Sam,” Chase said, taking his seat beside his brother. Sam grunted in response. “We were just talking about the hazards of you turning into a hermit.”

“Am I not a convincing hermit already?” he asked. “Do I need to make my disdain for mankind a little less subtle?”

“That might help,” Chase said.

“I might just go play a game of darts instead. I’ll catch up with you in a minute.” Sam took a long drink of his beer and stood, leaving the bottle on the table as he made his way over to the dartboard across the bar.

Silence settled between Chase and herself. Why was this suddenly weird? Why was Anna suddenly conscious of the way his throat moved when he swallowed a sip of beer, of the shift in his forearms as he set the bottle back down on the table? Of just how masculine a sound he made when he cleared his throat?

She was suddenly even conscious of the way he breathed.

She leaned back in her chair, lifting her beer to her lips and surveying the scene around them.

It was Friday night, so most of the town of Copper Ridge, Oregon, was hanging out, drowning the last vestiges of the workweek in booze. It was not the end of the workweek for Anna. Farmers and ranchers didn’t take time off, so neither did she. She had to be on hand to make repairs when necessary, especially right now, since she was just getting her own garage off the ground.

She’d just recently quit her job at Jake’s in order to open her own shop specializing in heavy equipment, which really was how she found herself in the position she was in right now. Invited to the charity gala thing and embroiled in a bet on whether or not she could get a date.

“So why exactly do you want to kill your brothers today?” Chase asked, startling her out of her thoughts.

“Various reasons.” She didn’t know why, but something stopped her from wanting to tell him exactly what was going on. Maybe because it was humiliating. Yes, it was definitely humiliating.

“Sure. But that’s every day. Why specifically do you want to kill them today?”

She took a deep breath, keeping her eyes fixed on the fishing boat that was mounted to the wall opposite her, and very determinedly not looking at Chase. “Because. They bet that I couldn’t get a date to this thing I’m invited to and I bet them that I could.” She thought about the woman he’d been talking to a moment ago. A woman so different from herself they might as well be different species. “And right about now I’m afraid they’re right.”