Chapter 4
CHAPTER 4
WYATT
“So, I’m guessing that since you’re sitting here with me, you haven’t had any luck?” Owen asks. He runs a hand through that shiny, thick hair of his and raises his beer bottle to his pillowy lips. He’s easily the best-looking man in this bar, if not the entire county, and the fact that he’s sitting next to me just goes to show I’ve got no luck at all.
Because the hottest guy in the bar?
Yeah, he’s of absolutely no use to me.
Hooking up with Dr. Golden Boy would be fun, I bet, but he comes with a cargo hold’s worth of baggage. My best friend’s brother? Check. Beloved member of the community? Check. Such a relationship guy that he’s best friends with his ex-girlfriend? Motherfucking check .
That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop playing with him, though. It’s not like I have any other plans for tonight.
“See that guy over there?” I point to a classic Indiana dirtbag farm boy with a huge belt buckle and a dirt-stained trucker hat. He’s currently trying to give his buddy a wedgie. “Back in March he walked up to me—stone-cold sober, I’m pretty sure—and said, ‘I wish you were my pinkie toe so I could bang you on every piece of furniture in my house.’”
Owen chokes on his beer. “He did not.”
“He did! And he said it with his whole chest!” I chuckle at the memory. “Frankly, the audacity was almost a turn-on. But it was thoroughly overpowered by the cringe.”
Owen shakes his head. “I cannot imagine saying that to a stranger. Honestly, I can’t imagine saying that to anyone I know, either.”
I cock an eyebrow at him. “Not into flirting?”
“I didn’t say that.” The tops of his ears go red, and I want to chase that blush like a high.
“Okay, then flirt with me,” I say, scooting my chair closer to him until my knees brush his. I lean in so that we’re face-to-face andcross my arms over my chest. I’m rewarded when his gaze drifts down to the swell of my breasts.
Fuck, this is fun.
He pauses, his dark brows furrowed in confusion. “What?”
I let a cocky grin spread across my lips. “Seriously. Flirt with me. Right now.”
He rolls his eyes, trying to play it off, but his cheeks flush the most glorious scarlet. “That’s…not how it works.”
But now I’m revved up. I cannot stop. I am horny and have no prospects in this bar beyond this blushing man I cannot have. I’ve had two whole beers after not drinking for three months. Hell, I’m drunk on being out of the house, listening to a jukebox play “Hurts So Good” for the fourth time. I’m just thrilled to pieces to hear a sound other than a baby crying.
If I can’t get laid, making Owen McBride blush is maybe the next best thing.
And so I give him my best devilish grin.
“How what works? Your moves?” I ask. I level my gaze at his gorgeous baby blues, pinning him to the chair with hooded eyes. “Owen, are you telling me you have actual moves ? And you won’t show me? How dare you allude to moves and refuse to demonstrate them! Come on, please? Pretty please? I promise never to tell anyone about your moves or use them against you. I’m just asking to see them, Owen. Please ? ”
I bat my eyelashes and rattle on like a schoolyard bully, desperate to make his cheeks flush again. Instead, his jaw ticks like he’s thinking hard or trying not to smile. Then his beer bottle hits the table with a heavy thud.
He leans forward until I can feel the heat coming off him, his long legs caging mine between his knees. He rests his warm, heavy hands on my thighs. He gives the slightest flex of his fingers, just the barest hint of a squeeze, and it sends an electric shock directly up my legs and into my panties.
But it’s nothing— nothing —compared to the way his ice-blue eyes go dark, practically navy, one heavy brow rising.
“You done being a brat, Wyatt? Or do you really want to play?” His voice is the most delicious deep growl of warning. The sound reverberates through my body, and it’s all I can do not to shiver.
All my words evaporate in my mouth. Only a tiny huff of a sigh escapes, my lips parted in half shock, half arousal. And every one of those reasons why Owen McBride isn’t for me?
They run straight for the hills.
Then he releases me, leans back in his chair like a Roman emperor, and reaches for his beer. Like nothing ever happened. Like he didn’t touch me, didn’t growl at me, didn’t turn me the fuck on with that little stunt.
But when that beer bottle meets his lips again, I don’t miss the quirk of a smile.
“Holy shit, McBride,” I say, and swat at his biceps, trying to erase the heat coursing through my body like an electric current.
He shrugs, the corners of his lips tugging up farther. “You asked to see my moves.”
“It’s always the nice ones,” I say, shaking my head. I turn and rest my elbows on the tabletop before I do something stupid, like climb into his lap and try to taste the beer on his lips.
Owen laughs. “Yeah, I think you’ve said that to me a time or two.”
I reach for my own beer and find the bottle empty. I want to order another, but if I have a third beer on a night like tonight, lord knows what I might do. I set the bottle back down on the table and laugh.
“I don’t even know if I have anything to say back to that.”
“Wyatt Hart at a loss for words? There’s a first.” Owen’s grin spreads wide now, the kind you see in toothpaste commercials. The kind that winds up on the front page of the local newspaper after he rescues a baby from a well or whatever Boy Scouts like Owen McBride get up to in their spare time.
I hate how much I like it.
“Where’d you learn to talk like that, from Archer?”
Owen scoffs. “You seriously think that of all my brothers, Archer is the biggest flirt? Archer has all the finesse of a third grader selling Girl Scout cookies.”
I roll my eyes. “Luckily, much like Archer, Girl Scout cookies sell themselves.”
He laughs. “Got a thing for my big brother, eh?”
I shake my head. “Not my type. But anyone can see you McBride boys are genetically blessed. You’re all built like Paul Bunyan and have that thick wavy hair that should be in shampoo commercials. To say nothing of the blue eyes on you people, my god.”
There’s that damn grin again. “Dang, Wyatt. If you want me so bad, just speak up.”
Maybe it’s the two beers, or maybe it’s that I don’t like feeling like he’s got the upper hand, but either way, I lean in and say loudly and clearly into his ear, “ I want you .”
The grin drops from his face, his blue eyes going wide. I’ve got him, and what I said even has the benefit of being true. But then I drop back onto my stool. “Unfortunately, you’re not for me.”
He scoffs. “And why is that?”
“Because I’m here to get laid, and you’re here to have drinks with your ex-girlfriend, who is now your best friend.”
“So?”
Oh, this sweet summer child. He actually looks puzzled.
“So you’re a relationship guy,” I explain. “And I’m not a relationship girl. I’m the kind of girl who likes to work out her frustrations and fulfill her needs with a willing and talented partner, but I’m not looking for dinner and dancing.”
Owen stares at me for a long beat, those dark brows furrowing. That studious gaze sends heat into my cheeks, and just like that, I’m back off my game.
Then he smirks. He smirks . I didn’t even know Owen McBride could do that.
“That’s a shame,” he says. “Because I’m a great dancer.”
Fuck . This is not how I imagined this conversation going.
I try to get my feet back under me. Because even if he is turning out to be a grade A flirt, it doesn’t change the fact that I am absolute not, under any circumstances, going to hook up with Owen McBride. No matter how much my fingers itch to know what the planes of his muscular chest feel like, no matter how much I want to sink my teeth into his full lower lip and then soothe that bite with my tongue, no matter how much I want to feel those big, strong, warm hands all over my body…I am absolutely not hooking up with Owen McBride. It would be like bringing a puppy home from the pound and then taking him back the next morning.
I nod. “Oh, I believe that. I also bet you have a preferred florist for sending ostentatious bouquets to your lady love.” I dig my chipped nail into the corner of the label on the beer bottle. “Flowers make me sneeze, Owen.”
He nods like he’s filing that away. So studious, this one.
“So fuck buddy, yes, flowers, no,” he says, and there go my hormones again. Jesus Christ, Glenn needs to turn down the heat in this bar before I start sweating.
I paste on my best unimpressed grin, because the only thing I want less than a relationship guy is to lose this verbal jousting match.
“You kiss kids’ boo-boos with that mouth?”
“I have a handheld fan shaped like a butterfly,” he says with a lazy shrug. “Big hit with the toddler set.”
Why does that turn me on?
Within seconds, there’s a pile of beer bottle label shreds on the table. Owen’s eyes track my fingers like he knows he’s got me. That little pile is proof of the tatters of my control.
“You know, it’s possible you’re wrong about me,” he says, his voice so low that it almost disappears beneath the noise of the jukebox. Which is playing “Hurts So Good” again , like John Mellencamp himself is trying to convince me to fuck Owen McBride. And there’s no doubt it would be, as the Coug says, a little bit of fun . I let my eyes roam over his tall, muscular frame, confident and relaxed on that wooden barstool. Oh yeah, sing it again, Johnny Cougar, because lord knows there are things we could do.
“I’m not wrong,” I say, but my voice cracks.
Owen reaches for my hand, stilling my fingers on the beer bottle.
“I am a boyfriend guy. A really fucking good one,” he says. “I listen and send flowers and apologize sincerely. I like spending time with a woman, learning her body like a textbook, highlighting all the best parts.”
My mouth has gone dry, and I can hear the whoosh of my blood in my eardrums.
“But I haven’t really had time for all that lately, and anyway, sometimes a little trouble is fun,” he says. And I’m pretty sure my heart skids to a halt.
Owen tips the last of his beer into his mouth, then sets the bottle on the table. He pulls out his wallet and drops a twenty next to it—of course he’s an extravagant tipper—then rises from his stool. My gaze follows him, my head tipping back. Fuck, he’s tall. And his shoulders are capped with the most delicious muscles that strain at his Henley.
“I think I’m done here,” he says, shrugging on his coat. He turns to me, those ice-blue eyes capturing mine. “I’m going to head out to my truck. I’d love it if you came with me.”
His eyes are smoldering in a way that’s usually reserved for guys who’ve broken hearts or seen the inside of a county jail. That is not Owen McBride.
Where did this guy come from? Am I actually wrong about him?
And then, as if he’s on a mission to scramble my brain and my lady parts in one go, he leans down, his lips just barely brushing my ear.
“Come with me, Wyatt,” he says, his voice like a shot straight to my clit. It takes everything I have not to leap off this stool, bolt out to the parking lot, strip off all my clothes, and wait for him, splayed out on the hood of his truck.
But I do have some semblance of self-control, and I’m not about to surrender all of it. So I reach up and grab a fistful of that shirt, relishing the softness of it in my grip. I tug on the fabric until he bends down.
Now it’s my lips against his ear.
“You sure about that, Doc? No take-backs.”
And then I dart the tip of my tongue out, flicking the soft skin just beneath his ear. The groan he lets out comes with the kind of electric current that should blow every fuse in this place.
He grabs my hand, tugging me off my stool. I let myself be pulled, let my body fall into his. The hard planes of muscle I imagined are under my palms. I may be about to make a colossal mistake, but hey, I’m really fucking good at those. At least that’s in my wheelhouse.
“Let’s go,” he says. The commanding tone is unfamiliar but so, so good. I want to strip off all my clothes and bathe in the heat of it.