Love You Truly (Buttercup Hill #3)

Chapter 5

Mallory

A half hour later, we’re in a back booth at the Dark Horse, which Mary says reminds her of home. “I used to cook meat pies in a kitchen half that size,” she says, pointing at the kitchen, which she insisted on seeing the first time we came here.

“Like, meat in a pie? Or is it really something else like sweetbreads?” I can’t help wincing at the memory of my first awkward bite of that particular dish on a trip to England.

She laughs. “I take it you were one of those tourists who thought sweetbreads were a dessert, then?”

“Honest mistake. I was just a kid when we took a family trip to London, and my parents didn’t know any better, so they couldn’t warn me.”

She nods. “Meat pies are how they sound. Meat in a pastry dough.” She inhales a deep breath and closes her eyes. When she opens them, she scans the bar menu hopefully.

“You won’t find those here, I’m afraid. It’s pizza and wings. Basic bar food.”

“I’ll make do with some chips.” She shoves the menu across the table to me, but I slip it between the salt and pepper shakers and a bottle of ketchup on our dark wood table.

Taking a wary glance behind me, I survey the crowd. So far, so good. No sign of anyone I know, which is what I expected when we chose this place. The crowd is small. A few people play pool at the one table in back, and three guys sit at the bar watching a baseball game on the big screen TV. The easy beat of old-school rock plays in the background, and a steady hum of voices makes the place feel packed yet anonymous.

“You want a dark beer or a lager?” Mary asks, signaling to the bartender with a raised finger.

“Dark.”

Mary holds up a second finger. It didn’t take her long to get in tight with the owners of this pub and everyone who works here. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she’s angling to supplement her au pair salary with a few shifts at the bar, but she denies that she’s being anything other than friendly.

Unlike most of the bars around town, where visitors sample glasses of local wines and angle to spot celebrities, this place is homey and rustic. Some might even call it shabby.

I’m happy to sit with my back to the door and tune out everything but Mary.

A few of the other tables are occupied by couples or groups, and I notice no one is lined up to play darts. “One game,” I tell Mary, pushing my chair back.

“Hell yeah.” She trails behind me and swipes our two pints of beer from the server. She hands me mine and keeps moving to the chalkboard, where she writes our initials.

“There’s no point in keeping score. You’re a ringer.” Last time we played, she got six bullseyes and eventually conceded to playing with her left hand. Even then, she beat me.

“My town didn’t have much to do,” she explains, plucking the darts from where they stick out at awkward angles and holding them with the little blue flags facing my hand. “Here. You go first.”

I back into position behind the painted line on the scratched wood floor and focus on the board. Raising the dart in front of my eyes, I move my hand back and forth a few times, lining up my aim. Then I throw the dart and watch it sail straight into the pie shape above the six.

Mary marks my score on the chalkboard and I throw the next dart. Closer to the center, but not great. Mary marks an eight. The rest of my darts hit various places on the board. It’s a respectable first round for someone whose opponent didn’t grow up in a pub.

Backing away, I get ready for the drubbing that will occur in a matter of seconds.

Mary takes a swig of her beer. Then another. “Helps my focus,” she explains. She spends far less time than I did surveying the board before throwing her first dart. It hits the largest ring outside the bullseye.

“Bollocks.”

“Are you kidding me? That’s great.”

“Not great, but I’m just getting warmed up.” She squares her shoulders and takes aim again, squinting at the board. The dart flies straight and hits just to the right of the center. “There we go. Getting closer.”

I mark her score, which is already so much better than mine. If I don’t hit some big numbers or if Mary doesn’t cramp up in the next couple of minutes, this game is going to be over before it starts.

Mary looks at the floor, then stares at the target with such focus I’m surprised it doesn’t burst into flames. She takes another sip with her left hand and proceeds to hit the bullseye before she even swallows. “What are we playing to?” Her smile returns.

I’m going to get my ass handed to me in this game, but I’d rather be here than almost any place else.

“Does it matter?” I sound grumpy, but really, this is the happiest I’ve been all day. Here, in this grubby bar, I don’t have to be Mallory Rutherford, super social party girl who’s always looking for a new man. I don’t have to prance around in fancy shoes with red soles and taunt the vineyard owners all over town with the idea that I might have land to sell in order to stay relevant in this small community.

I can just be myself, a shy girl who gets excited about darts and would rather drink beer than wine sometimes. This place is my own little haven.

Or at least it was.

The door swings open.

“Speak of the devil.”

My heart sinks because there’s only one devil, and I’ve already dealt with him once today. I don’t want to speak of him or think about him. I especially don’t want to see him.

I feel his breath against the back of my neck before he says a word. It’s like a Saharan wind slapping my skin, and I bristle at his presence.

“Mal.” The way he says my name feels more like a command than a greeting. His voice lacks any warmth, and for the millionth time, I ask myself how I ever fell for him in the first place.

I debate just not turning around. I could pretend I didn’t hear him and continue throwing darts at the board. Or I could turn and throw darts at him. My fingers twitch at the idea of that.

“Babe…” My shoulders rise at the term of endearment.

Slowly, I turn around. “‘Babe?’ Really?”

He smiles. Hair slicked back, perfect teeth, a smile that looks like a puma who wants a meal. Felix shrugs and tilts his head to the side, fixing his dark eyes on me. They used to seem soulful. Now I know the man has no soul. He just wants what he wants, and in my case, he wants our family’s land.

“You are still a babe,” he says. “But if you want, I’ll call you something else.”

“You don’t seem to understand, Felix. I don’t want you to call me at all.”

Now his smile bends into the smirk of the devil that fits his face so much better. “You keep saying that…”

“Because I mean it. What did you do, follow me here?”

Felix fondles his chin in a way I found sexy for a brief insane moment, and when his eyes finish their sweep around the interior of the bar, they land on me. He tilts his head and furrows his brow. Doesn’t make him any less of a stalker.

“Maybe.”

I feel my blood pressure rise at the idea that he did, in fact, follow me. “Do I need to take out a restraining order, Felix?”

He holds up his hands and takes one step back, but the smirk on his face makes it clear he thinks this is all a joke.

Mary, who’s been watching our exchange, takes a couple of steps closer. She stands in front of Felix with one arm crossed over the other, a handful of darts in her extended hand. “We’re in the middle of a game, if you don’t mind. You should sod off.”

Felix laughs. “I don’t mind. Finish your game. I can wait.” Signaling at the bar, he mimes the size of a rocks glass. Ordering his usual bourbon, I assume.

“Restraining order sounds like a decent idea,” I tell Felix, grabbing one of the darts from Mary’s still-outstretched hand. I hold it in throwing position, and if he doesn’t move, it’s going to hit him squarely in the chest. He wisely sidesteps and lets me take aim at the board.

The dart flies wild and barely makes it onto the board at all, scoring me a measly two points. Damn him. Not only is he ruining my anonymous night out, he’s ruining my darts game.

“Do you mind?” I take the remaining darts from Mary, and she goes to the chalkboard.

Felix looks from me to the dartboard and takes another step back. Crossing his arms, he smirks as though he’s getting ready for an epic fail. Even when we were together, he loved it when I fell short of any objective. Brownies overbaked? He smoothed the hair off my forehead and told me it was okay that I wasn’t a chef. Plants underwatered? He gave me a condescending smile and said he hoped I’d do better at keeping our future children alive.

Secretly—or not so secretly—he seemed to enjoy my little failings. They provided proof that I needed him more than I actually did.

I hone my focus. Hell, if I’m going to lose with him watching. I line up my next dart and let it fly.

It hits the bull’s-eye like it has a homing device stored in its little feathers. The success of the first bull’s-eye fuels three more, and now my score on the chalkboard rivals Mary’s. Okay, not exactly because she’s trounced me in the past four rounds, but if she throws blindfolded, I have a fighting chance now.

I turn back to Felix with a plastered-on smile. “Nice seeing you, but I’m going to enjoy the rest of my evening with my friend.”

Mary gives him a little wave. “Bye, Felicia,” she says in her clipped accent. But Felix doesn’t take the hint.

In fact, he steps closer. I feel the rush of air when the door to the place opens and closes again, but I don’t look away from Felix.

“Just when we were getting along so well, you have to go and be rude.”

“I’m not being rude. I’m asking you to leave me alone.”

He takes another step closer crowding me. His finger reaches out and he boops me on the nose. It’s a too-familiar gesture, but Felix takes liberties, inserts himself into situations by referencing some tiny past interaction like it was an intimate moment.

“Sorry, babe. Not until we talk.”

Shuddering at the sound of the word ‘babe,’ I exhale a long breath and close my eyes. As I count backward from five, I calculate the odds that Felix will be gone when I open them. Pretty close to zero, and I’m good at math.

“She told you to go. I’d listen if I were you.” The voice is deep, gruff, threatening.

When my eyes open, I’m surprised to see Dash Corbett nearly burning a hole through Felix’s face with his fiery glare.

Oh god.

As if the day weren’t going horribly enough, I’m pummeled with another level of humiliation, one I’ve successfully blocked for the past two weeks.

After our run-in at the grocery store a month ago, something kept nagging at me. Something about the gentlemanly grace of a guy who kept me from plummeting to certain injury in a sea of pickle juice, mixed with something so hot that my skin still reacts from the mere memory.

I couldn’t explain it at the time and I still can’t. I’ve known the Corbett family most of my life and I even dated the middle brother, Jax, briefly a few years ago. Or more like I hooked up with him. Potato, potah-to.

No doubt, the Corbett siblings have the impression of me as a snooty, man-crazy socialite. In fact, I acted haughty and gossipy when I ran into PJ with a billionaire in a movie theater a month back because I’d gotten a bad grade in one of my accounting classes, and it was easier to hide behind a mask than let my disappointment show.

It's how I roll. Feelings are mine and only mine. Perceptions offer a safe hiding place for things I don’t want people to know.

But after my collision with Dash, thoughts of him disrupted my days. Two weeks later, I couldn’t make them stop. So after losing one too many dart games one night and consuming one too many black and tans, I sent him a text.

And asked him out.

Then, crickets.

Yup, he ignored the text. Didn’t merely turn me down. He didn’t respond at all. And now here he is in all his glare-y splendor, facing off against my ex for some reason. It doesn’t excuse his failure to reply to a text in a timely manner. Ignoring me is just plain rude.

I wish I didn’t notice the way a lock of his dark hair falls over his forehead like he just finished shoving his hands in it and a stray piece fell loose. His pale blue eyes are arresting this close up, begging me to stare, but I force my gaze downward, snagging on the rough stubble that makes him look like he just rolled out of bed after having sex for forty-eight hours straight.

For a moment, my mind wanders to what that would be like. Then I shake myself out of the trance I’ve somehow fallen under and remind myself that asking him on a date was purely a business move, which is irrelevant now anyway.

If he simply forgot to reply, I’m guessing he remembers now. He offers me that lady-killer smile of his, only I’m not falling for it. Well, I’m trying not to, but it’s difficult.

It’s even harder when he turns and fixes an icy stare squarely on Felix. My insides twist and heat at how much I like it.

His glare emphasizes the tiny crinkles around his eyes, which narrow in a way that should not be this sexy. His chest, muscular under a worn tee, heaves with anger similar to what I feel. And his scowl makes his boyish face look so much more serious. Menacing. Hot.

For a second, I imagine him hovering over my body after stripping off every last stitch of clothing. I picture the same intense expression on his face as he contemplates all the ways he can pleasure me, leaving me aching…

Jesus. What?

I shake myself out of the momentary reverie and refocus. Clearly, the ire I feel toward Felix has affected my sanity.

Glancing back at Dash, I see him looking at my ex like he’s the pond scum he is. I appreciate it, though it surprises me because Mary is the only other person I’ve ever seen with the same look of disgust when she beholds Felix’s annoying face. And she’s used to kicking drunk guys out of pubs.

I wonder if Dash knows Felix well. He must, based on the distaste he seems to have for him. I mentally add that fact to the tally of things he and I have in common. So far, the total is one, but it’s one more than we had a month earlier in the grocery store.

“She asked you to leave her alone.” Dash’s voice is deeper than I remember it sounding just hours earlier. There’s a growl that makes him sound dangerous. Also so incredibly sexy.

Stop it.

Now is not the time for me to be thinking of Dash as anything other than a temporary saving grace who allows me to take a couple steps away from Felix. The area around me feels cooler now, and I inhale a gulp of air.

Felix turns to stand toe-to-toe with Dash, and I notice for the first time how small Felix looks. Unimposing.

Or maybe it’s Dash who looks especially tall and built like a lumberjack.

“Not your business, fella,” Felix says.

“I’ll decide that for myself.”

“I’m not joking. This is between me and a friend.”

Felix attempts to return Dash’s angry stare with the same ferocity, but it’s a waste of effort. He looks outmatched, even as a server shows up by his side and hands him a small tumbler of bourbon. Felix takes the drink but ignores her.

“It’s polite to say thank you,” I can’t help saying.

“Jesus, are you serious?” He makes an exaggerated turning gesture toward the server, a diminutive blonde with black eyeliner who looks like she could kick Felix’s ass with a hand tied behind her back. She also doesn’t care enough about him to bother.

“You wanna pay now or open a tab?”

With a grimace, Felix shoves a hand into his pocket and retrieves his wallet. Without looking, he yanks out a twenty and shoves it at her. “Thank. You,” he breathes in her face. Then he downs half his drink in one pull. It feels like dramatics—tough cowboy trying to scare off the local boy with his drinking ability. Dumb move when the local boy owns a winery.

“You should go. Respect her wishes,” Dash says, positioning himself between Felix and me.

“Who even are you? And why do you care so much?”

I appreciate him going to bat for me, which drives home the idea that some part of me was right when I asked him on a date. Looking back, I should have worded my request differently. I should have asked for a meeting. As a fellow vineyard owner, he’d have been more likely to say yes.

Instead, a new idea starts bouncing around in my brain. It’s a crazy idea, but I’ve tried normal. Crazy is all that’s left.

So I look at Felix dead in the eyes and grab Dash’s hand.

“He’s my fiancé.”