Chapter 2
Avery O’Leery had been gettinginto scrapes her whole life, much to her mama’s chagrin. No matter the situation, she always managed to do something that got her dusty, dirty, banged up, or busted. Leaving her purse in Ben’s truck might be the biggest screw-up yet. She had always been a free-spirited country girl, had never gotten used to hauling a pocketbook around with her everywhere. Eyelash curlers, floss, and seven shades of lipstick were not things Avery felt the need to have with her at every minute, and now that lack of concern for her purse had landed her penniless on the streets of Nashville in the middle of the night.
With a man who might be her savior or her killer.
She hadn’t decided which one yet.
It was hard to think straight. She was tired, she was upset, angry, and heartbroken. Then there was Shane, looking very much a man, not youthful like Ben. A seriously good looking man. The kind of good looking that had her doing double-takes. He was tall, lean but muscular, wearing a maroon-colored T-shirt with a white eagle on it. He had on an expensive watch that flashed gold as he raised his arm to hold the door to the coffee shop open for her. It gave her a clear view of his bicep, rock solid, and a glimpse of a tattoo under the shirt sleeve. He had a narrow face with dark eyes, short brown hair, and a wicked, charming smile.
Growing up in a small town where everyone knew everyone, she’d seen her fair share of guys who thought they were all that. But this guy? He really was. He was all that and then some. It was terrifying.
But given her current circumstances, her experiences with sexy Prince Charmings—or lack thereof—was irrelevant. Her options sucked and she believed Shane when he said it was unlikely the cops could help her out, if she could even find one. Without any phone or money, she was stuck with Shane until she could sort out a plan, so the last thing in the world she needed to be doing was rising to the bait of his dancing comment.
Another of her flaws? Blurting things out without thinking them through first.
“Yes, sex,” he said. “Though if I’m trying to convince you I don’t have ulterior motives, I guess I shouldn’t be talking about sex.”
He turned and held up two fingers for the hostess who just said, “Sit anywhere you like, folks.”
“How about this table?” Shane said, gesturing to the one right up alongside the window by the sidewalk.
Avery didn’t care if they sat on the floor. She just needed to put her bucket on any bale and try to clean up this disaster. “That’s fine, thank you. And thank you for stopping,” she said, remembering her manners about ten minutes too late. Had she said thank you already? She wasn’t really sure because when Ben drove off, all she had been able to think was that she had never been angrier or more frustrated in her whole damn life.
“Even if you are just an opportunist serial killer,” she added. It probably wasn’t necessary, but she wanted him to know that just because she had been stupid enough to trust Ben, that didn’t make her stupid enough to trust a total stranger.
Shane held out a chair for Avery to sit. “No problem. We’ll get you home safe and I can give myself a pat on the back for being a decent human being.”
“Where were you tonight? Out with friends?” She sat down and strived to be polite, even though she was distracted. Her elbow hurt. She had banged it during her sudden exit out of Ben’s truck. Ben. That jerk. To think she’d put on a new dress for him, believing they had a big romantic night ahead of them.
He nodded. “Bachelor party.”
“You seem pretty sober for a bachelor party.” She hadn’t been in Nashville long, but it had been enough time to see that Music City had become the Sin City of the mountain state. There were drunken bachelor—and bachelorette—parties stumbling up and down Broadway every weekend. Avery adjusted the hem of her dress. Lord, this thing was short. She didn’t know how other women managed to function normally in minidresses. She was definitely more a jeans and T-shirt girl, or if the occasion required something more, a long skirt and denim jacket.
“The groom doesn’t drink, so it didn’t seem right to tie one on.” He ordered two coffees from the waitress. “Just black for me, cream and sugar for the lady.” He gave her a smile. “You look like cream and sugar.”
Avery stiffened. Was he flirting? “I take it black,” she said stiffly. That was a lie, but she felt the need to be contrary, though she wasn’t sure why. She fingered the sticky menu, her leg bouncing up and down. She wanted to trust the man sitting across from her, but she had trusted Ben and look where that had gotten her. Abandoned on Broadway at two o’clock in the morning after too many wasted years.
He shrugged, but the waitress was gone. “Sorry, that was presumptuous of me. You don’t have to add it if you don’t want to. So, how long did you say you’ve been in Nashville?”
“Just a few weeks.” She had arrived hopeful, happy. Now she was left doubting everything. Was she really so unlovable and unattractive that Ben felt the need to have more than one woman on the side?
“You in school?”
“No.” School hadn’t been her strong suit. “I’m here for the music.” Also, to find answers about her father, but not even Ben knew about that, thank goodness. That was her secret. Hers and Mama’s.
Shane sat back, unfurling his long legs out to the side. “Ah, yes, the music. I guess that’s what brings most people to Nashville in one way or another these days.”
“What brought you here?” He didn’t look small town to her at all, but sophisticated, confident. The cool guy everyone wants to hang out with.
“My mother. We moved here when I was twenty. Along with my two sisters.”
“Did your mother take a new job or something?”
He shook his head. “No.” He didn’t elaborate and he looked a little guarded, like the question had made him uncomfortable.
It piqued her curiosity, but she didn’t figure it was her right to press. That he’d grown up around women was oddly reassuring. Maybe that was why he was taking the time to help her sorry ass. “You seem to have shaken off your accent a bit.” He sounded decidedly city boy.
“It took some effort but I managed. I’ve been here almost ten years.”
Lord, he was old. Nearly thirty. Not that thirty was old, but she was only twenty-four and she considered herself an unintentionally young twenty-four. Part of it was the virginity thing, she knew. But until coming here, she hadn’t fully experienced life, and it made her feel…well, young. Or, as her mother would say, you weren’t truly an adult until you filed your own taxes, paid your rent, and had a man inside you. That was a direct quote. So far, she’d only managed to pay taxes.
She wanted to cry again, this time not from anger, but from homesickness. She missed her mother. How pathetic was that? She had come to Nashville to grow up, start her life, become a woman, and hopefully a songwriter, but here she was lost in the middle of the night, wanting her mother to save her. She drew a shuddery breath and focused on Shane. If she just concentrated on him, maybe she could ground herself, keep it together.
Murmuring her thanks to the waitress for pouring her coffee, she absently wrapped her hand around the mug, but didn’t take a sip. She cupped the mug until it made her flesh too hot, then removed it. “So you’ve found your place here, then. I hope someday I feel that way.”
“How long have you been with Ben?” he asked, lifting his own mug and taking a long swallow.
“Eight years.”
He choked, coughing into his hand, and putting his mug onto the linoleum table with a hard bang. “Holy shit, that’s a long time.”
“Too long,” she said with no small amount of regret. “What a total waste of time.” All that time waiting… for what? Nothing, apparently. Tonight was not the culmination of eight years of dating ending in an engagement and wonderful hotel-room sex, which was what she had been planning and expecting. No. It was just…nothing. A giant why-the-hell-had-she-bothered? What had she invested in? Hopes and dreams, clearly not reality. The realization drew a shaky sigh out of her.
“If you say what a waste of the best years of your life, I’m going to call bullshit. You have plenty of great years ahead of you to do the relationship thing,” he said.
“I wasn’t going to say the best years of my life, no.” They hadn’t been. They’d been content years, but also years of anticipating. She’d been stuck in a holding pattern, waiting for the future. For her real life to begin.
He studied her until she shifted uncomfortably. What was he thinking?
“How old are you?” he asked finally.
“Twenty-four.”
“Oh. I would have thought you were younger.” He seemed both surprised and relieved.
Great, just what every grown woman wants to hear. That she was so obviously immature her actual age was shocking. “I’m not. I guess I’ve been sheltered though.”
“So with the same guy since you were sixteen, huh?” He looked intrigued by the thought. “I’ve never been with anyone for eight years. I can’t even imagine it, actually.”
He was looking at her like she had achieved the unachievable. Like it was an Olympic record for dating or something. Clearly not a man who sought a commitment. “I take it you’re not married or anything then?”
“No. Happily single. I’m too…selfish to be in a serious relationship.” He actually shook his head to emphasize his point.
That seemed like a pat response. She didn’t know anything about him, but what she did know was that he had interrupted his night to help her, so he wasn’t entirely selfish. He’d offered her money for a cab. She had his cell phone sitting next to her. Maybe it was all an elaborate con to kidnap her, but that seemed a little farfetched.
She let his comment sit and instead asked him about the bachelor party. “Is it your friend getting married or a relative?”
“My sister. It works for them, but I’m not sure it’s my destiny. Too many beautiful girls to settle down with just one.” He gave her a smile and a shrug. It wasn’t a lecherous or bragging smile. It was a self-deprecating one. Like he didn’t understand exactly how he ticked, but he had accepted it.
Or maybe like he was hiding the truth from himself, and everyone else around him.
If he weren’t so sheepish, it would sound frankly unappealing. So playboy. Avery wasn’t sure if it was the truth or just what he liked to believe. Either way, it had nothing to do with her. She wasn’t the kind of girl a man like Shane would be interested in. She was the perennial friend, the guy’s girl, the little sister sidekick. That had been her mistake with Ben. He had felt all of those things for her, and she had mistaken youthful affection for love. And she had been wrong. So very wrong.
“At least you’re honest about it.” That was what chapped her ass the most. Ben didn’t want to be with her, so what? She could live with that. But he had made a job out of lying to her. Telling her they needed to stay pure until marriage, even when she’d been so crazy aroused, she would have done it in broad daylight in the middle of the street if he had given her the green light. She had been wanting to satisfy those increasing urges for at least four years and he had shamed her into thinking she was wrong for wanting it. Yet all the while he had been screwing around on her.
Her cheeks burned with renewed anger. It was a double betrayal. It made him just about the shittiest human being she had encountered in her life and she had spent eight years with him? Good Lord. Where was the Do Over button when you needed it?
“I’m sorry about your boyfriend.”
“I’m sorry I was a fool,” she said. She could feel the initial shock and grief again being consumed by the flames of rage. She took a sip of her coffee to stop herself before she went into a rant about liars, and lamented all those nights she could have had an orgasm and hadn’t in a diatribe to a complete stranger.
Ben had been so convincing, and for years she had wanted to be respectful of their relationship. Everyone in town knew her mama had been wild in her youth and Avery hated the way they had talked about her, not to mention the way they teased Avery herself as a grade school kid for being gangly and awkward, more into horses than sleepovers. She had wanted to somehow prove to them that her mother had raised a woman who wasn’t impulsive, who thought about the future. She had also yearned for the security of marriage and forever because she knew how hard it had been for her mother to be a single parent. All of which seemed decidedly less important now at twenty-four—but at sixteen years old, had been everything to her. Once the ball had started rolling with Ben, the years had ticked by.
Now here she was, finally in Nashville, her whole life behind her like a big giant joke, abandoned by the person she thought she loved. She had trusted Ben to be the one person from home who would back her, and yet, that was exactly the opposite of what he had done, made a total mockery out of her feelings for him. It hurt like hell and her stomach twisted in knots anew. She was stagnant, behind the dime in the game of life, a very twitchy virgin. Even this attractive stranger sitting across from her thought she looked like a kid.
“It’s not foolish to trust someone you love,” Shane said. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
Did she even love Ben? She wasn’t sure anymore. He was just…familiar. It had been Avery and Ben, since forever. The options in Rock Creek hadn’t been that plentiful. She and Ben had gotten along, and they had seemed a good fit. The move to Nashville had been exciting, the culmination of years of dreaming and planning, and she had felt like once here, she would truly start living. In her mind, tonight had been about them cementing that future.
Talk about best-laid plans and all that shit. She couldn’t help but want to laugh at how horrible and ridiculous and insulting it all was. It didn’t even feel real, sitting here, under the fluorescent lights, talking to a man who was so even and reasonable, unlike the way Ben had been the last year. Shane seemed steady, spoke maturely, much like she had imagined Ben would be as he grew up. But Ben hadn’t changed all that much in the years they had been together, and it seemed so damn obvious right now. He had stayed selfish and childish and patronizing. It was she who had changed, who strove to grow, leave the petulance of youth behind her.
It made her furious with herself, that she had chosen to ignore that truth about Ben. She’d known for a while, she had. But moving to Nashville felt impossible without him so she had turned a blind eye to her discontent and the red flags of his impatience and secrecy.
In retrospect, maybe she wasn’t as mature as she liked to think. But she was a work in progress. “How old did you think I was?” she asked, not sure she really wanted the answer.
“I don’t know.” Shane shrugged. “I knew you weren’t a kid but I didn’t think you were on the high side of twenty.”
Wonderful. He had thought she was basically a teenager. “My mama always tells me one day I’ll be glad I look young, but at the same time it would be nice if just once a man looked at me and thought—”
Avery cut herself off. What was she doing? Shane didn’t need to know that she was desperately afraid no one would ever think she was sexy. She’d never been the hot girl, who had guys jostling to get her attention. Clearly Ben had even gone so far as to create an elaborate “wait until marriage” ruse in order to avoid getting naked with her. Sure, they’d fooled around, but not much more. She had once wondered if he was secretly gay, but given the other women, that wasn’t the true story. He just hadn’t been attracted to her.
Only Shane-the-stranger didn’t need to know any of that.
Unfortunately, he didn’t let it go.
“What?” he asked. “What do you want a man to think when he looks at you?”
“Never mind.” She felt pinned beneath his intense gaze, like he could tease out all of her secrets. The man never blinked. He just watched her like he knew exactly what she was thinking. Like he knew she wanted a man to strip her naked and make her his. Avery broke eye contact and felt herself blushing as she looked down at her cup. Damn, she wished it had some sugar in it. It was a bitter liquid, much like the pill she was swallowing. The sugar packets and creamers were just sitting there on the table taunting her, but she ignored them. “I just don’t get why Ben even bothered to stay with me. That’s just wrong. It’s rude to string someone along. Unnecessary. Who does that?”
“Like I said, some people want to have their cake and to eat it too.” He sat back, letting his long legs sprawl out. His arm came up to adjust something in the pocket of his jeans, and she saw again the ripple of corded muscles in his arms.
It should be terrifying to sit with him, but Avery was too upset to even care about being nervous. Instead, she was just fascinated. She’d never been this close to a man who wasn’t someone she’d known her whole life. Hell, she really was the epitome of a sheltered, small-town girl. And Shane seemed like the men she saw in magazine underwear ads, on TV shows, or at concerts she had been to in Nashville. He looked like a man who made it his business to flirt. And she would bet every dime of the four grand she had spent the last six years saving up that he was not into waiting until marriage. He would want to have sex with the women he dated. Know them completely. Be satisfied.
He would fuck.
The thought made her blush harder, yet made her want to be that woman. Just once, she wanted to be that woman.
“I’m not so sure I’m cake,” she said, tilting her head as she thought about it. “More like banana bread.”
He started laughing. “I don’t even know what that means.” He walked his long fingers over the tabletop and turned his phone screen, pushing it on. “It’s been twenty minutes. I think it’s safe to say that Ben isn’t coming back for you. What do you want to do?”
She wasn’t sure if he didn’t want to hear her musings on her ex, or if he was tired, or just trying to be thoughtful of her, but she realized she had to make a decision. She couldn’t sit here all night and expect Shane to fix the situation, or for it to fix itself.
She wanted to stay with Shane, because for some reason it felt safe to be around him. But that wasn’t smart. He was nice, and he was attractive, but she didn’t know anything else about him.
An idea occurred to her. “Can I use your phone to log in to my social app? I can send Ben a message. He’ll get the notification.”
“Sure. I don’t really use any of that stuff. Not my thing.” He unlocked the phone and turned it back toward her.
“What is your thing?” she asked, curious. His screen was a picture of the Smokey Mountains.
“Music. Motorcycles.” He smiled. “And a few other things.”
“Do you have a motorcycle?” She had no problem picturing him on the back of a bike, straddling it, in control. Strong, sexy. “I prefer horses myself.”
Shane moistened the tip of his finger and reached out and rolled it over his half-used sugar, getting the crystals on his finger. He brought it back to suck the sugar off and Avery’s mouth went dry. He had just merged adorable and hot as hell into one sexy move.
“I enjoy riding horses too. But I like the noise of my bike. It drowns out the world around me. Sometimes I need that.”
Avery knew what she needed and it was definitely a ride. She forced herself to clear her throat and focus on their conversation. “Is it hard to live in the city?” she asked, wondering if she would eventually get used to it. “I mean, that sounds awkward, but I have to admit that while I love the energy here, I feel like a hick sometimes.”
“I felt like that too when we first moved. This is your dream, though, right? To be here?”
“Yeah.” She busied herself with his phone, logging in to her various accounts before messaging Ben. “It is.” It was all she’d ever wanted—to be a songwriter. Well, that, and to find her father’s family.
That was a secret she had kept from everyone, including Ben. She didn’t plan to try and meet them. She just wanted to see them with her own two eyes. To see if they walked like she did or talked like her, or shared the same laugh.
It was a long shot. Men like Buddy and Chance Rivers were untouchable to common folk like her. The truth of that was the reason everyone scoffed at her mother’s claims to an affair with Buck Rivers. They lived behind gates and tall hedges and moved around town with bodyguards and didn’t co-mingle with catering assistants like her mother had been.
But finding them, at least catching a glimpse of them, was her dream, even if Buck, her father, had passed away in a car accident years earlier. Buddy was her grandfather, Chance her half-brother, and she just wanted to see them.
Didn’t every woman have a secret fantasy or two?
She had two, and she wasn’t sure which one was more realistic or possible. The first was to see her family, the second was to finally understand what it was like to know the secrets of sex, to experience the intimacy Ben wouldn’t give her.
Avery stared at the screen and willed Ben to respond to her. Miraculously, he did.
Where are you?
A diner.
She glanced at the menu the waitress hadn’t removed and typed out the name and address of the restaurant.
You have to bring me my purse.
I’m already home.
Seriously? He had the gall to cheat on her and then complain about driving out of his way?
I don’t have any money or my phone!
Fine. Be there in ten.
Relieved, she wrote, “Thanks” and then set the phone back down.
“Did you just thank him?” Shane asked, glancing down at the screen.
“Well, yeah. I mean, he agreed to bring my purse.”
“It’s the fucking least he could do,” Shane snorted.
“True.” She couldn’t help it though. She’d been raised to be polite. But he was right. She didn’t owe Ben a damn thing, least of all a thank you. “That gets you off the hook though.”
Shane shook his head. “I’m not leaving until you have your purse and you’re settled somewhere safe for the night.”
“You don’t have to do that.” She wanted him to, though. She didn’t want to be alone. She didn’t want to see Ben. If Shane were still sitting with her when he arrived, she wouldn’t have to get into a conversation, or more likely a fight, with her ex-boyfriend. It would allow her to retain the tiny shreds of dignity she still held and not bawl her eyes out in front of the jerk or start screaming at him in the presence of diners who just wanted to eat their eggs.
“I know I don’t have to. But I’m going to,” he said firmly. “Now tell me, what is it you want to do here? Be a big star?”
She shook her head. “No. That’s not my dream.” She didn’t want to talk about how she wanted to be a songwriter. It would sound so silly to a man like Shane. How many fresh-faced girls had wandered into Nashville thinking they would make a career out of music, only to have the hard reality of the industry shut them down? Thousands. She knew she sounded and looked na?ve.
Besides, she couldn’t take any more disappointment tonight. She didn’t want to see Shane’s skepticism or sympathy when she said she wanted to be a songwriter.
“That’s it? That’s all I get?” He frowned at her.
Basically.
“Do you want to be a songwriter? A backup singer? A sound tech? A producer?”
“Never mind.” She wasn’t going to wax enthusiastic about writing songs to a man who was just being polite.
“Now you’re just making me even more curious. It sounds so mysterious.” He smiled at her.
That wasn’t her intention either. She just wanted to dissuade him from prying “Well, what’s your dream?” she asked. “What do you do for a living?”
He made a face. “Okay, fair enough. I’m not of the mind to share that right now.”
Avery gave him a smile, pleased that she had turned it around on him. “See? Though I guess if we’re ever going to share secrets, at three in the morning with a stranger is the way to do it.”
But Shane raised his eyebrows up. “I could think of better things we could share than secrets in the middle of the night.”
In the midst of taking a sip of her coffee, Avery paused. That almost sounded suggestive. She swallowed and looked at him closely. Not exactly familiar with the signs of overwhelming lust in a man, she couldn’t say for certain that’s what was darkening his eyes, but she didn’t think it was heartburn either. “Like what?” she asked without thinking. Blame it on the emotional overload. She wanted to hear him say it—that he was talking about sex, that he was flirting.
The corner of his mouth turned up in a slow, sensual grin. “Waffles.”
She blinked. “Waffles?”
“Yeah, I’m starving.” He winked at her.
He’d been flirting and pulled back. It seemed that tonight was just not the night a man would decide with raging certainty that he could not go another minute without making her feel like a real woman. It shocked her how disappointed she was. “Might as well,” she told him. “There’s nothing better to do.”
She excused herself to go to the restroom. She was feeling a cry coming on and there was no way she wanted to do that in front of him. Her fragility upset her. She hated the way it made her feel.
“Are you okay?” he asked, jumping out of his seat in a gentlemanly quest to pull out her chair for her.
Avery nodded, then bolted for the restroom, smacking the hand dryer on so no one would hear her sobs.
She wanted to goddamn Ben and all men, including Shane, but she couldn’t bring herself to say goddamn after so many years of Sunday school training. No need to take any chances. So instead she cursed Ben for being a bastard. But she didn’t love that word. It didn’t feel strong enough. Finally, she settled on deeming him an asshole, because it was a gross word and Ben was just gross. It suited him. Ass. Hole.
She studied her swollen eyes and her ratty hair in the mirror. “Ben, you’re a no-good, cheating, lying, asshole,” she murmured out loud. “And I can’t believe how badly I wanted to have sex with you tonight.”
That was the most ironic part of the whole situation. She had booked a hotel room for the express purpose of tossing her virginity aside as easily as the annoying lace dress she had envisioned Ben ripping off over her head.
It had been her quest to stop letting Ben control her destiny. Her moment to push him a little, take what she wanted, wrest a deeper, more meaningful commitment from him. Talk about having it blow up in her face. Why had she tried so hard to force something? It was mortifying.
She had the hotel room that was too late to cancel, her credit card on file. It looked like she would be spending the night in that big bed all alone. This was the single most depressing and humiliating night of her whole life.
She wanted to drag her feet, linger over her coffee with Shane. Have him try to make her feel better, smile at her. She had jumped out of Ben’s truck, and landed right in front of a man who said straight-up said he loved ’em and left ’em. No relationships.
Which made him perfect for stroking her ego, offering her a little comfort. Shane almost seemed like he was flirting, but she couldn’t tell for sure, because she hadn’t tried to flirt back. If she were analytical about it, the waffle comment he’d made could have been all part of that byplay between a man and a woman. Not him saying he wasn’t interested. There was something there. In his eyes. She wasn’t going to have sex with him, obviously, but here at least was the perfect opportunity to hone her flirting skills. Make herself feel a little better. Avoid the inevitability of the empty bed for a little longer.
Give Ben the proverbial middle finger.
If she had her purse, she’d fix her hair, but then she realized she didn’t have a brush in her purse anyway, so she was shit out of luck.
That thought made her laugh. “Avery, it’s time to act like the woman you want to be,” she told her reflection.
Nashville wasn’t for sissies. Ben or no Ben, she was staying here.