Young Buck: A Slow Burn Small Town Romance (Green Valley Heroes Book 5)

Chapter 17

“You’re getting better at eyeshadow.”

Clarine made her observation with sharp eyes that washed over my face. I’d just walked into Genie’s Country Western Bar. I was five minutes late meeting her for drinks. I hadn’t seen her in a week.

“Well I couldn’t have gotten much worse.” I took the compliment with a smile. Only Clarine knew just how abysmal my makeup skills had once been. Under her tutelage, I’d learned how to add color to my cheeks and my lips without looking clownish, and to do a smoky eye without looking like Beetlejuice.

“That dress is cute, too. You got a hot date after this?” Clarine smiled conspiratorially.

“I’ve given up on dating, girl.”

Clarine winced empathetically. “The guy from the Christian dating app didn’t work out?”

I rolled my eyes. “He prayed over every dang thing on the table. The cocktails, the bread basket, and even the water. When he thanked the Lord for the butter, I made my excuses, then erased the app off of my phone.”

She frowned sympathetically. “Well...you gave it an honest try. Onward and upward, right?”

She repeated the line I’d spoken to so many other women at Cheated On-Onymous. I put my purse straps on a hook under the bar and swiveled to face her. She was having a raspberry lemon drop. I motioned for the bartender to bring me the same.

“Perry keeps calling,” I reported. “I told him I’m off the market.”

“Perry the Geri?”

I shot her a look. “That nickname is unkind.”

The “geri” she referred to meant geriatric. Perry was twenty years my senior, which only made him fifty-five. Our first and only date had been marked by a 5:00 p.m. rendezvous time that turned out to be for a sit-down dinner, not just cocktails, as I’d anticipated at that hour. He’d sent back his soup twice, claiming both times that it was too cold. Then, he’d paid with his AARP Mastercard.

“What did you expect?” she defended. “That guy was, like, a hundred.”

“I told you. I want to meet someone who’s ready to settle down.”

“Settle down, as in, a rocking chair?”

I covered up the laugh I wanted to let out with an eye roll.

“I don’t know why you keep messing with all these older guys,” Clarine groused as the bartender set down my drink. “If you happen to meet a silver fox, that’s one thing. But why limit yourself? What’s wrong with guys your own age?”

“Unmarried men my own age are bachelors for a reason. By fifty, they’re tired of a dating scene that’s trash. A fifty-year-old man knows that he doesn’t want to be with a twenty-year-old, and is ready to find a great catch in a woman who’s thirty-five.”

Clarine scrutinized me for several moments longer than I expected.

“I call bullshit,” she finally said. “You don’t just want an older man so you can settle down. You’re hedging your bets against being traded in for a newer model. You don’t want to end up with another Floyd.”

I lifted my chin a bit proudly. “Don’t make it sound so stupid. Marrying a man on the other side of his midlife crisis seems pretty damn smart. I want a man who knows who he is. And why are we even talking about this? I’m not in the market for a boyfriend anymore.”

Clarine sat back in her chair and arched her eyebrow. “You ought to go out with that firefighter.”

I scoffed like I hadn’t spent the better part of the past two days remembering that kiss.

“You can’t be serious. Buck is younger than some pants I own.”

“First of all, I doubt that. Second of all, Buck is smoking hot.”

“That man is not trying to go to Cougartown,” I insisted.

“Cougars are fortysomething women who date twentysomething men. Fiftysomethings are sabertooths. You’re a thirtysomething, which makes you a puma.”

“Seriously. How do you know all of this?”

Clarine shrugged. “Jolene. And as Mother Jolene has taught us, the benefits of dating a younger man are endless.”

“I told you—I’m done dating. I’m ready to move on to Plan B. And I can’t have anything to do with Buck. Even if he got a twinkle in his eye catching me out of a dead faint, I still can’t date him. For reasons.”

“Reasons,” Clarine repeated.

It was finally time to come clean. “The meeting...it wasn’t the first time I met him.”

“Because he’s your neighbor . . .”

But there was no elegant way to say it, no preamble that would make it make more sense. So I just came out with it.

“I mistook him for a burglar and tased him, the first time we met.”

Unlike the cackling I could usually expect from Clarine when I humbled myself to reveal my misadventures, she remained quiet with her mouth slacked. Her speechlessness was my cue to tell the tale, which was somehow more horrible in its recounting. It was hard to think about how I’d seen him that first night now that I knew him as a human, and as a man.

“Honestly?” Clarine said at the end of it all. “That’s proof he’s a decent person. Judging by how he treated you at the meeting, that man is not holding a grudge. He’s hot as hell and he’s not an asshole. What more do you need?”

“I don’t need a date with Buck because I am no longer dating. And while we’re on the topic of asshole-proofing, can we talk about client forty-nine?”

I lowered my voice. Green Valley was still a small town. Thanks to Clarine’s undercover mission, Jackie Dupree was finally convinced of Dickie’s philandering. She’d sent her final payment that morning.

Client forty-nine, Hopey Danforth, had a case that was picking up steam. Clarine had done all the recon and knew more about the job than even I did at this point. Next stop was a low-danger stakeout that Clarine was ready to try on her own.

“Do you feel ready to take all that on?”

“Are you kidding? I’ve been waiting for something this juicy. I assume you’re working on other clients?”

“The sheriff’s got me working more hours at the station,” I explained.

He usually stayed away from dates I was supposed to be leading COO, but he’d called me in just last night. Two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have thought much of it. Now that he’d offered me the investigator job, I’d started to see things differently.

“They’ve been keeping you busy lately,” Clarine observed.

“Yeah, well, an increasing number of Green Valley residents are leading a life of crime. How was the meeting last night?”

“You missed Jolene’s birthday,” Clarine said. “Gabe surprised her with a giant cake and champagne for everyone. He even serenaded her before he left us to our business.”

I felt a twinge of jealousy as I gave a little smile.

“Some days, I think Jolene ought to lead the group,” Clarine continued wistfully. “That woman is living the dream.”

I handled my martini glass carefully as I giggled through my sip. It felt good to unwind. Lately, too many thoughts had been weighing heavy. What would I do about the chief’s offer? Was I really ready for a sperm donor? And, how was I going to solve Buck’s case?

“Well, well, well. If it ain’t the woman who nabbed Robbery Buck. I hardly recognized you without your Taser.”

I turned toward the voice that—out of nowhere—had begun talking to me. I didn’t know the man who stood behind me now, whose strawberry blond hair was so pale it was nearly platinum. His speech slurred and he reeked of something hard.

My face heated at his words. How did he know about the confrontation? He had to be fire or police. Since I knew all of the latter, he had to be a co-worker of Buck’s.

“Don’t mind my friend.”

A hand clapped over the shoulder of the man who had spoken, pulling him back from where he now leaned on the back of our stools, too close for comfort and swaying a bit as he lingered. I didn’t recognize the man who pulled him back either. A longer look at both seemed to confirm my suspicion about their professions. They seemed pretty built.

“He’s had a little too much to drink,” the second one explained. This one had dark hair that was graying at the temples. His kind eyes seemed to apologize sincerely as he pulled at his friend, but blondie shrugged him off.

I stole a glance at Clarine, who gaped wide-eyed at all that was unfolding, all at the same time as leaning away from the one who was drunk.

“I wouldn’t mind breaking into your house if it meant you would tase me.” He leaned in closer and spoke directly to my breasts. “I saw the way you frisked him, too. Why don’t you pat me down, Black beauty? Find out what I’m packing?”

Before I could formulate a retort befitting of such a disgusting comment, a more aggressive hand clapped over his other shoulder and jerked him back like his resistance was nothing.

“If you don’t get the fuck away from her, you’re gonna find out how off duty I can get.”

It was Buck, his voice menacing in a low growl. The next thing I knew, the blond one had been pulled two feet back from our chairs. His hand was bent behind his back and Buck’s large hand was cuffed around his neck.

Buck gave him a hard push that sent him careening toward the door. He looked ten times scarier than I’d imagined him to be when I’d thought him to be robbing the Jenkinses. For a second, I feared for the one who was drunk. Sure, that guy had made lewd comments and looked at me like he was starving and I was a steak dinner. But Buck didn’t seem embarrassed or annoyed. He seemed absolutely livid.

“I’m sorry again, ma’am,” a fourth one said. “You ladies enjoy your evening.”

A retreating group of firefighters were now pushing the drunk one out the door. A fifth one—this one a bit older—echoed the fourth one’s apology. I recognized him as Grizz Grady.

My heart still pounded rapidly as they disappeared out the door. I turned my gaze back to Clarine, who now stared back at me with wide eyes.

“What the hell just happened?”

But I wasn’t thinking about blondie. I was thinking about Buck.

“I told you things were complicated.”