13. Mollie
CHAPTER 13
Mollie
RED FLAGS
The smell of stale beer and cigarettes permeates the air.
The floor is sticky enough that my boots make a crackling sound every time I take a step.
The only light comes from the neon beer signs hung haphazardly across the walls. On the far side of the space, there’s a stage, where Sally, Patsy, and—ha!—Goody’s paralegal, Zach, are setting up for Frisky Whiskey’s show.
The Rattler is, in other words, the perfect dive bar. Stepping through the door, three Rivers boys hot on my heels, the bone-deep exhaustion I’ve felt all day lifts.
I love it.
I also know it somehow. A vague memory takes shape inside my head. I was on the dance floor with Mom and Dad, the three of us lined up together in front of the stage.
“Hey, Wyatt?” I ask.
He turns to look at me. “What’s up?”
“Do they host line-dancing lessons here?”
“As a matter of fact, they do.” He grins. “Every Wednesday, once in the afternoon and once in the early evening.”
That’s why I recognized The Rattler when I first drove into town. My parents took me here to learn how to line dance .
How cute. My heart somersaults at the idea that Mom and Dad liked each other enough to do something fun together like that. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside that they included me too.
I follow Wyatt and the other cowboys to the bar. I wondered where the hell everyone got the energy to go out on a Friday night after a long-ass week on the ranch. But when the bartender, a woman with a shock of bright blonde hair and dancing blue eyes, looks up from emptying a dishwasher and smiles at us, I get it.
The vibe, the band, the sense of anticipation in the air—you just know you’re about to have a good time.
And, yeah, considering the multiple bombs that’ve been dropped on me lately, I could really use a drink. I can’t stop thinking about what Jen said—the stuff about Cash being scared and life becoming more vibrant in a small town in a way she wasn’t expecting.
Is that what’s happening to me?
“Whatcha drinking?” Wyatt settles his elbows on the bar beside me.
He drove Duke, Ryder, and me to town in one of Lucky Ranch’s pickups. Sally and Patsy drove separately so they could get here early to set up. Sawyer’s back at the ranch, putting Ella to bed, and Cash is…I don’t know where.
I tell myself I don’t care.
I dig my credit card out of my crossbody. “Honestly, I could go for a cold beer. Let me buy you one or three for letting me tag along again today.”
I was able to get away from my laptop and Bellamy Brooks for a couple of hours this morning, so Wyatt took me under his wing for a second time and showed me the ranch office, introduced me to the farrier—a guy who takes care of the horses’ legs and hooves—and then took me to the equipment barn, where he explained what each of the enormous machines parked there did .
It wasn’t physically taxing work, but it was important, and I feel like I learned a lot. This beer is well deserved.
“You don’t have to buy me a drink,” Wyatt says. “It was my pleasure.”
“I insist.”
Wyatt smiles at the bartender when she heads our way. “Hey, Tallulah. How you been? Ankle any better?”
“They took the boot off on Tuesday. It’s still a little sore, but worlds better than it was. Only what I deserve for attempting the Cupid Shuffle four whiskey sours deep.” Tallulah smiles, then glances at me. “This Mollie Luck? My wife has told me all about you.”
“Tallulah is married to Goody,” Wyatt explains. “They tied the knot, what, three years ago now? John B officiated the ceremony right here at The Rattler.”
“Three years and three months of wedded bliss, yeah.” Tallulah extends her hand. “Welcome to my bar, Mollie. We’re happy you’re here. What can I get you?”
A bubbly warmth rises in the back of my throat. I don’t know this woman, who married a lawyer in a bar in a ceremony officiated by a veterinarian, but I already like her.
I take her hand and give it a firm shake. “Thank you so damn much for having me. I adore your place. I’ll have a Shiner Bock, please.”
“Make that two.”
My heart takes a swan dive at the sound of the gravelly voice behind me.
I glance over my shoulder, and my heart falls to the goddamn floor when I see him.
Cash.
He stands a few feet away, one hand tucked into the front pocket of his jeans. He’s wearing a baseball hat.
A backward baseball hat. Add to that his broken-in Wranglers and the clean white tee that stretches across his chest and shoulders in the most mind-bogglingly sexy way imaginable, and you have one very tall glass of water.
Cash is a smokeshow when he’s doing his cowboy thing, no denying that.
But in these neon lights, in that hat and those jeans, he is…epically, obscenely hot. My pulse riots, a bloom of pure, unadulterated desire spreading between my legs.
Squeezing them together in an effort to cut that shit off at the pass, I blurt, “I thought you weren’t coming.”
He comes to stand beside me at the bar and meets my eyes. “Changed my mind. You gonna leave now, City Girl?”
“I will if you keep calling me that.”
He smells like he just got out of the shower, the scent of clean, simple soap rising off his skin. I detect a hint of something subtly minty and herbal too.
I do my best to ignore it. But this man would get eaten alive at the bars I go to in Dallas. I mean that literally. Men and women would be all over him. Looking around The Rattler, people seem to notice Cash, but no one’s approaching us. Why not?
Maybe, like me, they’ve witnessed his less than friendly side.
Or maybe he’s already slept with them. Does Cash get around? And why does that thought make my chest cramp?
I need to stop thinking about this shit.
“You drink Shiner Bock,” he says, forehead creased in disbelief.
Looking away, I put my card on the bar’s gleaming wooden surface. “Of course I do. It’s delicious. I was just about to buy Wyatt and myself a round as a matter of fact.”
Cash pushes my card aside. “Your money’s no good here. Tallulah, put it on the tab.”
“You have a tab?”
“Of course we have a tab. ”
Tallulah grins as she pops the tops off three longnecks. “The boys are here…often.”
“What she means is”—Cash takes a beer from Tallulah and hands it to me—“Wyatt may or may not host an illegal poker game here every so often. The people who play with him may or may not lose enough money to pay our tab many times over.”
Wyatt nods, sipping his beer. “Tallulah gets a cut of my winnings.”
“What if you lose?”
“I don’t. Someone’s gotta put money into Ella’s college fund.”
Cash meets my eyes again, his longneck at his lips. “Come hell or high water, a Rivers is gonna get a degree.”
Tipping back my beer, I look away. I have to. I might literally melt if I keep looking at this indecently handsome man who’s apparently hell-bent on sending his niece to college.
It’s a dream he couldn’t make come true for himself. But he’ll be damned if it doesn’t come true for his loved ones.
For a second, I get this weird, floaty feeling, like the ground is literally shifting beneath my feet. Cash is continually taking me off guard.
He’s continually surprising me, and I’m not quite sure what to do with myself when he does. Hating him is easy.
But if I don’t hate him…then what?
I startle at the sound of a snare drum. Glancing at the stage, I see Patsy twirling a drumstick in her hand before the band launches into its first song.
Watching Patsy play the drums, a smile splits my face. Of course she plays the drums. And of course she absolutely rocks it, pounding away like she wasn’t up long before the sun, making the first of many meals to feed many mouths.
Zach is on the steel guitar while Sally is a backup singer at a microphone, a violin on her shoulder. I don’t recognize the lead vocalist or the gal playing the acoustic guitar, but I’m sure they’re somehow connected to Lucky Ranch.
I’m learning that everyone around here is.
The song they play is a George Strait cover. One of my favorites—“It Just Comes Natural.” Maybe that’s why the ground suddenly steadies and I’m tapping the toe of my boot in time to the beat.
This I know.
This I love.
Live music. Classic country. A bar where no one gives a fuck who you are or what you’re wearing. We’re all just here to have a good time.
We’re all here to forget life for a little while.
I’m not the only one in need of an escape. People immediately move from the bar to the dance floor. I smile harder when I see John B leading the pack.
Turning back to Cash and Wyatt, I catch Cash looking at me. Checking me out, more like it. His eyes rove up the length of my body, a slow, steady perusal that feels like a physical caress.
It should piss me off. Offend me at the very least.
Instead, his attention makes me feel…definitely not offended.
Is Cash into me? Am I into him?
No. Definitely not. Although I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t the tiniest bit flattered by the idea that he’s physically attracted to me.
Then again, that makes the fact that I’m attracted to him that much more dangerous.
Let’s be real, though. There’s zero chance we’ll hook up. I don’t want to stay on the ranch, but I also don’t want to be reckless with its future. The more I learn about the place, the more I recognize how essential Cash is to its operation. I lose him, I lose the ranch. Period, end of sentence.
I sip my beer. “Frisky Whiskey is really good. ”
“Best cover band in South Texas, no question.” Cash’s eyes reflect the red and blue lights of a nearby Bud Light sign. “That’s how I got that concussion, dancing to their cover of ‘Cotton Eye Joe.’”
“Back when you were fun,” Wyatt says wistfully. “I miss those days.”
I screw up my face. “Cash was fun?”
Wyatt sips his Shiner Bock. “Hard to believe, I know.”
“I’m still fun.” Cash crosses his arms, beer dangling over his taut stomach. The pose makes his biceps strain against the sleeves of his T-shirt. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
Maybe it’s the biceps. The beer. The band.
The nagging question in the back of my mind— why is Cash here? Did he come to blow off some steam? Or did he come to keep an eye on me?
For whatever reason, I feel like egging him on, even though I shouldn’t.
I really, really shouldn’t.
“But you’re not dancing,” I say.
“Running the ranch without me because I’m in the hospital with another head injury is not a risk you wanna take, City Girl.”
“Worth the risk to see you shake it for me, Country Boy.”
Cash’s turn to screw up his face. “I hate that.”
“See? Stupid nicknames suck.”
His lips twitch. “Fine. You got me there, Mollie .”
“Told you, Cash .” Heart thumping, I loop my arm through his. “Now let’s go dance.”