Chapter 3 #2
Usually, men didn’t ruffle her. They were so basic. They paid her a whole lot of attention, especially because they assumed she was easy, based on her friendly demeanor and, well, her clothes. In fact, they spread plenty of rumors that she was, because none of them wanted to feel left out.
Oh, Jessie Jane? Yeah, I totally hit that too.
Idiots.
She didn’t care. But when it came to Flynn, she felt that awful, hot, shameful caring settle in her gut. It was half of why he was a problem, and being in proximity to him like this made it feel like an even bigger problem.
“I don’t actually want to claw your eyes out,” she said, because it was the truth.
“You don’t?”
“Nope. You’re giving yourself a lot more credit than you ought to. I find you mildly irritating at worst and best, Flynn. Otherwise, I mostly don’t think about you at all.”
That was a lie. She thought about him quite a lot.
For the first time, she wondered if she’d chosen him because he was the best person for the job, or because he was the first person she had thought of.
What if she had partnered up with somebody who had a better reputation?
No. That actually wouldn’t have worked. If she’d chosen someone with a better reputation, she’d be running the risk of two things:
He’d be too good to get involved in something like this, or he’d be so much shadier than she could ever be.
She wanted a known quantity.
Because, yeah, Flynn was shameless. He was a womanizer. He had a reputation for running wild around town. But he was open about all that. There were no surprises to be had with Flynn Wilder, and that suited her.
Nothing more.
“You sure do know how to flatter a man’s ego.”
“Weirdly, I actually don’t care about flattering men’s egos. They can rot in hell for all I care.”
“Bitter.”
“Realistic.”
When the road transitioned from gravel to pavement, she looked out at the view from her window. It was beautiful. All pine trees and the sparkling blue of the lake below.
“It’s a beautiful drive,” she said.
“Yeah. It’s a nice drive out to the Wild West Show too. I was glad we got to go last year. You know, before that, Austin wouldn’t let us.”
“Are you serious?”
“Not really. Mostly because if Austin ever tried to outright tell me what to do, I would tell him where to shove it. But he would never have approved, no. When you asked Carson to fix your wagon …” He paused for a moment. “You didn’t have a thing with my brother, did you?”
She nearly howled in shock. “What?”
“Well, last year when you came to him and asked him to help restore the wagon, we kind of thought maybe you were … trying to pick him up. And I know he and Perry hooked up sometime after that but—”
“I never hooked up with your brother,” she said. “Good God.”
The idea had never even occurred to her. Carson Wilder was a decent man but he …
He did not make her skin feel like it was too tight. He didn’t make her feel like she was overheating.
Only Flynn Wilder did that. She hated to admit it, even to herself. But it was true.
She was unlikely to ever act on the feelings Flynn aroused inside her.
The idea of acting on some kind of sexual impulse with a man she wasn’t into was … Nope.
If there was one thing Jessie didn’t do, it was vulnerability. In the past, she had cared too much. She had tried to make herself be what other people wanted her to be, needed her to be.
And she just wasn’t going to do it anymore.
She didn’t like looking as if she didn’t know what she was doing. As if she wasn’t on top of absolutely everything.
“Then what was that?”
“A request for your brother’s good restoration work.
The end. As for the show, I was being neighborly because he agreed to help fix our wagon.
Also, I genuinely wanted you all to see it.
We’ve never been what you thought we were, you know.
It wasn’t like we were gleefully profiting from your family tragedy. ”
“You kind of do, though.”
“We aren’t gleeful, though.”
“That’s beside the point, Jess,” he said.
“Just because we do a reenactment of the death of your ancestor? It’s not like you knew him.”
“Fair. But my brother takes the murder of the first Austin Wilder very personally. Maybe because they share the same name.”
“Well, that is also not my fault. Yes, my family was involved in all of that, and I know that Butch Hancock betrayed Austin, but … there’s nothing I can do about it.
We might as well make some money. And anyway, Wild West shows are supposed to sensationalize history.
They’re not supposed to be one hundred percent accurate.
I get that your brother has a stick up his butt about that.
But I like the sensational. I feel there’s room for legends that are bigger than Big Sky Country, and tall tales taller than the mountains. ”
It was possible some of that speech was in the intro to the Wild West Show. But hey, if it was effective, why not use it?
“You really are a showman,” he said.
She was. She had been trained by the best. Her dad was magnetic when he stood out there in his fringe jacket and cowboy hat telling stories and introducing each act.
He wasn’t totally wrong when he called it a carnival.
Or maybe even more accurately, a Western Circus.
The result if a rodeo and a circus had a baby.
“It’s my job. And I’m going to take that experience and make it work in this mayoral race.”
“Are you going to have time to do the Wild West Show and run the town?”
“It’s not like it’s a full-time job.”
He laughed. “Yeah. I mean, I know that the mayor has to keep their day job when they take on this position. But your day job is a little bit unconventional.”
“This town is unconventional. Which goes back to my original intent. This place is so much cooler than we’re treating it. It’s been sanitized and watered down and given over to people like Danielle. I refuse to allow that to stand.”
Her impassioned speech ended right as they rolled into town, where all the perfectly preserved brick buildings glowed in the early morning sun.
An American flag waved merrily from the pole mounted on the front of the old hotel, and Scallywag Coffee was a little aqua beacon at the end of the street beckoning weary travelers to come in and grab some caffeine.
Flynn managed to find a parking space right in front of the building, and she waited in her seat until he came around and opened the door for her.
“My lady,” he said, extending his hand.
She was reluctant to touch him again, but she knew she couldn’t get around it. So she reached out and took his hand, and she smiled. Because she refused to appear uncomfortable, to him, to anyone.
The minute his skin touched hers, she felt heat rush through her.
Her heart began to beat hard as he pulled her out of the truck, and she stumbled forward, falling against his chest, bracing her hand on his shoulder, and regretting it instantly, because he was so solid. So hot and hard.
Without her permission, her fingers curled, just slightly, gathering up a little bit of his T-shirt fabric and skimming over all those muscles.
She gasped and straightened.
“Steady there,” he said, his eyes dipping down to her lips for a second, and she felt an arrow of reaction pierce that place between her thighs she thought far too much about in his presence.
She cleared her throat.
“What kind of coffee do you like?” she asked, because she needed something to say.
“Well, this morning I had my coffee black, but I would actually like a latte now.”
“I didn’t realize that cowboys drank lattes.”
“Cowboys that are secure in their masculinity can drink whatever they like. And I’m good.”
She snorted a laugh. He opened up the white door, which had a raccoon decal on the window, and held it for her.
She cleared her throat. “You do know how to treat a lady.”
And he didn’t even make a joke about her not being a lady as they walked in and found at least ten pairs of eyes glued to them.
Oh yes. They were definitely going to be gossip. Most definitely.
She couldn’t get used to the way he held her hand as they walked up to the counter.
She felt as if her skin was on fire. So she just tried her best to stare straight ahead as if she was focusing on the menu.
She had a feeling she was holding her head at a weird angle, like she was trying to put some distance between him and her, which was not what she should be doing.
She didn’t know how to do this. And suddenly, she questioned herself, because this was a whole lot of things she didn’t know how to do.
Usually, she was very good at faking it. It was how she navigated the world.
But this was a lot more faking it than normal.
“I’ll have a latte,” he said. “And whatever she would like.”
“The Milky Way, please,” she said, just choosing something on the menu that sounded decent, and she liked the Milky Way candy bar, so surely it would be all right.
She didn’t go out for coffee routinely. The Wild West Show made very good money these days, but her family had never changed the way they lived.
“Two cinnamon rolls too,” he said.
Jessie was so used to pinching pennies that she just did it as a matter of course.
This felt extravagant in ways she really wasn’t used to.
He paid for the coffee, and she knew it was just part of the performance; then they moved away from the register to wait for their drinks.
“You can go have a seat,” he said.
She nodded and realized that she was probably requiring a little bit more direction than he expected. Shouldn’t she know all the steps of a one-night stand?
The Jessie Jane that everybody assumed she was certainly would.
Well, maybe not. Maybe she never stayed the whole night or something.
He came to the table a few minutes later with their coffee and the warmed-up cinnamon rolls.
She dug into the treat with great enthusiasm.
Then she took a sip of her mocha and moaned. It was delicious. A Milky Way bar was made of chocolate and caramel, so she assumed the drink had the same ingredients, but the coffee and rich, frothy milk made it even better than a candy bar.
“Good?”
She didn’t care if he saw how much she was enjoying her drink. It would’ve embarrassed her when she was a kid. Because it betrayed how foreign such luxury was to her.
She wasn’t embarrassed now.
“Yeah. It’s great. I don’t come here very often. And when I do, basically I get a regular coffee. This is a treat.”
“Well. Glad to treat you.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to have to go up to visit my brother after this. He’s going to have questions.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Funny. Well, my brother is probably going to have some questions too. Normally, he stays out of my business, and I stay out of his.”
“What’s that like? My brothers are always in my business. My sister is even more in my business.”
Jessie chuckled. “That’s nice, isn’t it?”
“It can be. But you know, we raised Cassidy, basically. Well, Carson and Austin more than me. But she came to live at the ranch when she was just nine, and Dad was already dead so … it was up to us. Three idiots and a little girl.”
She had never really given a lot of thought to that part of his life. He had been pretty young when his dad had died. And he would’ve been young when Cassidy came to live with them.
“That’s when we cleaned our act up a little bit,” he said. “For her.”
“That’s … that’s nice.”
“I guess so. We try, anyway.”
“Well, I guess that just leaves one question,” she said, looking down at her cinnamon roll, then gathering all her bravery to look up at him. “Do you want to go steady, Flynn Wilder?”
“I want nothing more,” he responded. And then he grinned. She thought she might die. She thought she was going to pass out. She had never been on the receiving end of his smile. Not like this. Full watt, less than a foot away from her.
No wonder women fell at his feet. No wonder they could scarcely handle themselves around him.
“Great,” she said.
And then she speared the remaining third of her cinnamon roll with her fork, taking a bite that was far too big and chewing it so long, it meant that she didn’t have to think of anything else to say.
“Better go,” she said, snagging her coffee. “I have to get back to the property. I didn’t tell West where I was going. Or that I was going to be gone all night.”
“I thought he’s not usually up in your business.”
She did not tell him that this time was different because she was never gone all night. Instead, she pivoted. “Sure. But we’re working on a new routine. So he’ll be expecting me.”
Her parents wouldn’t wonder. They’d just assume she was out having lots of fun. Good for her. West, though, he had more opinions.
Though the main thing was that she really needed a break from Flynn Wilder.
“You could just text him,” he pointed out.
“I could. But he never answers my texts. My brother’s phone is exclusively used for receiving texts from women who want to sleep with him.”
Flynn snorted. “He must be busy.”
“Waaaay busier than I would like to acknowledge.”
He stood up and took their dishes to the trash can, held the door open for her while she walked past him. “You don’t have to walk me back to my truck.”
“I do.”
“Really?”
“For God’s sake, what kind of men do you usually hook up with? You’ve got to walk a lady back to her vehicle.”
“Amazing. Now that I’ve pretend-slept with you, I’m a lady.”
“Yeah, I have that effect.”
She rolled her eyes, and was grateful when he didn’t grab her hand again.
When they got to the truck, her heart stalled out for a moment. She wondered if he was going to do something crazy, like kiss her.
Eventually he was going to have to.
She opened up the truck door and climbed in quickly. “I’m going to the courthouse to file the paperwork, and then I’m going to make my announcement later today.”
“Do I need to stand behind you like a silent, dutiful partner?”
“No. But … we’ll have to get some signs made. And get them put up around town.”
“Are you going to ask me to recruit my family?”
“I might.”
He shook his head. “All right. Well … You know, I don’t have your number.”
“Your brother does,” she said, smiling.
On that note, she started the engine of the truck and slammed the driver’s side door shut. And then she took her first full breath since first encountering Flynn the night before.
As schemes went, this was going to be a wild ride.