Chapter 2
Rory
“Hey, Cowboy” by Devon Cole starts playing on the sound system, louder than the previous song that was cut off, but Morgan still keeps his back to me. His flannel shirt shifts and tugs against his broad shoulders, so he’s clearly doing something and hiding it from my view.
I take a swig of my beer to keep myself from staring at his ass. It’s a great ass—narrow waist tapering down to worn jeans. One of the pockets has a hole in the bottom.
God damn it, I’m staring. Again.
The people at the end of the bar start watching whatever Morgan’s doing.
This includes the really pretty white woman around our age who walked in earlier and made me irrationally jealous—seriously, all he did was smile at her.
He smiles at everyone so why did I hate it?
There’s a lot of laughter and someone starts catcalling. What the hell is happening?
The chorus hits and Morgan spins around, dramatically ripping his flannel shirt open.
Holy shit.
He yanks the shirt out from his jeans and grabs the long handle of something, coming through the pass-through to this side of the bar. At this point, everyone’s cheering him on, singing along to the song.
I’m already distracted by his abs. His torso is smooth and tanned, black ink up and down the side, on his chest, and a half sleeve on one shoulder. A deep V-cut draws my eyes farther south.
It doesn’t help that when Devon Cole says she’s a woman and not a lady, Morgan does a hip swivel that should be downright illegal.
The song moves onto the next verse and Morgan focuses on the thing in his hand—a broom—and starts sweeping toward me.
When the song howls, he throws back his head and howls too, as does everyone else in the bar.
Morgan has to grip the cowboy hat to keep it from falling off his head, and that makes his biceps bulge outrageously.
Why am I lightheaded?
He draws closer and I’m gripping the beer bottle so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t shatter. I let go and wipe both hands on my thighs. The one that wasn’t on the cool, condensed bottle is sweaty.
Morgan uses the broom like a prop, dancing with it, swaying his hips, even grinding against it, all while sweeping expertly around the legs of the barstools.
My barstool has swiveled toward Morgan of its own accord, my knees pointing to him like a compass to the North Pole. I can’t figure out where to put my eyes so they’re all over the place.
Especially because I can now see the tattoos properly. There’s a fucking snake running down the side of his ribs and I can practically feel the ridges under my tongue.
Oh no. This is bad. I squeeze my thighs together and try not to meet his eyes. I don’t know how, but Morgan is pretty goddamned confident that I’m into him, no matter how hard I’ve tried not to be.
Morgan gets to my stool. He sets the broom against the bar and, with a hand on the outside of my knee that burns me, spins me so that my back is to the bar. He follows the movement and puts his hands on either side of me, caging me in.
That’s the first time Morgan’s ever touched me. Usually we have the bulky wood bar between us, which has given me so much distance from his charm—enough distance to make it easier to deflect.
And then it’s all abs and hips and his cocky, far-too-confident-in-himself smile. I’m vaguely aware that the crowd has gotten louder, but Morgan’s quietly singing the words and that’s all I can focus on.
After what feels like too long but also not nearly long enough, Morgan pulls the hat off his head and leans back to put it between us, right over his crotch.
Nothing’s changed underneath. I know that.
His fly is still zipped up, the black leather belt secure, but like .
. . I can’t see it and dear god, why is that hotter?
The song comes to its end. Was it always such a short song?
Morgan leans away from me, grinning, and puts his hat back on. We make eye contact and I can’t help it.
I laugh.
It’s a nervous laugh, a laugh that’s trying to expel all the flustered-up feelings inside of me. I’m embarrassed and turned on and don’t know what I do with my hands right now so they flutter somewhere near my burning face.
Flutter. My hands flutter. Before today I would have told you that was impossible.
This fucking guy. The day I first walked into this bar I thought, wow, that is the friendliest bartender I’ve ever met. He kept looking at me and I kept ignoring him.
Er, mostly ignoring him. Have I mentioned that he’s really hot? His dark blond hair is a little too long, his eyes a little too bright, his nose a little too crooked, but it all fucking works for him.
His imperfections make the whole package better.
The second time I walked into his bar, he remembered me, and his face lit up and he had a completely one-sided flirtation.
It was good, which is impressive considering I didn’t give him any ammunition.
The third time it was all over. The way he greeted me, you’d have thought I was a long-lost friend. Well, maybe not—we didn’t do the handshake he did with that other guy, but it was so familiar.
So nice to have someone happy to see me.
Morgan is standing stock-still in front of me and I’m still smiling, coming down off that embarrassing laugh.
But when I look up at him, all the humor drains out of me. He’s staring, the wide smile eroded to one side of his mouth. The teasing light is fading, the flirtiness disappearing.
I press my lips together. God damn it.
I look away before I can see the transformation end in sympathy . . . or worse.
The crowd is still loud, cheering, and I feel Morgan behind me shaking off what he saw. I sip my beer, and on my periphery, his hand reaches out to grab the broom handle.
“Look at all this shit,” he shouts over the cheering. In the mirror I watch as he raises his arms. “I swept this morning, you filthy animals. Kit, grab me the dustpan.”
In the reflection, Morgan sweeps along the floor, teasingly shoving people out of the way while his friend—white guy, floppy hair, rangier than Morgan—grabs the cleaning supplies and they work together, ducking down out of sight.
“Like a professional,” someone says in a lilting voice, and a few people chuckle.
The crowd resumes its normal hum, the music gets turned down, and after a few minutes, Morgan appears in front of me again, still shirtless.
“So you’re a stripper,” I say.
“Nope.” He grins. “I didn’t take my clothes off.”
“You took your shirt off,” I point out.
He puts his hand over his chest, his thumb resting against a thick black line that slopes down over his pec. “I’m so glad you noticed. But that was the setup.”
“You danced.”
“The dance was for you. I may have gotten carried away.” He grins, unrepentant. “I don’t dance that way for anyone, you know.”
I shake my head. I don’t think he’s lying to me, per se, but that sure felt like I was minutes away from getting a lap dance. And what else could the hint have been?
Someone calls for more drinks, and Morgan trots off to take care of them. He returns a few minutes later, dropping my loaded tater tots off in front of me with a fresh beer, and then I try to ignore him milling around while he lets me eat in peace.
I’m about halfway done when someone comes up to the bar a few seats down from me. Most of the bar patrons are either in the booths behind me or at the far end by the pool table where Morgan’s friend Kit is playing a game with the guy who was sitting here when I first arrived.
This person, though, isn’t a twenty- or thirty-something local that fits right into this little dive bar. She’s an older white woman, maybe in her sixties, with a silver-gray bob and a color-coordinated outfit, complete with a jeweled brooch.
She holds a martini glass, which, in my entire two months coming here, I’ve never seen one before.
Morgan spots her and saunters over, full, charming grin in place.
“Mrs. Gardiner, ready for another martini?”
She sniffs. “Morgan, my glass has been empty for nearly a half hour.”
I’m sure that’s not true, because I haven’t even been here a half hour.
Morgan is nonplussed by her tone. “Sorry, Mrs. Gardiner. It’s hard to see it over that bucket of beer at the table.”
“Or you’ve been too busy trying to charm your way into this woman’s pants.” She says it with something that could be a sneer.
“Your lips to God’s ears,” he says, flicking his eyes at me with a tease. Is he just so charming he can’t help himself?
The lady gasps. “Morgan. What would your grandmother think, you cavorting all over the place with your shirt off? Or your boss? I have half a mind to report you.”
“He’s right over there. You know Hunter. He took your granddaughter to prom, remember?”
“I’m talking about the Schaefers,” she snaps. “I don’t know what they’re thinking, leaving you two to run this place. You’ll run it into the ground!”
Morgan’s smile doesn’t slip, but I swear the muscle in his cheek jumps. “Why don’t you head on back to your booth with your friends and I’ll whip up that drink for you and bring it over? That way you can leave my future bride to enjoy her own drink in peace.”
I roll my eyes. This isn’t the first time that Morgan has joked about marrying me. In fact, the second time I was in his bar, he asked how the tots were, and I stared him dead in the eye and said, “It’s fried potatoes.”
He’d put his hand to his chest, staggering. “Oh baby, I love the way you pay me compliments. Will you marry me?”
I’d scoffed, he’d laughed, and it had been enough encouragement for him to keep it up.
Mrs. Gardiner sniffs. “Be sure that you do, Morgan. I’m not your mother who’ll let you get away with far too much.”
Morgan turns away from me so I can’t see his reaction to that, but it’s a pretty obvious dismissal. The rude lady harrumphs, but follows his advice and goes back to her friends.
I watch them while Morgan mixes the drink.
There are two older women at the table she joins.
While Mrs. Gardiner is dressed pretty nicely in her pantsuit, the other two are more casual.
One, a white woman with a short halo of curls wears a shirt that says “Shuck the Patriarchy” with a row of oysters below it, and the other, a dark-skinned woman, has long gray dreads hanging over her shoulder and an outfit with bright colors and a flowy, hippie vibe.
These women are about my grandmother’s age, and I wonder where they live. It’s a small town. I bet they have families nearby that take care of them, not put them in a home like I’ve done.
I shake the guilt away and eat the last tater tot. This is why I always come here—I need a buffer between my own grandmother and the real world.
“For the record,” Morgan says as he mixes the drink. “I’m not just trying to get into your pants.”
I raise an eyebrow. Whatever he’s going to say is bound to be outrageous, and he doesn’t mean it.
Despite all his words, today is the first time Morgan’s ever crossed the figurative bar with me.
He’s teased and flirted plenty, but Morgan isn’t interested that way, especially after seeing his reaction to my teeth.
We both wait while he shakes up the martini. He pops the top and pours it into a chilled glass.
“No, I’m trying to give you a night that forever changes the way you dream. The kind of night that leaves you shaky and wrung out and thinking about me, that small-town bartender that gave you the ride of your life.”
And with that, he picks up the filled martini glass and saunters off.