Chapter 1 #2
His mouth curves like he understands women who come to a bar carrying more than a purse. “Sounds like your friend knows you well.”
“She knows too much. There’s a difference.”
“That why she left you unsupervised?”
I laugh before I can stop myself. “Annie
believes supervision is the ruination of a good time.”
Bo’s smile emerges, and it changes his whole face. It makes him look less like the bad kind of trouble and more like the kind of trouble a woman might willingly walk toward.
“She sounds wise.”
“She’s bossy.”
“Usually the same thing.”
I shake my head, still smiling, and trace a finger through the salt on the rim of my glass. “What about you? Anybody bossing you around tonight?”
“Not tonight.” He turns his whiskey once on the bar top. “Most days, it’s cattle, weather, and a ranch owner who thinks the need for sleep is a character flaw.”
“That sounds familiar. At the care home, sleep is reserved for the residents. The employees are expected to run on gas fumes and good will.”
His eyes warm. “You take care of people.”
“I try to.” The answer comes out softer than I intend. “Some days I think I do all right. Other days, I mostly keep everybody alive and hope that counts.”
“It counts,” he says.
The noise of the bar fills the small pause between us, but it doesn’t feel awkward. It feels like two tired people recognizing the same kind of weariness in each other and choosing, for a moment, not to step away.
When I finally set my empty glass down, he looks over. “You in a hurry to leave, or you want another mercy cocktail?”
A tired laugh slips out of me. “I’m always in a hurry to leave.”
His gaze stays on my face. “That so?”
“I’ve got two kids at home. They’re my sister’s, but…
” I pause, then shrug because explaining my life is never simple.
“They’re mine now, too, in all the ways that matter.
Naomi has a science project due, my five-year-old nephew thinks bedtime is a lie started by adults, and my mama is probably wondering why I’m not home being respectable. ”
Bo’s expression doesn’t shift into pity. I like that more than I should.
“Sounds like you keep a lot of plates spinning,” he says.
“Plates, knives, flaming torches. Depends on the day.” I turn my straw through the melted ice. “What about you?”
He glances at his glass, then back at me. “Came in for a drink. Saw you sitting here and figured I’d rather talk to you than drink alone.”
I lift an eyebrow anyway because flirting feels safer when wrapped in humor. “Smooth, cowboy. You use that one often?”
“First time.”
He says it so seriously, I believe him.
Then his voice lowers. “You really have to run off right now?”
I should say yes.
Yes, I have to go home. Yes, I have responsibilities. Yes, I’m tired. Yes, I’m the kind of woman who makes good choices because too many people depend on her not to fall apart.
Instead, I hear myself say, “I probably should.”
Bo waits. I look at him. At what feels like a well of patient hunger in his eyes. At the rough hands around his glass. At the quiet space he seems to make just by being near me.
“But I’m still sitting here,” I add.
His gaze drops briefly to my mouth.
“Good.”
I feel that one tiny word is like a hand at the small of my back.
We talk. He tells me he works on a ranch outside town that I’m familiar with, that he likes early mornings better than late nights, and that horses are easier to understand than people.
He has two nieces who like to climb all over him and ride him like a horse, and when he talks about them, his whole face lights up.
I tell him about the care home, about Mrs. Bell hiding peppermints in her bra, about Elijah insisting a T.
rex would make an excellent family pet, and Naomi asking questions so sharp they could cut glass.
Bo listens without interrupting, soaking up everything I share like a kid collecting shells at the beach.
He doesn’t try to fix my life in three sentences, or look around the room for someone younger, freer, and easier.
When I admit I’m bone-tired, he only nods like he understands the kind of exhaustion sleep doesn’t touch.
At some point, his knee brushes mine beneath the bar, and I don’t move away.
The music changes to something slower that’s all steel guitar and longing. The crowd shifts around us, laughter rising and falling. My second drink sits half finished in front of me, sweating onto a paper napkin.
Bo leans closer, just enough for me to catch the clean, masculine scent of him beneath the whiskey. Soap. Leather. Sun-warmed and honest.
His hand settles lightly at my waist, asking its own question.
My breath catches.
“You wanna come with me, Brandy, and let me loosen all the burden for a while?”
My heart skitters as I look anywhere else but at him. Over his shoulder, a drunk cowboy trips, losing his hat to the dance floor. The server shakes his head and continues wiping the bar.
All the reasons this is a terrible idea coalesce into a soup in my stomach. He’s a stranger. I need to go home. I don’t have time in my life for a man, let alone a cowboy. Momma would be disappointed. I haven’t shaved my legs. On and on.
“I don’t usually do this,” I whisper.
“I figured.” His thumb moves once, slowly over the thin fabric of my tank top. The small stroke sends heat unraveling through me.
I turn my face toward him. “You don’t know me.”
“No,” he says. “But I see you.”
I want to laugh off his words. I want to say something smart enough and sharp enough to put distance back between us. But the truth is, no one has looked at me like this in so long.
His focus on me feels so good. He makes me feel like I’m desirable, not the dependable daughter, the stand-in mother, or the reliable family member who picks up extra shifts, packs lunches, remembers appointments, pays bills late but pays them, and cries in the shower where nobody can hear.
Not the employee changing the elder's diapers and spoon feeding them vegetable mush.
Bo looks at me like I am still a woman beneath all that weight. A woman with skin that remembers heat. A woman whose body remembers the frisson of desire. A woman who deserves to be wanted, seen, and touched.
His breath brushes my ear when he speaks again. “You’re thinking about leaving.”
“I am.”
“And you’re thinking about staying.”
My thighs press together under the bar. Heat pools low, startling in its intensity. I haven’t been kissed in so long, I’m not sure I remember how.
Bo draws back enough to meet my eyes.
Those blue-gray-colored eyes have gone darker now. They’re still patient and controlled, but hungry enough to make me shiver.
“I think you should come with me,” he says. “Let me take care of you for a while.”
I stand at the edge of every promise I’ve made to everyone else.
The responsible voice in my head tells me to smile, drive home, and be grateful for one harmless conversation with a handsome stranger.
It reminds me of school projects, lunch boxes, Mama’s worried face, the church ladies who have opinions about everyone with a vagina.
But another part of me stirs. The lonely part. The tired part. The part that lies awake at night with one hand pressed to the aching panic in my chest, wondering when my life became a series of duties stitched together with guilt and grief.
That part looks at Bo’s handsome face and desperately wants to set the weight down, just for tonight.
He waits with his warm hand at my waist, his thumb moving in slow, soothing circles like he has all the patience in the world and is content to give me the time to wrestle my own convictions, even if it’ll lose him the chance to get between my thighs.
My fingers tremble as I reach for him.
Then I slip my hand into his.
This is probably stupid. Definitely stupid.
I need sleep more than sex. I need food, a warm drink, and a cool pillow to rest my head.
There’s a very real chance that I’m going to fall asleep while he’s doing delicious things to me.
I haven’t tidied my lady garden in a long, long time, but I can’t find a single fuck to give about any of it.
All the fucks I had, minus the one Bo’s going to get tonight, were given a long time ago.
His grip closes around mine, gentle but sure, and I exhale.
I can take this one thing for me. No one ever has to know.
CLAIMED BY THE COWBOYS