Chapter 5 Passion Project
Passion Project
As the days go by, when I’m not slammed at the bar, I can’t help but sneak glances at Luke again and again. He deals with all his new fans with polite but professional disinterest. He doesn’t return their flirtation. Doesn’t smile.
It only makes them work that much harder for his attention.
At closing time, Luke and I settle into what’s become our routine. Every night, he helps me clean up. Then he always walks me to my car. He even opens the door for me and closes it once I’m in before he heads back to his truck.
Every night, also without fail, I’m tempted to roll down my window again. To ask him why I catch him looking at me all the time, but he still won’t make a move.
But I don’t.
He’s my coworker.
More than that, though, he’s become my friend.
Yes, I could really use getting put through the mattress by a hot cowboy right now.
But I think I need a friend even more.
Because the thing is—I really like having Luke around. In fact, I really like him as a person, which is more than I can say for most of the men I encounter on a regular basis.
He asks me questions about myself—not in a pushy or intrusive way, or like there’s some agenda behind it—just like he really wants to know me.
And I find myself telling him the little details I don’t give most people. How I cry at the first ten minutes of the Pixar movie “Up” every time. That I hate cooking but I learned how to do it so I could feed myself and Dad something healthier than boxed mac and cheese.
I don’t tell him the really deep stuff. Like the way holidays make me happy and sad at the same time, because for me they never look like the Hallmark card version I always wished for growing up. Like the way I think about my mom every day, and wonder if she thinks of me too.
I don’t get into my whole life story. I just tell him my mom wasn’t around and my dad raised me.
In turn, Luke tells me more about his life.
He tells me how he learned to ride a horse before he learned to ride a bike. How he’s fixing up the guest cabin on his parents’ property, the one he moved back into when he took his leave of absence from school.
“You’re doing all the work yourself?” I ask.
“If you want a job done right, better do it yourself.” The corner of his mouth lifts in a smile. “Plus, it’s a lot cheaper when you do your own labor.”
“Amen to that.” I grab a couple of shot glasses and pour us both whiskeys before sliding his across the bar. “To cheap labor.”
He catches the glass, his fingers brushing mine.
“Well now,” he says, eyes glinting with amusement as he raises it toward me, “I wouldn’t call myself cheap. Maybe reasonably priced.” That smile deepens into something warmer. “But for the right project, I’ve been known to work for free.”
“What’s the right project?” I ask, unable to keep the curiosity out of my voice.
He takes a slow sip of his whiskey. “A passion project.” His gaze drops to my lips for just a fraction of a second before finding my eyes again. “The kind where you actually want to take your time. Have your fingerprints all over every inch.”
Good. Fucking. Lord.
Heat blooms in my cheeks, spreading down my neck. The air between us simmers, almost electric.
My imagination is running wild with the idea of Luke taking his time. Putting all his passion into a certain kind of project. Putting his fingerprints all over me.
When I finally glance back up at him through my lashes, he’s still watching me with that same warm, patient expression, like he’s got all the time in the world and he’s content to spend it right here.
I slam back my shot glass and down the whiskey in one swallow.
Damn, does it burn.
Even if I know the real reason I’m burning up inside has nothing to do with the whiskey, and everything to do with the cowboy sitting right across from me.
A few days later, I pull into the gravel lot behind Mad Dog’s and kill the engine. The CLOSED sign hangs in the window. We don’t open until four on Mondays. I wouldn’t normally be here since it’s my day off, but here I am anyway.
I left my favorite set of colored pens in the storage room last night, and I’d like to use my free time to finish up my latest drawing.
The back door’s unlocked, which is weird. Dad’s supposed to be at a supplier meeting in Billings.
Then I hear it. The rhythmic thwack of a hammer against wood.
I round the corner of the building and stop dead.
Luke’s there, shirtless in the afternoon sun, a backwards baseball cap shading his neck. Sweat gleams across his shoulders as he drives another nail into fresh cedar siding. The muscles in his back flex with each swing.
I forget how to breathe for a second.
He must sense me because he turns, hammer still raised. A slow smile spreads across his face.
“Madison.” He lowers the hammer. “Thought you had the day off.”
“I do.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “Forgot something. What are you doing here?”
He gestures at the wall with the hammer. “Your dad mentioned the siding was rotting. Was gonna call someone, but...” He shrugs, and the movement does absolutely unfair things to his taut, ridged torso. “I’ve done plenty of maintenance at the ranch. Figured I’d save him a few hundred bucks.”
I step closer, examining his work. The new boards line up perfectly, the seams tight and clean. “You’re good at this.”
“I like to work with my hands.”
The corner of his mouth quirks up. I don’t have to look in the mirror to know pink must be flooding my cheeks.
He notices.
Something heated flickers in those seaglass eyes as he says, voice a little huskier, “Almost done here, actually. Just need to seal these last two boards.”
I watch him work for a moment, admiring not just his incredible body but his sure, practiced movements, the way he checks each board for level before securing it.
There’s something really attractive about competence. About a man who can fix things. Who makes sure the job is getting done right.
“Let me buy you lunch,” I blurt out. “As a thank you. For helping Dad out.”
Luke sets down the hammer and reaches for the faded blue henley draped over the porch railing. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to.”
He pulls the shirt over his head, and I can’t fight my disappointment when all that skin disappears. “Alright then,” he says. “But I’m paying.”
“That defeats the whole purpose!”
“Madison.” He says my name like it belongs to him, and it basically does now. “I’m paying.”
Twenty minutes later, we’re sliding into a booth at Tower Deli on Main Street.
I insisted on driving, since that’s apparently the only favor he’ll let me do for him.
Luke’s cleaned up, in a fresh t-shirt he got out of his truck. His cap is still backwards, and he still looks hot as fuck.
“My friend Emily used to be a waitress here,” I tell him, opening the laminated menu even though I have it memorized. “Best waffles in town.”
“That’s what your dad said.”
“Yeah, I bet. These waffles are at least fifty percent to blame for giving him diabetes.”
Luke doesn’t open his menu. He’s watching me instead, and it makes my pulse skip. “He talks about you a lot, you know. Says you’re the only reason the bar’s still running.”
“He exaggerates.”
“I don’t think he does.”
We order—burgers for both of us, Cherry Coke for me, ice water for him—and then it’s just us in the red vinyl booth with sunlight streaming through the window.
“So, business school,” I say, popping the paper off my straw. “Kind of a swerve for a cowboy, no?”
A rueful smile. “So people say. My daddy thinks it’s a waste of time, even if he doesn’t say so. He just says ranching doesn’t need an MBA.”
“But you think different?”
“I don’t know what I think, some days.” He runs his thumb along the condensation on his water glass.
“Maybe that if I’m going to take over the ranch someday, I should actually know how to run it like a business.
We’ve been doing things the same way for four generations.
Maybe it’s time someone looked at the data, figured out how to make it sustainable for the next generation.
I want my kids to not have to struggle to survive.
I want them to look forward to taking over, to being stewards of the land. ”
Okay. If my ovaries could talk, they’d be shouting, good provider, strong genes. Have this one’s babies.
For once, they’re probably right. Looks like my ovaries have gotten older and wiser too.
When the check comes, Luke snatches it before I can even reach over.
“I said I was buying,” I protest.
“And I said I was paying.”
He slides cash into the folder. Too much, I notice. A very generous tip.
As we walk back to my Jeep, I poke his firm bicep. The cotton t-shirt stretches around his muscles.
“You have way too much brainpower to be knocking skulls together at a dive bar,” I say. “Couldn’t you have gotten a paid internship somewhere?”
“Can’t set your own hours at a paid internship.”
“You’re already spending a lot of hours at Mad Dog’s. And now you’re working overtime, fixing up the place too? I hope Dad’s giving you double-time for that, at least.”
“I don’t need to get paid to do a simple favor.”
I goggle at him. “You’re not even getting paid for today?”
He shrugs.
“Oh my god, Luke. Maybe you really did fall off the back of a turnip truck. Everything you do at Mad Dog’s is work. You need the money. It’s only right to get paid for what you do.”
His eyes glint as he looks at me. “It’s a passion project.”
This backwards-baseball-cap, jacked, gorgeous, sneakily-charming motherfucker.
I like him way too much.
But all I say is, “I take back everything I said about you having too much brainpower to be a bouncer.”
He just grins that gorgeous grin at me.
Yeah, I’m cooked.