Chapter Five
As he drove, Jace noted small changes to the town.
Small being the operative word. There were new signs over some of the buildings, but that was to be expected after a couple decades.
What was missing was a complete landscape change, with highways, high-rises, and hotels cropping up like in Bozeman.
Banberry had stayed true to the footprint he’d grown up with.
Small-town quaint with class and country in equal measure. He didn’t think he’d mind being here as much as he’d feared it on the flight up.
He felt light behind the wheel of his dad’s Chevy. Older and wiser than the last time he’d stolen the vehicle to pick up a girl he’d wanted to make out with, but still the same at his core. At least he thought so.
He flipped on the radio; country music came through the speakers loud and clear, and Jace settled back into his drive.
The guys were right about Joe’s. It was hopping busy on both sides, it seemed, and Jace smiled.
All the vehicles in the lot were trucks with oversized beds, some even with horse trailers still attached.
Not a Porsche in sight, or within a hundred miles, outside his rental, which was going back tomorrow, no question.
He pulled into the last open spot in the dirt lot and hopped out, making his way to the entrance of the restaurant side, only to slam into the back of a man who stood at the end of a line out the door. Damn, this place was like the Warwick on a Saturday night.
Inside, he saw—and smelled—why the place was so packed.
Every booth, every four- and two-top was packed with people enjoying mile-high plates of food that caused his stomach to rumble.
Salads toppling off the plates, burgers that stood taller than a large beer stein, fries spilling onto the table… It all looked too good to pass up.
The guys were already seated, and more importantly, they had a round of drinks in front of them.
“Sorry, it took a sec to clean up.”
“No apologies needed,” Brad said, handing over a shot glass filled to the brim with what looked like straight whiskey. “But it does come with a hefty catch-up fee.”
Jace clinked glasses with the guys and let the shot slide down his throat. Yep. Straight whiskey. The good stuff, too.
“Damn, that was needed,” he said, collapsing into the bench seat next to Owen. “I don’t know the last time I’ve been that physically wiped.”
“Yeah, I’d imagine there was a disconnect between the ranching you did in LA and here,” Owen said.
He waved over the server and made a sweeping gesture to the table, indicating another round was in order. Owen was quiet, serious, but the twinkle in his eyes now that he was out and away from the ranch told Jace he was probably down for a good time if the situation called for it.
“That’s an understatement. We were missing about three thousand acres and about forty heavy spotlights. That, and the most I lifted was a script. Today was…”
“Hard as hell?” Brad offered.
“Fuckin’ exhausting?” Owen chimed in.
The server reappeared with the second round of whiskeys, this time in rocks glasses and more than a healthy pour in them. Jace would need food soon or this night was going to ruin him for any work he hoped to do tomorrow.
Jace sipped on the whiskey, letting the burn wash away any remaining reticence about sticking out this renovation instead of leaving Banberry with the same speed he had at eighteen.
“It was nice, actually.”
Owen’s mouth twitched into a half smile, the most Jace had seen on the guy yet.
“I didn’t appreciate it much when I was a kid, but it’s worth the break in acting to be here, I know that much. Even if it hurts.”
“So, you’re really sticking around? Man, your dad would get a kick out of that,” Brad said, shaking his head and taking a long sip of his drink.
“He was always kidding around that if you came home, the pigs in the barn would sprout wings. That didn’t help him thinking you would at some point.
He even bet our friend, Steve, that you’d be back before he retired. ”
“Your dad was a good man,” Owen added. “Helluva rancher. You’ve got big boots to fill.”
“Don’t I know it.” It was hard to hear about his dad, about the kind of man these guys had gotten to know, a man Jace never had or would know in that way.
His chest ached with regret and loss, the result mingling with the whiskey into a melancholy cocktail of emotion. “Well, hopefully, I’ll do him proud.”
“You will,” Brad said. “Just being here’s enough. Hey, where is Steve, by the way?”
“Probably working on baby-making.” Owen turned to Jace. “Steve and his wife, Jackie, just got married. They’re trying to get pregnant and aren’t shy about telling us that’s why they’re leaving a party.”
“Or dinner.”
“Or a hike. Those two can’t keep their hands off one another.”
Jace swallowed the rest of his whiskey in a single gulp.
“Not to switch subjects, but what can you tell me about your tenant, Brad? She friends with you guys first, or you rented your space out to her when she moved to town?” It was the most innocuous way he could think to get to the heart of what he was curious about: Who is Aurelie?
With so much else going on in his life of late—losing his dad, quitting acting, and deciding to become a full-time rancher—he shouldn’t have anything as ridiculous as a woman on his mind, but she was taking over a heckuva lot of his bandwidth.
Brad’s smile was knowing, but he did Jace a favor and just nodded. “Yeah, she and my sister were best friends in Turks and Caicos. When Aury’s mom died, she came here and nursed Paige through her cancer diagnosis.”
Jace almost choked on his drink. “Paige had cancer?”
“Yeah, scary time in our lives. Aury was a goddamn saint, though. Saved her in more ways than one.”
“Hey,” Owen said.
Brad smiled and slapped his brother-in-law on the shoulder.
“You did, too, bud. Don’t think I don’t appreciate you every day for what you’ve brought to my sister’s life. Maddie’s the best thing to happen to any of us, too.”
Owen cleared his throat, his eyes misty. “Well, my girls are pretty great. I’m the best version of myself with them.”
“Anyway,” Brad said, kindly steering the conversation to more benign territory—for Owen anyway. “Aurelie is a gift, and not only because she’s a nurse. She’s fiery, loyal, and loves our whole family like she was raised alongside us.”
Jace let that sink in. So, Paige was a pediatrician, her husband was former military, then her brother was a world-famous author, and his wife a high-powered lawyer.
And to top off the group was Aurelie, a nurse from the islands who could have easily doubled as a fashion model with her insanely intense eyes, skin that begged to be touched, and the kind of curves that literally stopped traffic and broke up marriages.
He admitted when he was wrong and, boy, had he misjudged his hometown when he’d decided to come back.
Maybe it wasn’t the rural hellscape he thought he’d left behind.
The server arrived with a mountain of food and heaped it all in front of him.
Jace’s jaw fell open. Between his physical training for the action films he’d done, combined with healthy genetics, he could eat.
But this feast? Yeah, he’d overordered. Too bad Max wasn’t there to take some of the load off.
A pang shot through Jace’s chest. He couldn’t wait to have his faithful mutt up here. Would Aurelie and Max get along? It surprised him that he cared so much about the answer.
The men ate and caught up, the subject of women going well with the whiskey that kept flowing.
Jace’s ears perked every time he heard Aurelie’s name come up.
He learned she was single, ran the OB ward at the hospital, and was fiercely protective of her goddaughter, Maddie.
He also learned that she could hold her liquor, was feisty and wild, and had a whip-smart intellect that kept men in their place.
All of it should have told him to steer clear, but damn if Jace wasn’t more intrigued by the time the guys begged off to get some sleep before a full day, which would start before the sun came up the next morning.
He lingered in the parking lot at Joe’s, arguing with himself and the guys that he needed a second to chill and think through the house plans. Too bad all he was thinking about was that long cascade of raven hair and eyes that peered into his soul.
Maybe that’s why he imagined the flash of neon yellow ducking into the bar side of Joe’s, followed by a dark cascade of hair.
Had he manifested Aurelie just by being unable to stop thinking about her?
Either way, his luck had run out. No way he’d be able to concentrate on relaxing when she was at the bar, too.
Los Angeles was too big for his simpler tastes, but this town might actually be a little on the small side of things, at least with Aurelie cropping up every time he thought he’d gotten his bearings.
He headed back inside, reasoning that he’d check it out for a later date, but his gaze wandered the bar until it fell on the neon yellow he’d followed in.
Aurelie. She was sheathed in the brightest colors he’d seen in person.
A yellow tunic fell over her shoulders, and he tried like hell not to notice the perfect, full breasts that bounced as she walked toward him.
Her legs were clad in a shade of blue-green he’d only seen on a diving trip to the Palancar Gardens in Cozumel.
She looked like the sun and the sea, and he dissolved into a puddle when her bone-white teeth smiled at him.
Yeah, fuck peace. This woman was all kinetic energy, and his world felt the seismic shift every time she came near him.