Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Mason
“ I ’m glad you showed up tonight.” Lucas squeezed my shoulder, his dark hazel eyes appearing gold under the string lights above us.
“I always show up to this thing… every single year,” I grunted, shifting onto the heels of my boots. “I don’t know how you’d handle the drunks without me.”
“Oh, I think we’d handle them, send ‘em out to break colts with some of the guys,” Lucas chuckled. His blonde hair peeked out from under his cowboy hat, and the red undertone on his face was a little more prevalent from the heat of the evening. My best friend was about two inches shorter than me, making him right around six feet tall. He was a looker, that was for sure, but he still hadn’t landed a lady…
And I wasn’t sure if he ever would.
“You still talking to that vet—what’s her name?” I asked him as I checked my watch.
“Macie Jo?” Lucas raised his brows at me as the live cover band started to play on the makeshift stage in the barn.
“Yeah, I don’t know what her name was. You know I’m not any good with names.” The smell of smoked meat filled the air, and I was dying to try some of Ted’s, but I never ate until I was off my shift. Besides, I needed to find Jess…
“Well, if it was Macie Jo, then no, I’m still not talking to her. She moved off to the north, took a job at one of them big cattle ranches up in Wyoming.”
“As a vet?” I scanned the crowd, looking for Jackson. I had seen him walking around with some blonde—whatever her name was—but I hadn’t seen him in a solid half hour...
“Yeah, as a vet.” Lucas grabbed my attention. “I don’t know why else she’d spend all that time going to vet school and then not use her degree.”
I shrugged, noting that he was a little defensive about it—must still be bothering him. “Touché, but sometimes people just get burned out on their jobs.”
Or this loud ass music.
I felt my thirty-eight years of age at the moment, watching the teenagers dance around the floor, two-stepping and laughing as they went. “Man, to be young again.”
“No kidding. I’m a year younger than you, and I still feel like I might throw out my back if I dance for more than just a few songs.”
I laughed, shaking my head at him. “That’s because you’ve been thrown off so many damn broncs. That’s not age, that’s just foolishness.”
Lucas punched me in the arm. “Yeah, ‘cause you never did anything stupid.”
“He didn’t,” Jackson’s voice commented from behind us. “I don’t think Sheriff has done a bad deed in his life. He complains if we just eat on our shift—like we ain’t being paid a salary or something.”
“That’s because your lunch turns into a two-hour conversation with your girlfriend,” I pointed out, my tone flat.
“She’s not my girlfriend… yet, ” Jackson added with a grin.
“Women are only trouble,” Lucas muttered, causing Jackson’s smile to fade.
“You two really are the same kind of cynics.” My deputy shook his head at us both, before glancing down to his watch. “Ah, it’s that time.” He unbuttoned his pearl snap, revealing a black T-shirt with the word ‘security’ written across the back of it in bold white letters.
“Man, you take this real seriously,” Lucas snickered. “You do know that this is just a dinner and dance—and we ain’t ever had to do anything other than calm down a few drunk cowboys, right?”
“Yeah, but this way, they know that if they start throwing punches, I ain’t gonna be in trouble for hitting them back.”
My lips turned downward. “You better not be getting into any fights. We haven’t had a fight here, ever. And I don’t think we want to start that kind of environment. This is a family-friendly event.”
“I’m not gonna start anything,” he grunted, switching his radio to the ON position. “I’ll be on my best behavior… as long as everyone else is, too.”
“All right.” I ignored the amused look on Lucas’s face when Jackson shot us both a wink and headed off to some young blonde who I hadn’t noticed waiting for him. “He’s gonna be worthless.”
“We were both young like that at one point,” Lucas slapped me lightly on the shoulder. “Now, I need to get back to making my rounds, and you need to get something to eat now that you’re not playing security.”
“Deal.” With that, we parted ways and I headed to the row of food. There was enough left to fill my plate, and I let out a sigh of parental relief when I caught sight of Jess hanging with Dara, Lily’s daughter. I knew that Dara wasn’t trouble. She was a good influence.
“Mason!” a voice called from behind me. I turned to see just who I was thinking of, sitting there at the table. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the two of them.”
“Thanks,” I said to Lily as I took a seat at the table across from her. I sat my plate down on the standard red and white checkered tablecloths. I was pretty sure they were from the nineties, but I never asked—nor cared—about how Lucas threw this shindig every year.
I glanced around, wondering if her friend, Emma, was with her. I hadn’t been able to get the woman out of my head since I met her at the café, and then saw her a second time outside the florist later that night…
But I was also avoiding her like the plague.
I didn’t like feeling any attraction to anyone anymore—not that I didn’t notice beautiful women. I was still a man, but also, no one had caught my attention the way Emma had. She knocked me right off my feet.
“So is Jess ready to get behind the wheel and get her license?” Lily asked as she shoved a fry into her mouth. “Dara’s been driving for two months now, and I’m still not sure how I feel about it.”
“Yeah,” I grimaced. “Her sixteenth birthday is in December, but I don’t know about that driving stuff—so many idiots out on the road these days.”
Lily nodded. “But they gotta get out there at some point, you know? It’s so tempting to lock them away from the world, but we can’t shield them forever.”
I’ll sure as hell try to.
I pursed my lips instead of saying anything, opting not to enter this kind of conversation with Lily. She was an outspoken woman, and while I could appreciate that to some degree, I wasn’t willing to pit myself against her. She was a firecracker—and I wondered if Emma was the same…
“So I saw that the window is fixed at Doris’s shop,” Lily continued, sucking the BBQ off her pointer finger. “I thought that was really nice of you to tarp it up the evening of.”
“Yeah, that’s just part of my job,” I chuckled, taking a bite of the rib on my plate. “I couldn’t just leave it open like that.”
“They have insurance people for that,” Lily countered. Her eyes suddenly lit up as she looked past me to someone. “There you are! I thought you might not show!”
“Sorry, I just ran a little late.”
My heart flip flopped a few times in my chest when I recognized the sweet, airy voice behind me.
“You look amazing.” Lily beamed from across the table. “Like wow, look at those bootcut jeans on you! You look like you’re straight out of a Boot Barn catalog.”
Oof. My mouth went dry at the thought of seeing a better outline of Emma’s hips, the shape of her thighs, and well… her ass.
And the hang up was causing me to be rude.
Shit.
I cleared my throat and turned around in my chair. “Hello, Emma.”
She graced me with a sparkling smile, the string lights above appearing to shimmer across her creamy skin. “Hey, Sheriff. I thought that might be you. Mind if I sit here?” Emma gestured to the chair beside me, and I nodded, not wanting to be rude.
I pulled it out for her, eyeing the dark wash denim with the fading all in the right spots. She had more curves than I imagined, and I fought the masculine desire to picture her with nothing at all covering them. Her white tank top showing off her perky breasts wasn’t helping, either.
“This is such an authentic little get together,” she began as she leaned against the table on her elbow. It gave me a full view of her cleavage, and I had to force my eyes away—back to Lily…
Who was grinning from ear to ear.
Is my face red?
“There’s a good couple hundred people here tonight,” Lily said, and I let out an inward sigh, realizing that she was finding Emma’s words funny. “I know Austin is full of thousands—well maybe hundreds of thousands? I don’t know. But you get what I’m saying. This is a good turnout.”
She nodded. “Maybe next year I can make some food for it? I saw there’s a lot of entrees and not many desserts.”
“I think that’s a great idea,” I chimed in honestly. “Lucas doesn’t hire caterers, so it’s all based on donations. It’s just all done in good fun.”
“That’s so cool, really. I love the small-town dynamic.” Emma was beaming under the lights, and I could not take my eyes off her.
“It’s all fun until you start getting rumors floating around about you,” Lily snorted. “Then I started wishing that I lived in Austin. Speaking of, I really need to find Drew.”
“Ah yeah,” I said with a nod. “I saw him earlier talking with some guy way overdressed.” I thought back to the stranger in a suit and tie.
“That’s Graham—I don’t know his last name—or maybe that is his last name?” Lily ran her index finger along her bottom lip. “I don’t know. They just moved here though. He’s some kind of developer. He thinks that Drew can secure him a bunch of property, and I think he was disappointed when he told him that most of his real estate sales are out of town.”
“Better to keep the developers out of town, anyway,” I muttered, shaking my head.
“Why is that?” Emma tilted her head in my direction. “Wouldn’t that just bring more business to town?”
“We don’t want more business,” I shot back at her, and her eyebrows raised in response. “We like Millfield the way it is.”
“Hmm,” she shrugged. “I guess it could hamper the vibe.”
“Hamper the vibe?” I chuckled. “What kind of saying is that?”
“The kind I made up,” she teased back, her cheek flushing with a shade of crimson that made my stomach flip. “I happen to like my sayings.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “They’re intriguing.”
“Andddd… I think I’m going to go find Drew now,” Lily rose to her feet, giving us both a smirk. “You two have fun.”