Chapter Two
“Where’s Duke?” Calhoun stared at Cross, Rohan and Huck, who’d all stood up from their table and quickly crossed the room to greet him.
“Kai?” Rohan broke the rhythm of the handshake to push back so he could look him in the face.
Calhoun knew he’d been unbearably rude—not greeting them, just asking about Kai, but seeing Duke go down, get back up and take out his target, even as blood soaked his fur…
“He’s fine.” Rohan gripped his shoulder. “He’s good. Better than good. Adjusting. Healthy.”
“Why isn’t he here?” Calhoun hadn’t wanted to meet the Coyotes at a bar. He’d wanted to go to Rohan’s family’s ranch where Ryder worked and pick up Kai.
“Kai’s with Ryder.”
“Yeah, I know,” Calhoun snapped then sucked in a breath.
He’d asked Ry to pick up Kai from the rehab facility if he was ready before Calhoun had mustered out, and the mission with Wolf had dragged on longer and become far more complicated than either of them had imagined.
The three men—his brothers; they’d been called the Coyote Cowboys—just stared at him. They probably looked ridiculous, facing off in a cowboy bar like Wild West gunslingers.
“Ryder’s had Kai a little under a month,” Rohan said like he was trying to defuse a situation, which he most definitely wasn’t going to have to do.
And that burned.
“Yeah.” Calhoun’s tension rose. He’d counted on seeing Kai, checking him out, reintroducing himself, starting their new life together.
“Ryder’s in full swing of rodeo season,” Rohan offered, his green gaze piercing. “Kai travels with him on the road.”
“What?” Calhoun demanded.
He’d imagined Kai running free on the ranch, tagging after Ryder while he worked there—herding cattle, checking fences, laying pipes for irrigation. Calhoun knew how to do it all—his family made sure of that even as they had hundreds of employees working long hours to make the Lael-Miller ranch and vineyards operate smoothly and at a staggering profit.
“Thought you were going to give the rodeo cowboy gig a spin.” Calhoun looked at Huck.
“I did. For a summer,” Huck said. “Only wanted a taste—something to do with Jim, the man who fostered me in my teens. I had to wait until September to honor my commitment to Jace so Jim and I hit the road and I competed last summer.”
That was something else they had to talk about. Jace. His gut felt like a stone, and his chest felt compressed like he’d just taken a round that his vest had barely stopped.
“Did you honor Jace? Did you finish the task for him?” Calhoun asked, feeling edgy.
What were they all doing now other than staring at him like an alien specimen dropped on the saloon’s wide-planked floor? It felt weird standing in a cluster in the middle of a bar. He felt utterly exposed. Couldn’t relax.
His nerves screamed with tension.
“Hell yeah.” Huck held up his left hand and Calhoun stared at him.
“What the…” He broke off seeing a band of gold around Huck’s deeply tanned finger.
“Got a baby too. Little girl. Born late March—Jacie.”
He heard the words but couldn’t process them. A kid. A wife and a kid? Huck had nearly died trying to save Jace last July. Ten months later he had a wife and a baby and had honored their brother by naming his kid after him?
Huck could have said he’d been elected to the US Senate, and Calhoun would have believed it more.
“You?” He choked out the word, rudely.
“I ain’t that ugly.” Huck rocked back on his heels, his eyes glinting with amusement and challenge.
“Me too.” Rohan held up his left hand, and Calhoun was dazzled by the sheen of gold around Rohan’s third finger. “Wanted to wait for you, but after your second delay, we went ahead with the wedding over spring break so Ginny and I could take a trip together. Adopting her son. Lucas. I’m a dad.”
Calhoun couldn’t even form the words. Helpless he looked at Cross. The one man he could count on to be as immovable and removed from drama as a mountain range, but he too had his hand up, only his band was more of a gunmetal gray that matched his narrowed gaze.
“Married in September,” he said, “’bout five weeks from the night I first laid eyes on her.”
Calhoun’s vision tunneled, and his ears rang, and everything seemed muffled like after a blast.
But Cross wasn’t done talking. “Got a teenage daughter too, and it’s all due to Jace so you’d better sit your ass down, Cowboy. Time for a beer and to catch up and wait for destiny to saunter through the door and take a chunk outta your ass.”
*
It felt weirdcrossing over the railroad tracks to head into town. At first Jory held her breath, expecting to be recognized, but maybe she was being too paranoid. She’d been gone fifteen years. She’d grown up, cut her long, curly hair, paid for her own braces in college. She was an adult. Successful. Who cared what people thought? She’d put herself through college, medical school and the grueling years of residency, paid her bills and had even helped her mom and oma start a new chapter in their lives.
She turned on to Main Street and stopped, mouth dropping open in wonder. The town looked so charming in the evening. Couples strolling, shops lit up, though closed on a Sunday night. Crawford Park still had fairy lights in the trees, and the flag flew proudly over the stately courthouse.
For a moment, her nerve failed her. Maybe this would be enough. She didn’t ever walk into restaurants alone—not the type that you sat down at a table and ordered off a menu from a server. Coffee shops yes. To pick up takeout, definitely.
And now she was going to walk into Grey’s Saloon, the oldest building in town that used to be a bar and brothel? Alone?
In Marietta, Montana?
“Yes.” Again she squared her shoulders and balled her fists.
Lisa had always waxed confidently about ‘manifesting.’ Jory thought it was easy for Lisa to manifest as she’d been born wealthy, adored, blonde, tall and beautiful. Still Lisa had been kind to the dazzled, so far out of her comfort zone Jory.
“Picture what you want,” Lisa had told her one evening as she’d demonstrated how to apply lip liner or eyeliner, or contour her sparkling eye shadow under her perfect winged brows. “But always figure out the steps you need to get there. Picture, plan, execute.”
So there in the middle of the sidewalk Jory Quinn pictured herself striding through the double doors of Grey’s, sauntering up to the bar and ordering a drink and then she’d catch the eye of a man and say something.
Like what?
No ideas formed so Jory decided this night too would be the debut of her spontaneous side. Besides, she could always sip her whiskey, smile enigmatically—another Lisaism—and raise one eyebrow inviting the hot cowboy—in her manifesting fantasy—to say something first.
Hopefully nothing too cheesy as that would spoil the fantasy.
“Showtime.” She marched down the rest of the block, eyes on the double doors so she saw the man come out. Dang he was tall. Broad shoulders. Brown Stetson angled on his head just so. T-shirt so in love with his body it clung. No belt buckle. Two full sleeves of tattoos.
Her stomach bottomed out.
Ink had not been part of her fantasy, but it should have been. She was finding it a little difficult to suck in a breath. So much for all the times she’d hit the hotel gyms.
He was gorgeous. Hotter than the sun. But he was also totally blocking her path, and her confidence was bleeding out like air on a busted tire.
“Excuse me?”
Ugh, her voice sounded like she was a little girl. Too tentative.
“Um…” Did you call unknown cowboys sir? Dude? Mister? Jerk?
“I’d like to…can you move just a little? You’re a man, not a mountain.” She shifted one foot to the other, but then her training kicked in.
He was utterly still. The expression in his eyes blank. And his skin had a pale grayish tinge, sweating a little, and the evening was not warm.
“Sir, are you okay?” Jory placed one hand gently on his forearm, and nearly gasped at the strength and tension running through it.
Like a coiled snake.
“Excuse me, sir.” Jory used her doctor voice, the deep one that someone in residency had told her was so soothing that it reminded them of a pond in the mountains surrounded by fir and hemlock. “Do you know where you are?” she asked. “Do you know what day it is?”
She released his arm, only keeping the tips of her thumb glancing on his wrist while her index finger took his pulse. Damn. Fifty. He could be suffering from bradycardia. Low O2 saturation or low blood pressure could make him lightheaded.
Or he could be an elite athlete.
He sure looked like one. She placed a hand on his back to measure his breath, but he spun around and grabbed her wrist. His eyes blazed brown gold, but the pupils weren’t dilated or contracted. Good news. A million things she should have said burbled up in her mind, but they danced just out of reach of her tongue. Instead, her brain went lizard.
“You are gorgeous,” she breathed.
He looked like he’d been carved out of Copper Mountain. His forehead was wide and flat, and he had a widow’s peak, and his sandy hair fell a bit disheveled around his eyes, but it was shaved short on the sides.
His cheekbones were high, sharp slicing hollows below. His nose was long, too bony to give him a polished look, but definitely ethnic, distinctive, lending him an old European royal air. And his mouth. Wow. His mouth was so sensual and sexy and stern, and she wondered what he’d look like smiling or what his lips would feel like on her skin.
Like that would ever happen.
His shoulders were broad and developed. She could see the twist of each muscle that her brain started to name like she was studying for a muscular system final in undergrad again. His khaki cotton, green T could barely contain that much muscle. His waist tapered, and his legs were long and muscular, and she bet he was rocking a six—maybe an eight-pack under his shirt, and she’d sure like to look to see if he had an Adonis belt.
She’d seen thousands of bodies in her practice, but nothing close to his, dang it.
His fingers easily wrapped around her wrist. She looked into his blazing eyes. She should feel trapped. Nervous maybe. Instead she felt thrilled. She stared at the tendons and veining in his hands, the length of his fingers, the tight trim of his nails, and all she could think of was ‘yes, please.’
“You should be in an anatomy class,” she said stupidly. “But that would be bad because you’d be dead, and that would devastate women everywhere.”
She clapped her free hand over her mouth.
“Shutting up now.”
“Why? It’s just getting good.”
Good? Jory felt like she’d blasted by that boring adjective the second she’d spotted him.
Was he flirting with her? She moistened her lower lip. He dried all the spit in her mouth and shorted her neurons so all she could do was stare at him.
“If there’s a woman alive who could think of a snappy retort while looking at you, I definitely don’t want to meet her. No. Wait. Maybe I do. I need tips. Desperately.”
Still should be shutting up.
This was why she didn’t go to bars.
He blinked. She could see the moment he came back into himself. The awareness felt like a blast of heat, and then humor lit those beautiful dark-honey-colored eyes, and his sensuous but hard lips twitched into a hint of a smile.
He still shackled her wrist.
“Ummmm, sir…” She looked down at his hand still wrapped around her arm.
“Sir?” Now he definitely smiled. “That takes me back when I’ve barely left.”
She stared into his warm gaze. Genetics definitely favored the few. He was damn near perfect.
“You are the total golden ratio,” she breathed, her mind calculating his features, his shoulders, his arms, torso, legs. Her gaze felt hungry, greedy, and she’d never see him again, and she wanted to remember everything.
“I was thinking maybe I’d feel a man’s touch tonight,” she said, her mouth jumping in even as her brain sputtered. “But not exactly like this.”
He released her, and she felt bereft. The quiet breathed between them.
“How did you imagine being touched?” He formed each word carefully, his gold gaze lasered into her eyes, and she felt like his eyes were a spotlight reading every lost, rejected, loner moment of her life when she wanted him to see the intelligent, determined, successful, confident woman she’d become. She straightened, chin up and out, shoulders back under his scrutiny.
“To be determined,” she said.
“Fair enough.”
He felt like a soldier on review, and while he wasn’t relaxed, he felt easy, like he’d made a decision. What had thrown this beautiful man off his stride earlier? The thought of him vulnerable filled her with cognitive dissonance.
He hesitated a moment and then his mouth twitched into a crooked smile. He raised his eyebrows.
“You going in or out?”
“I thought I’d go in, but if you’re leaving, what’s the point?”
This time his smile hit his eyes. “The night suddenly has possibilities.”
“Are you leaving?” She pressed her advantage.
“I don’t really have any place I want to go,” he said softly, and there was something in his voice that caught at Jory. His comment sounded more than literal. More than situational, and she could relate to that.
“I’m only in town for a short time,” she said, wanting to be upfront, and she couldn’t be any less cool than she already had been. “I don’t want to be in Marietta, but I am, and rather than hiding in my room, I thought I’d slay a few demons from my past. Have a drink. Play darts. Pool. Dance. See what happens.”
She issued it like a challenge.
“I have a few demons who need their asses kicked,” he mused, his eyes lighter than they’d been before—no shadows. “And I too am passing through Marietta. I’m doing a favor for a friend.”
“I’ve always wanted to try a whiskey,” Jory said. “I could buy the first round, and we could toast demon slaying.”
She forced her words to be a statement, not a question. Why wait a moment longer to take charge of her life? She needed to seize her confidence cape, fling it around her shoulders and let it ripple out behind her.
“I’ll drink to that.”