The Spice Is Nice (Alphas Fall Hard Collection #2)

1. Lips Now, Logic Later

Lips Now, Logic Later

Ivy Wylde

The Sapphire Saloon had never looked this good, and I’d take full credit for that, thank you very much.

Twinkle lights were strung from every rafter, culminating in one big ball of light above the dance floor.

Mason jars on the pub tables were stuffed with wildflowers.

A banner over the bar read HAPPILY EVER AFTER, and the dance floor remained packed with wedding guests who’d watched Ash and Willow fall in love over the past year and showed up tonight to celebrate the hell out of it.

The bride and groom danced, and I sat at a table with a bottleneck beer I’d barely touched.

I watched my sister Daisy spin Willow’s girl, Rosie, around on the dance floor.

Her cute little girl laughter cut through the music, high and bright, and Daisy grinned down at her like the tough-as-nails farrier she was had a soft underbelly after all.

She might talk like she didn’t want kids and a husband, but her eyes gave her away.

Then again, all of us Wylde sisters hadn’t quite found the key to love yet.

“Why aren’t you two out dancing? There're more cowboys here than women, and I guarantee each would love to be asked for a turn around the dance floor,” I teased Sage and Poppy at our table.

“I’m fine for now. Happy to just observe and take it all in,” Sage stated, nursing a special Irish coffee the newlywed couple had created, a spiced vanilla latte with Bailey’s they’d named The Forbidden Brew—fitting, for reasons anyone who knew their love story would understand.

“Since this is my third slice of wedding cake, I’ll be hitting the dance floor shortly to work off the calories,” Poppy giggled with white icing laced across her teeth, yet every bit of sunshine with strawberry-blonde tresses to match, bopping in place to the beat of the music.

The youngest of us, God bless her nineteen-year-old metabolism.

It was just the four of us sisters against the world since Mom and Dad died, and some days the world still felt like it was winning.

“What about you? Why aren’t you out there kicking up your heels with one or more of these cowboys?

” Sage directed her cocked eyebrow at me.

Of the four of us, she was the one most quiet, but easygoing and smart as a whip, too.

She had surprised us all, not wanting to go to college, simply content to live and work in this town.

Not me. I left town years ago on the back of a Harley, with a man I thought I loved. How mistaken I was.

“I’m too busy making sure this event goes off well.” I quickly dismissed any thoughts of getting hooked up with anyone.

She was right, though. I usually danced the night away.

These days, I wasn’t the “wild” Wylde sister running after foolish men for love.

I’d helped plan this reception. Coordinated the flowers, the food, the playlist, the seating.

I did this sort of thing because over the past few years, I’d come to realize that I was good at it—and because our dwindling town of Forest Grove needed someone who gave a damn about making things happen.

Young people fled our poor little town for Bozeman or Billings for college when they came of age, or anywhere that had more than one stoplight and a halfway decent dating pool.

And they never returned. Which left us with more than our fair share of cowboys and ranch hands, and too few women.

The population ratio got worse every year.

What this town needed was more families.

More families meant the town could grow.

Bringing in business and attracting prosperity.

I had ideas about how to fix that, big ideas I’d been working up the courage to pitch at the next Chamber of Commerce meeting, but tonight wasn’t about business.

Tonight was about love and dancing and an open bar, and I was determined to enjoy it.

I left my sisters behind and headed toward the bar, when the front door of the Sapphire swung open hard enough to rattle the neon sign above it.

Seth Brewster walked in like he owned the place.

He didn’t, and never had. But my ex moved like a man who believed the world owed him a seat at every table, and the people nearest the door shifted out of his way on instinct.

I grimaced, and my stomach dropped. What did I ever see in him, all dirty and scruffy?

He wore a leather jacket with his Raisin’ Hell MC Club patch and a red bandana tied around his head despite the June heat.

His motorcycle boots trailed dust on the Sapphire’s floor, the look on his face bored and dangerous.

More than his appearance, it was his dark soul that ultimately drove me away from him.

I hadn’t seen Seth in years. Not since before his arrest—the night I’d watched him beat a man bloody.

I had called in anonymously to the police with my hands shaking so badly I could barely hold the phone.

When they arrived, I fled and returned to my hometown.

Returning home, I tried rebuilding myself into someone my sisters could trust not to run away again.

Now the past hit me hard, as this uninvited guest scanned the room. When his dark eyes found mine across the crowd, his mouth smirked like a predator when it spotted something it had marked long ago.

My body went cold, shaking in my boots.

He started walking toward me.

Think. I needed to think.

I turned on my heel, my heart slamming against my ribs so hard I could feel it in my throat. I needed a barrier between us. A wall. A reason for Seth Brewster not to corner me in front of one hundred people at a wedding reception. I needed—

Colt Calhoun. The ranch hand I’d spent the better part of a year pretending not to notice as anything other than a friend. He leaned his elbows against the bar with a bottle of beer in one hand, shooting the shit with Knox and a couple of their ranch buddies.

His eyes cut to me as I approached, and as usual, his gaze set butterflies in motion in my stomach. But friendship was all I could handle at this point in my life, so I never allowed myself to put more thought into his glances.

The guy cleaned up nicely for this wedding in a white button-down with the sleeves rolled to his forearms. The hem of it tucked into the trim waist of black jeans.

His good black boots, polished to a shine—ones I’d convinced him he should buy from my shop to impress the ladies about six months ago.

He still wore his light brown hair high and tight, but his chin and jaw sported a few days’ growth.

How could I not notice him? With his muscular build, he’d have been the type of cowboy I’d have flirted with, had my way with, and chewed up for breakfast long ago.

But that was the old me of the past. He wasn’t doing anything remarkable, just standing there, steady and solid and calm, the way he always came across.

Unknowingly sexy, too. I locked onto him like a compass finding north.

I didn’t weigh options or consider consequences, or do any of the careful strategic planning I’d spent the last few years rebuilding my life around. Nope. With Seth heading my way, I walked straight up to Colt, grabbed the front of his shirt with both hands, stood on my tippy toes—and kissed him.

Not a tentative first kiss, but a full-lipped, demanding one.

He went still for a second. I made a small sound against his mouth, begging—please, just play along—and he seemed to understand when his free hand came to my waist, not grabbing, just settling there against my bare skin like his calloused palm had been waiting for exactly that spot.

Of all days to wear a short cropped blouse over a long flowing skirt, baring my midriff—my skin tingled where he touched. And holy hell, he kissed me back, warm and welcoming, accepting my tongue. He tasted of beer and sweet champagne wedding cake, and somehow the combination worked.

His scent surrounded me, clean and leathery, bergamot and pine. His other hand left his bottle on the bar and landed on the small of my back, his thumb caressing in place. More tingles, more sensations, more of everything on overload.

The entire Sapphire Saloon disappeared. The music, the crowd, the neon lights, and the weight of Seth Brewster’s eyes on my back. All of it gone. Just the heat from Colt’s hands on me and his mouth against mine and the absolutely terrifying realization that I did not want to stop kissing him.

If this was the way friends kissed in Colt’s world, then why the hell did it take us so long to try it?

But no. That wasn’t the reason I came onto him.

I pulled back, my chest heaving. His blue-green eyes shimmered in the light; every fleck of color in them held a question he was too polite to ask out loud.

“I’m sorry. I just needed help,” I breathed.

“Happy to help you anytime if it means more kisses like that, Wylde,” he whispered, always using my last name, as if calling each other by our first names might negate our friendship. His hands hadn’t moved off my skin yet.

Behind me, Seth cleared his throat. Colt eyed him over my shoulder.

“Who is that?” He asked.

“My ex. Play along. Please, Calhoun? For me?”

His hand tightened on my waist, enough to assure me. Everyone in Forest Grove knew I’d had a rough ex, and Colt had probably heard the gossip mill too. Nobody knew the details, though, not even my sisters, and I intended to keep it that way.

“He bothering you?”

“He’s here. That’s enough to bother me.”

“Ivy, a word,” Seth commanded. But I didn’t answer to him anymore. I turned to face him, with Colt at my back, both of his hands repositioning to my waist in a show of fake possession. Seth’s eyes flicked quickly down there and back up. “So that’s how it is? You forgot who you belonged to?”

“I belong to myself, and definitely not to you,” I spat back.