Until You (Billionaire Cowboys #3)

Chapter 1

chapter

one

Cora

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s this: bad decisions usually start with neon lighting and a man who looks like trouble.

Tonight? I’ve got both.

“Cora,” Jules says, dragging my attention back to our table. “You’ve been staring at that guy for a full thirty seconds. Either go talk to him or stop making it weird.”

“I am not making it weird,” I say, even though I absolutely am.

Jules snorts. “Oh, okay.”

“Who are we staring at?” Hope leans across the table, following my line of sight. “Ohhhh.” Her brows lift. “Oh, wow. Okay, yeah. He’s a problem.”

“Right?”

Across the bar is a man who looks like he walked straight out of a country song about poor life choices and spectacular consequences.

He’s leaning with his back against the actual bar, one boot resting on the corrugated metal wrapped around the old scarred wood, a long neck of green-bottle beer dangling loose between two fingers like he was born holding it.

Above his head, a neon double-X sign pulses green and slow.

He looks perfectly at home in that light.

He looks like trouble in that light.

Trouble is the last thing I need.

I’ve spent years trying to avoid trouble. Now, true, this is after years of running headfirst into trouble. But I’m reformed now. Mostly.

But today has been a shit day. The kind of day that makes my inner rebellious teenager wake up and snarl at the world, because sometimes, no matter how good you try to be, it’s not good enough.

“He is the best advertisement for ordering one of those green bottles I have ever seen,” I say.

“Agreed,” Hope says. “And I don’t even like beer.”

The man beside him says something that makes him laugh—a real one, not performed—and from across the room I watch the way the crinkles appear at the corners of his eyes. I find myself wishing, stupidly, that I knew what color they were.

Tall. Broad through the shoulders. Worn-in jeans that have never seen the inside of a mall. I can tell his dark hair is overdue for a cut by the way it curls up softly around the brim of his cowboy hat. A real cowboy hat, one that looks like it’s been through weather and work and years.

Yes, folks, I think I have a type I didn’t know about.

“New kink unlocked,” I murmur.

Jules’s brow shoots up. “The hat or the whole situation?”

“The whole situation,” I say. “It’s really doing it for me.”

“Well, why don’t you go find out if the whole situation will literally do it for you? “

“Jules.” Hope cuts her off with a swat on the arm.

“I’m just saying—”

“We know what you’re saying.”

Jules, Hope, and I are sisters in all the ways that matter.

The closest thing to family that any of us has.

I’m the reason we’re all here in Saddle Creek.

I had an interview for a job that I should have gotten.

Jules drove, since she’s the only one with a car.

And Hope tagged along, because that’s what you do with your ride or dies.

But the interview didn’t go well. It wasn’t an outright rejection, but I can feel it in my bones.

Which is why we’re sitting here in a bar in Saddle Creek, contemplating bad decisions.

I’m only half-listening. I’m still cataloging him as if I’ll need to recall every part of him from memory at a later date. The nose that’s been broken at least once and healed a little crooked. The deep-set eyes of an indeterminate color. The jawline.

That jawline. Shadowed with half a day’s worth of stubble and so sharp it could ruin a girl’s entire evening.

Hell, jawlines like that make women like me stupid.

“Military, you think?” Hope murmurs.

“Or cop,” Jules adds. “Or serial killer.”

I snort. “Those are wildly different options.”

“Not really,” Jules says, perfectly serious. “Common denominator is emotionally unavailable.”

“Lucky for me,” I say, reaching for my drink, “that’s exactly what I’m looking for tonight.”

Jules gives me a look that says she believes exactly none of that. “So you are planning to eventually walk over there?”

I open my mouth to respond, but then I stop. Because the man in question just looked over. And he caught me staring right at him.

His gaze finds mine across the whole length of the bar—steady and unhurried, like he’s been waiting for me to look long enough to look back. Like he doesn’t flinch away from things once he’s decided they’re worth watching.

He takes a long pull off his beer, his eyes still locked on me. Then he does that thing I think I’ve only ever seen in movies… he touches the brim of his hat with one finger and gives me a slight nod.

“Oh holy shit,” Hope breathes.

“I think I just came,” Jules says.

Hope doesn’t even chastise our friend this time because, yeah, that whole across-the-room cowboy greeting was sexy as fuck.

And still, I don’t look away.

Neither does he.

Something moves in the air between us—not soft, not sweet. Something with an edge to it. Something that tastes like the moment right before you do the thing you know you shouldn’t.

I’ve been here before, standing on this exact ledge.

I’ve never wanted to jump quite this badly.

“Go,” Jules says, nudging my foot hard under the table.

“I don’t need a push.”

“Cora. Honey. You are white-knuckling that drink.”

I look down. She’s not wrong. I set the glass down.

Hope grins. “Live your best life, babe. Just—maybe don’t fall in love tonight.”

“Please,” I say, already sliding off my stool. “I don’t even know his name.”

“Exactly,” Jules calls after me. “Keep it that way.”

I can feel my heart beating in my throat as I cross from my table to the bar. Cowboy’s heated gaze is still locked on mine.

Here’s the thing about names.

Names are a thread. Pull one and suddenly there’s a whole sweater unraveling—where are you from, what do you do, what are you looking for.

And then you’re sitting across from someone at two in the morning, telling them about growing up in foster care and how you got your first tattoo when you were sixteen, shortly after you failed out of high school.

Yeah, we’re not pulling on that thread tonight.

So nameless it is. Because nameless is temporary. Temporary is clean. Temporary is a night that exists in its own little sealed box, no spillover, no aftermath. No one creeping into the space you’ve carefully carved out for yourself.

Temporary doesn’t hurt. It’s hope that hurts. I know that better than most.

I make my way across the bar, weaving through clusters of people, through the low pulse of the music and the warm press of bodies. The smell of beer and fried food permeates the air. The closer I get, the more aware I am that he’s still watching.

Not the way most men watch.

Most men track movement.

This one is looking.

Like he’s already trying to figure out all my secrets.

Too bad for him. I’m not that easy to read.

I stop in front of him, and before he can open his mouth or raise an eyebrow or do anything that gives him the upper hand, I tilt my chin up and say, “What does a girl have to do around here to get a cowboy to ask her to dance?”

One beat.

Two.

Something moves behind his eyes—something that might be amusement, if he were the kind of man who let it show. His gaze drops to the bar floor, then comes back to my face.

“Usually,” he says, slow and measured, “she just has to ask.”

“I’m asking.”

“Sounds more like a complaint than an invitation.”

I laugh before I can stop myself. It surprises me. “Fine.” I hold out my hand. “Will you dance with me?”

He looks at my hand. Takes his time about it. Then he takes it. His hand is warm, rough-palmed. He’s got a grip that’s firm and certain. Then he unfolds himself from the bar to his full height, and I realize, belatedly, that from across the room I had underestimated him.

He is tall and broad. Big in the very best of ways. Especially since I am no dainty flower.

“Hm,” I say, tilting my head back to look at him properly.

One corner of his mouth tips up. “Hm?”

“Nothing,” I say. “You’re just—bigger than you looked from over there.”

“You were watching me from over there.”

“You were watching me back.”

“Fair point.” He tips his head toward the dance floor. “Shall we?”

One hand settles at the small of my back, warm and certain. The other holds mine. We’re not close enough to cause a scene, but close enough that I’m aware of him in a way that has nothing to do with proximity and everything to do with something I don’t have a clean word for.

The song is slow. Of course it is.

“You always stare like that, or am I just special?” I ask.

Up close, his eyes are not quite brown and not quite hazel. Something in between that shifts with the light, and there’s a faint line between his brows like he spends a lot of time thinking before he speaks.

“Depends,” he says. “You always walk up to strangers and accuse them of things?”

“I didn’t accuse you of anything. I made an accurate observation.”

“There a difference?”

“Tone,” I say. “Mine was charming.”

That almost-smile again. God, it’s maddening. Like he’s got the full version of it locked somewhere and he’s not sure I’ve earned it yet.

“Your friends put you up to it?” he asks.

“No,” I say. “I’m used to making decisions on my own.”

He turns us slightly, steering us away from another couple without looking. Smooth. Practiced. Like he’s danced in small spaces before and learned the geometry of it.

“You do that a lot?” he asks. “Things on your own?”

Something about the question snags. Like a fishhook grabbing onto a root. I metaphorically brush it away.

“When they’re worth doing.”

“And this qualified?”

I look up at him. “Jury’s still out, Cowboy.”

His brows lift just slightly at the name. He doesn’t correct me.

“You’ve got a lot of those,” he says, nodding toward the ink on my forearm where my sleeve is pushed up.

“I do.”

“They mean something?”

“Most of them.”

“Which ones don’t?”

I glance down at the small, simple star on my wrist—the first professionally done tattoo I ever got, age eighteen, the day I aged out of the foster system, and no one on earth knew where I was or had any claim on me. My first act of being entirely my own.

“That one means something,” I say. “They all do, actually.”

He doesn’t push. Just looks and nods, like that answer was enough.

“What about you?” I ask. “You always haunt the corner of the bar like you’re getting paid for it?”

A tiny shift in his lips. “I was standing.”

“You were brooding.”

“I was having a beer.”

“With tremendous emotional weight.”

A real breath of a laugh escapes him at that—short, almost surprised, like it got out before he could weigh it. It transforms his face. Makes him look younger and considerably more dangerous at the same time.

I feel it like a match strike, low in my chest.

Don’t do it, Cora. I tell myself. That’s not what tonight is.

The song shifts. Something with a little more pace to it. He adjusts without missing a step, like the change in tempo is nothing.

“You’re from here?” I ask.

“Yeah. My cousin,” he tilts his head towards the bar to the man he’d been standing with. “Is in town.” His hand shifts slightly at my back. “You?”

“Nope.” I let the ‘p’ pop at the end of the word. “Should I let you get back to your cousin?”

“Nah. You smell better than he does.”

I give him a saucy smile. “I grew up about forty miles north of nothing,” I say. “Small town. Smaller than this.” I glance around the bar—the scarred wood, the boot-worn floors, the neon. “Moved around a lot, actually. But small towns are all I know.”

He looks at me then. Really looks. Like something in what I said caught his attention in a way that polite small talk doesn’t. “You don’t look like a small-town girl.”

“What exactly does a small-town girl look like?”

“Touche,” he says. “Are you going to tell me your name?”

I shake my head.

“No names,” he says. “I gotcha.”

“What?”

“You. The no names thing.” He tips his head. “Somewhere between the opening line and now, I got the feeling that was coming.”

I look at him for a moment. “You pick up on things fast.”

“I observe.”

“So you say.”

“And what I’ve observed,” he says, “is that you’ve been real careful about every single thing you’ve said to me.”

My pulse does something inconvenient. “Maybe I’m just private.”

“Maybe,” he agrees. “Or maybe you’re looking for a little escape.”

I hold his gaze. Don’t blink.

“Everyone needs a little escape every now and then,” I say.

“What are you escaping? Can you tell me that?”

I blow out a little breath. “I had a shitty job interview today. Some people only see what they want to see.”

“Fair enough.”

“Are you interested in escaping with me?”

His eyes lock onto my own, and I swear he can see into my very soul. But then he gives the tiniest of nods. “No names,” he says. “No expectations. No tomorrow.”

“Exactly,” I say.

Precisely the rules that keep things clean. Contained. Just the small, careful architecture of a life where temporary is the only kind of safe.

“Alright,” he says, finally. Quiet and certain.

My pulse kicks.

Because I should feel relieved. That’s the part where I feel relieved — where the thing I wanted gets agreed to and the rest is just easy.

So why does it feel like I just stepped into something I won’t be able to put back in the box once it’s opened?

I smile anyway.

“Good.” I glance toward the bar. “Now buy me a drink, Cowboy.”

He looks down at me with that almost-smile—closer to the full version now, just slightly, just enough that I feel like I’ve won something.

“You’re going to be a lot of trouble,” he says.

“I know.”

He doesn’t look the least bit sorry about it.

Neither am I.

And just like that—the bad decision is officially, beautifully, gloriously underway.