Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 114263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
I glance over my shoulder, and my heart falls to the goddamn floor when I see him.
Cash.
He stands a few feet away, one hand tucked into the front pocket of his jeans. He’s wearing a baseball hat.
A backward baseball hat. Add to that his broken-in Wranglers and the clean white tee that stretches across his chest and shoulders in the most mind-bogglingly sexy way imaginable, and you have one very tall glass of water.
Cash is a smokeshow when he’s doing his cowboy thing, no denying that.
But in these neon lights, in that hat and those jeans, he is…epically, obscenely hot. My pulse riots, a bloom of pure, unadulterated desire spreading between my legs.
Squeezing them together in an effort to cut that shit off at the pass, I blurt, “I thought you weren’t coming.”
He comes to stand beside me at the bar and meets my eyes. “Changed my mind. You gonna leave now, City Girl?”
“I will if you keep calling me that.”
He smells like he just got out of the shower, the scent of clean, simple soap rising off his skin. I detect a hint of something subtly minty and herbal too.
I do my best to ignore it. But this man would get eaten alive at the bars I go to in Dallas. I mean that literally. Men and women would be all over him. Looking around The Rattler, people seem to notice Cash, but no one’s approaching us. Why not?
Maybe, like me, they’ve witnessed his less than friendly side.
Or maybe he’s already slept with them. Does Cash get around? And why does that thought make my chest cramp?
I need to stop thinking about this shit.
“You drink Shiner Bock,” he says, forehead creased in disbelief.
Looking away, I put my card on the bar’s gleaming wooden surface. “Of course I do. It’s delicious. I was just about to buy Wyatt and myself a round as a matter of fact.”
Cash pushes my card aside. “Your money’s no good here. Tallulah, put it on the tab.”
“You have a tab?”
“Of course we have a tab.”
Tallulah grins as she pops the tops off three longnecks. “The boys are here…often.”
“What she means is”—Cash takes a beer from Tallulah and hands it to me—“Wyatt may or may not host an illegal poker game here every so often. The people who play with him may or may not lose enough money to pay our tab many times over.”
Wyatt nods, sipping his beer. “Tallulah gets a cut of my winnings.”
“What if you lose?”
“I don’t. Someone’s gotta put money into Ella’s college fund.”
Cash meets my eyes again, his longneck at his lips. “Come hell or high water, a Rivers is gonna get a degree.”
Tipping back my beer, I look away. I have to. I might literally melt if I keep looking at this indecently handsome man who’s apparently hell-bent on sending his niece to college.
It’s a dream he couldn’t make come true for himself. But he’ll be damned if it doesn’t come true for his loved ones.
For a second, I get this weird, floaty feeling, like the ground is literally shifting beneath my feet. Cash is continually taking me off guard.
He’s continually surprising me, and I’m not quite sure what to do with myself when he does. Hating him is easy.
But if I don’t hate him…then what?
I startle at the sound of a snare drum. Glancing at the stage, I see Patsy twirling a drumstick in her hand before the band launches into its first song.
Watching Patsy play the drums, a smile splits my face. Of course she plays the drums. And of course she absolutely rocks it, pounding away like she wasn’t up long before the sun, making the first of many meals to feed many mouths.
Zach is on the steel guitar while Sally is a backup singer at a microphone, a violin on her shoulder. I don’t recognize the lead vocalist or the gal playing the acoustic guitar, but I’m sure they’re somehow connected to Lucky Ranch.
I’m learning that everyone around here is.
The song they play is a George Strait cover. One of my favorites—“It Just Comes Natural.” Maybe that’s why the ground suddenly steadies and I’m tapping the toe of my boot in time to the beat.
This I know.
This I love.
Live music. Classic country. A bar where no one gives a fuck who you are or what you’re wearing. We’re all just here to have a good time.
We’re all here to forget life for a little while.
I’m not the only one in need of an escape. People immediately move from the bar to the dance floor. I smile harder when I see John B leading the pack.
Turning back to Cash and Wyatt, I catch Cash looking at me. Checking me out, more like it. His eyes rove up the length of my body, a slow, steady perusal that feels like a physical caress.