by Megan Crane
Instead, he looked more like a god sent down from above to tempt her. Casually perfect, windblown and far too good-looking, from that disheveled hair of his to his scuffed boots, and all that smooth, mouthwatering muscle in between.
He pulled off his sunglasses and smirked at her, and Chelsea had the uneasy notion that he could read every single inappropriate thought she had right there on her face, like it was a billboard.
“I’m guessing from that look on your face that you know who I am,” he said, that drawl of his like honey, thick and sweet, confirming her fears.
“Your twin brother is busy buying up ranchland north of Flathead Lake, apparently,” she said by way of a reply, afraid that if she looked directly into his hazel eyes she’d go blind, like he was the sun. “Why are you opening microbreweries out here in the middle of nowhere? I’d think your tastes ran more to empire building and the wholesale destruction of natural environments in a cynical bid to line your own pockets.”
And then she aimed her best prim schoolteacher smile at him, deliberately. His smirk turned into something more dangerous.
“Look at that. It’s like we’re old friends.”
“I hope you’re happy,” she said, meaning to maintain her almost believably light tone but losing it somewhere as she spoke. “History is important. Just because you don’t have any of your own doesn’t mean you should stamp all over other people’s.”
“I wasn’t planning to stamp, necessarily.” He eyed her, sending that curious heat stampeding through her again, then jerked his head toward the saloon. “Thought I might walk calmly into Grey’s and enjoy a little bit of Marietta history first hand. Feel free to join me.” That quirk of his lips shouldn’t affect her like that, surely. “We can talk about the many and varied reasons women proposition me, at any time of the day or night.”
Chelsea opened her mouth to say no, automatically, because of course she wasn’t the type of woman who went into bars with strange men in the middle of the afternoon.
But the mountain was behind him, still waiting, and the light was so thick and golden it made him look like he was made of the stuff, like the kind of man sculptors tried to capture in bronze. She didn’t have to turn around to know that Tod was likely looking out the window of his office at this interaction, that Alisa was probably texting it to anyone within a hundred miles who wasn’t around to witness it, and that Carol Bingley herself was either pressed to her own window down at the pharmacy or letting one of her spies do it for her. Because the good news and the bad news of life in a place like Marietta was that everyone knew everyone else’s business.
Mama’s phone would be ringing right now, if it hadn’t rung already. She’d be peering down toward town from her lofty, disapproving perch high in the foothills, and Chelsea would start paying for this indiscretion the moment she walked in the door. Why not make it worth the bother?
And the truth was, no one else in Marietta looked at her like she was edible and he was very, very hungry.
No one else looked at her much at all—and why should they? She’d been exactly the same since birth. Dependable. Dutiful. The standard bearer for what was left of the once-mighty Crawford family, just as her mother wanted, and some part of her had even enjoyed that. She’d babysat for half the town and tutored for the rest, and they all treated her with the same mix of affably mild interest and polite support. She’d lived at home while she’d taken classes at Montana State over in Bozeman because it was easier and cheaper, and she’d settled into her life right here in Marietta without a hitch, like she might as well be one of the cottonwood trees down by the river, rooted in deep to this place. Immovable.
She’d wanted all of that. She still wanted it.
But you’re thirty, not sixty-five, a voice inside of her whispered. You deserve a few interesting afternoons, don’t you?
The only exciting thing that had ever happened to her had actually been happening between Tod and Leona. She’d only witnessed it, and had been patronized about it every day since.
So because it was the last thing anyone would ever expect her do—because she couldn’t believe she’d do such a thing and he looked like he expected her to make the sign of the cross and run for safety and holy water, Chelsea smiled up at Jasper Flint as if he really was the sun and it was still the height of summer.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’d love to join you.”
3.
That Miss Triple C was not a regular in Grey’s Saloon was obvious by the way she walked inside, gingerly, as if she expected a pack of hellhounds to descend upon her the moment she set foot in the comfortably dim interior.
Jasper’s impression was confirmed by the way she looked around wildly, gulped, then strode with more determination than enthusiasm toward the long, wide bar, straight up to the unsmiling older man who stood there, glowering. A glower which turned thunderous as he looked from Chelsea to Jasper and then back again.
“Are you lost?” the man asked, his voice gruff and rude.
“Hello, Mr. Grey,” she chirped, because of course Triple C was polite to the scariest son of a bitch bartender Jasper had seen in a while. She was wearing ruffles, for God’s sake. Ruffles and that perky voice, and why the hell was he hard? Rock hard, like he might die from it.
Unbelievable, he thought, and followed her to the bar.
“Thought I told you to call me Jason a decade back,” the man growled, but his ferocious glare was on Jasper now. “Mr. Grey is my father, and I can’t say I’m particularly close with him.”
“Your father is a lovely man,” Chelsea said staunchly, which made it perfectly clear to Jasper that whatever the man was, he certainly wasn’t lovely. Jason’s snort confirmed it. “My friend and I would like two whiskeys,” she continued, and if he wasn’t mistaken, that was pure bravado in her voice then, pushing back the perkiness and taking on a hint of huskiness when she looked at him. “Right?”
“I won’t decline,” he said, all drawl and no bravado, only need.
The look the bartender shot him was about as unfriendly as it was possible to get without involving fists. Jasper grinned, in a manner he knew perfectly well could only be described as shit-eating.
“Where’s Reese?” Chelsea asked, then turned to Jasper as if she didn’t expect the surly older man to answer her, which he didn’t. “Reese is like a surrogate member of the Grey family. He helps run this place.”
Meaning, he was probably the one Jasper had seen behind the bar when he’d wandered in here on Saturday night after moving his meager belongings into the spacious top floor of the depot, which he’d decided to make a kind of loft. He filed away that information, along with the fact that both men carried themselves like ex-military—always a good thing to keep in mind when dealing with other men on their home territory. He waved away Chelsea’s attempt to pay for the drinks, added a beer to the order and a glass of appalling-looking red wine he had the feeling she didn’t even want despite asking for it, and then steered her away from the bar and Jason Grey’s relentless glower.
She chattered all the way to a booth in the far corner, filling Jasper in on what seemed to be every last member of the Grey family who had ever lived. A cousin in DC. Another in San Francisco. He got the impression of a lot of daughters who cared about as much for their dour father as Jasper did, and a runaway wife. Chelsea either didn’t notice the tension emanating from behind the bar, or was valiantly ignoring it.
Or, he thought when they sat down and she was clutching her shot glass like it was a life preserver, this was just nerves.
“I make you nervous,” he said.
She frowned. “Of course you don’t.”
He clearly did, and that, perversely, made him feel as relaxed as if he’d just had a full body massage from someone very curvy and morally questionable. He felt lazy and something far darker, far more intent, as he studied her.
“Is it this bar? Doesn’t look like you come in here much.”
“For all you know I dance nak
ed on the tables every night of the week,” she snapped at him, and he wasn’t the only one who noticed how the word naked seemed to sit there and spin on the dark wood tabletop between them. She swallowed, hard, like she couldn’t think about anything else. He knew he couldn’t.
“Every night except the last two, then.”
“You spent your first two nights in town at the saloon?”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing. I consider it my own, personal welcome wagon. Only without cookies.”
There was something about the way strands of her blonde hair kept falling out of that twist of hers that made him… edgy. Hungry, maybe, like he wanted to reach over and pull the whole mess of it down just to see it swirl around her shoulders, thick and bright. It was much too hard to keep himself from it. Much, much harder than it should have been.
“I wouldn’t dream of judging you,” she said, and then her lips twitched as the tone she’d used—the very definition of judgmental—echoed there between them. “Not too openly, anyway.”
He raised his shot glass and waited. Her face was so open he almost wanted to shield her from the rest of the bar, who surely didn’t deserve to read every last thought she broadcast there. Her alarm, her desire. Her nervousness. Her fascinating resolve. She swallowed hard, then picked up her own shot glass, and he watched her chin rise and her shoulders go back, like she was talking herself into it. Into this.
His little pugilist.
“To history,” he said.
Her blue eyes narrowed.
“To history,” she replied, and then held her shot glass still while he gently tapped his to the side.
Jasper tossed the whiskey back, then had the pleasure of watching her do the same. Her eyes watered, her face reddened, but she only coughed once. Then sat there, frozen, staring back at him as if she’d been slapped.
“Do that a lot, do you?”
He was mocking her, and she obviously knew it. She blinked until her eyes lost that hectic glitter, then glared at him.
“I love nothing more than a shot of whiskey at the end of a long school day, thank you,” she retorted.
“Tell me, Triple C,” he murmured, leaning in close, feeling daggers in his back from across the room but unable to care about anything but that frankly carnal mouth of hers and the way it parted slightly as he took up too much of the space between them. “Is this your big rebellion? Tossing back shots in the middle of town with a stranger?”
He didn’t know what he expected. Her to laugh, maybe. Or to suggest a more satisfying form of rebellion the way his usual sort of woman would. He certainly didn’t expect that flash of vulnerability in her gaze, or the way she shifted in her seat, then looked down.
“It sounds so pitiful when you say it.”
“Not at all, darlin’,” he heard himself say, more drawl than sense. “I’m an excellent way to start a downward spiral. We’ll have you table dancing within the week.”
He thought he saw the glimmer of a smile in the corner of her mouth.
“I don’t think multi-billionaires can claim to be anyone’s downward anything,” she said, and it took a moment for him to understand why it got under his skin. It was the brisk, matter-of-fact way she said it.
She wasn’t flirting with him. She was simply stating the obvious.
It was remarkably refreshing.
“A rich bastard’s still a bastard.”
She looked up then, her gaze solemn. “That’s true. My ancestor Barton Crawford was a very rich man, for his time. And by all accounts, an ass.”
“Then by all means, let’s make him a museum.”
Her smile was faint, but there, and it should have alarmed him that he viewed that like his own, personal triumph. But he was too focused on the way her fingers clasped the stem of her wine glass, more elegant than their surroundings, and too obsessed with imagining what she’d look like out of those fussy clothes she wore. Naked, he thought, and spread out across his bed, nothing but heat in her eyes and a smile on that decadent mouth of hers—
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted something like this, so badly and completely. Because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted something he couldn’t snap his fingers and have, just like that.
“It’s my mother,” she said. Then stopped and looked down, as if biting back whatever she’d been about to say. When she met his gaze again, hers was resigned, filled with a sort of amused love he recognized, and that resolve. “Life hasn’t been as kind as it could have been to my mother. Her father lost all his money and then my father died in a great deal of his own debt. She had to sell off all her family’s land, but kept the old house, because her ancestors built it so long ago it was free. My older sister and brother provided her with grandchildren, but they don’t live here, where she would dedicate herself to educating them on what she has left of her legacy. So what she has is family history.” She shrugged. “As obsessions go, hers is mild.”
But what Jasper saw were all the things she didn’t say, stuck in between the lines. It was all there on her open, expressive face, not at all hidden by that hint of wariness in her too-blue eyes. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted to reach out and touch another person like this, like it was a physical necessity.
He fought it off.
“Doesn’t sound like there’s much room for you in there.”
“This is Big Sky country. There’s always room.” But her chin was up, and he doubted it. “I love teaching and I’m good at it. I’ve lived here all my life and wouldn’t leave if I could. We have a lot going on, though maybe not by your Dallas standards.” She sat too straight, too still. “There’s what will probably be the wedding of the year next Saturday, big and brash and beautiful. Then the rodeo a week after that, and we’ll go all out for both. The wedding is one of our own and the rodeo is tradition.”
“I never said I didn’t like tradition.”
“You don’t have to say it.” She looked him up and down. “You are it.” She lifted up her glass then set it down again. “You’re not going to stay here. You know you’re not. You have a whole world to play in, and what’s one small town next to that? You’ll make your microbrewery and then you’ll get bored with it, so you’ll hire someone else to run it or you’ll sell it.”
There wasn’t a shred of accusation in her tone, not a hint of it in her gaze, and yet he stiffened.
“No point in living the next few years of my life for myself if you can decide how it’s all going to go, just like that.”
His voice was too curt, and he didn’t know why he was tense in the first place. Why he cared what this woman—plain by his usual standards, and why was that so hard to remember when he looked at her?—thought about him. Especially because she was probably right.
His twin brother Jonah was the magnate, he was the dilettante. Or so Jonah had informed him the last time they’d spoken.
“But I’ll still be here,” she said, her voice low and easy, but not quite happy, snapping him back from yet another unpleasant contemplation of his strained relationship with his brother. Then she laughed, and he felt it like a rush of something carbonated, washing over him. “I’ll be right here, trading concerned glances with every person who walks by because we’ve all known each other since birth. I’ll learn how to age into my old maid status gracefully, and stop trying to date the few single men left who haven’t already dated my friends. I already dress like my mother, as you so thoughtfully pointed out this morning. I’ll become her sooner rather than later, ranting about the Crawfords and shushing boisterous children like a librarian except in the middle of Main Street, and you know what?”
He didn’t think she knew that her cheeks were flushed with that tell-tale color, that her eyes were brilliant, that she looked more alive, and more beautiful, than he could have imagined possible. He felt that kick inside, in his gut and high in his chest, and he knew what it meant. What it was. However little he wanted it.
He’d be damn
ed.
But she was still talking.
“This is a good life,” she said quietly, with great conviction, and he believed her. “I might not have everything I want, but I’m happy. And it wouldn’t kill you to let us build that museum, because what do you care, in the end? This is nothing more than a little side project for you to play with between acts of corporate dominance.”
Jasper forgot about his beer. He saw nothing but Chelsea. He wanted nothing but Chelsea. He couldn’t keep himself from grinning.
“This is it, Triple C.”
She blinked. “What?”
He poked his finger down into the table between them.
“This moment, right here. This is that pivotal moment where you get to decide what kind of woman you are. What kind of life you want to live.”
“I’m thirty years old,” she said dryly. “I’m a well-established high school history teacher in the rural community where I was born. I’m pretty sure this is my life.”
Jasper flipped his hand over and let it lie there, open, and he saw the way her throat moved, how she stared at it, as if she could feel the same pull he did.
“You can be this old maid creature you keep talking about,” he said. “You can live it the way it is in your head, the way you see it all unfolding. Wearin’ your mama’s clothes and giving a shit what all these people think of you.”
“Of course I care. I’ve known them all since birth.” Her chin rose higher. “I like them. Most of the time.”
“Do they get to decide who you are or do you?”
She stared at him for a long moment, so long he thought he’d read this wrong, read her wrong. But then she shifted slightly, and he was relieved. Maybe too relieved.
“What’s the other option?” she asked.
“That’s the fun one.” He grinned. “You can be the woman who gets on the back of the bike of a man she met this morning, and lets whatever happens next, happen. No matter who’s watching, even if they’ve known you since birth.”
Her hands twitched near her glass, but she still sat there, tight and frozen, as if she was afraid to move.