“I’d say you’re pushing it.” But his scowl lacked the punch it had carried before. “Have you told Mom what you’re up to?”
“I’ll call her in a day or so. I wanted to tell you first.” And when it came to talking to their mother on the phone, she needed a dark, quiet room. Wine and chocolate were good, too. She stepped in, gave him a hug, and said, “Love you, Bro. Even when you treat me like I’m still ten years old.”
“Back then, I could take away your allowance.”
“Now the bank can do it for you.”
He winced. “Don’t say that. Don’t even think it.” A pause. “On second thought, do think it. Maybe knowing that you’re just a couple of missed payments away from having it all yanked away will help keep you on track.”
“I’ll keep myself on track, thank you very much.” And, yeah, the whole bank thing gave her a definite twinge. Hiding that behind a saucy smile—flirting was one thing that had always come naturally, even with Wyatt—she patted his cheek, near where she had kissed. “I’m leaving before you decide to scare more babies.”
“Going back to the store?”
“That’s the idea.” It was closed to customers, but there was plenty to do. And it was all hers! Well, hers and the bank’s.
“Change of plans,” Krista announced, appearing in the doorway, carrying Abby, who was armed with a fat chocolate-chip cookie and was back to her usual smiling self. Popping the baby in Wyatt’s arms, she said, “You’re on kidlet duty, because Ashley and I are going out. I already called the others, and they’re going to meet us at the Rope Burn. We’re going to celebrate Ashley’s big news!”
* * *
“I’ll have a Let’s Get This Party Started Cosmo,” Ashley said as she and the other four members of the Girl Zone settled around their usual high-top bar table.
“Sure thing.” The waitress poised a pen that had a miniature cowboy boot dangling off the end. “Do you want it in a light-up glass?”
“Absolutely.” Why not? They were celebrating.
“White wine for me,” Shelby said, then shot Ashley a wink.
Danny wrinkled her nose at them. “You two are such girls. I’ll have a Corona.”
“That’s not exactly a manly-man’s beer,” Shelby pointed out.
“Better than a cosmo. In a blinky glass, no less.”
“Tomboy,” Ashley said.
“Priss,” Danny fired back, and they grinned at each other.
The two were a study in opposites. Where Ashley flirted, Danny was no-nonsense. Where Ashley flitted, Danny kept her hiking boots firmly planted. And where Ashley rushed headlong, Danny planned everything out to the last detail. But despite their differences, they totally clicked.
“Here are your drinks!” their waitress announced, arriving with a spur jingle that somehow carried over the crowd noise. She offloaded the wine and beer, and then set Ashley’s tall glass in front of her and pushed the button on the bottom to activate the LED embedded in the stem, making red, white, and blue stripes move up and down.
Shelby raised her wine, which looked classy and grown- up in its traditional housing. “To Ashley. Congratulations on being the new owner of Another Fyne Thing!”
Danny held up her beer. “To being your own boss!”
Jenny added her glass to the group salute. “To loving what you do.”
Krista raised hers. “To taking a leap of faith!”
“Hear, hear!” The four of them clinked, then looked expectantly at Ashley.
Who sat there, holding her blinky glass as she fought back a sudden wave of emotion. “I . . . You guys . . . Wow. I can’t breathe.”
Sometimes when she was out with her friends, it was hard not to feel like the little sister, even when Wyatt was miles away. The others were so educated, so accomplished, each of them a business owner in her own right. Now, suddenly, they were looking at her like she had done something important. Something they understood, even admired.
“So don’t breathe,” Jenny advised. “Drink.” That got another round of “Hear, hear!” and the five of them clinked and drank.
The first slug of cosmo tingled going down; the second spread a warm glow that eased the pressure in Ashley’s lungs and let the air back in. With it came some of the positive vibes she had been practicing. Della believes in you. The customers love you. The window displays rock. You can totally do this.
And she could. She would. Starting now.
“Speaking of the store,” she said, setting down her blinky glass, “I could use some brainstorming help.” Considering how many times she had helped the others spitball ideas for their businesses—everything from new theme weeks for Krista’s dude ranch or Danny’s adventure trekking business, to slogans and photo-shoot locations for Shelby and Jenny—she got a buzz out of it being her turn.
Eyes lighting, Shelby beckoned. “Bring it on.”
“The second payment is due in forty-five days, and it’s going to be tight.” She had already filled them in on the financing. “The window display contest that Mayor Tepitt is running during the Midsummer Parade has a big cash prize, but it’s right before the money is due, and there’s no guarantee I’ll win. So, here’s the deal. I want to run a couple of special events at the store as a way to get customers through the door, and hopefully put product in their hands while they’re there. Which is where I could use some help. I was thinking of holding a sale and letting people spin a roulette wheel right at checkout to ‘win’ an extra discount. Or maybe having a fashion show. Or what about a handyman auction? Highest bidder gets stuff fixed around their house. I figure there aren’t enough eligible bachelors in Three Ridges for a sexier sort of auction, though that would tie in better with vintage clothing.”
Shelby whipped out her phone. “Hang on. Let me jot down a few notes.”
“What about a costume contest?” Krista suggested. “You know, sixties and seventies, that sort of thing. You could charge twenty bucks per entry, less if they buy everything from the store.”
But Shelby shook her head. “You don’t want the store to become a Halloween go-to, especially after Della did all that work for the drama club and helped out with the haunted house. Branding-wise, you need to focus on how you can make hip, trendy combinations with vintage clothes. That’s the message you’re trying to get out to your customers, right?”
“That’s exactly what I’m going for!” Ashley grinned, feeling suddenly like she was surrounded by a warm glow of friendship. Or was that that the cosmo? Probably a little of both.
“So no costumes.” Shelby hummed, tapping her lower lip. “But a contest isn’t a bad idea. Or the fashion show.”
They bounced ideas back and forth for the next twenty minutes, through another round of drinks, and pretty soon Ashley had decided she should totally claim the night as a business expense, because they were getting more planning done over drinks than she had in the past three weeks of sitting up late at night.
It was crazy, really, how much things had changed in the past year and a half.
Her lips curved. “Thanks, guys. I mean it. Thanks for the ideas, for coming out tonight, for being happy for me, even though some people—cough-cough, Wyatt, cough-cough—think I’m completely nuts for jumping in like this . . . for all of it.”
“Well, we kind of think you’re nuts, too, but that’s why we love you.” Danny lifted her glass. “To Ashley!”
“To Ashley!” the others chorused, then clinked and drank, with Shelby giving Ashley’s glass an extra tap and adding, “We’re here for you, girlfriend.”
“Hello?” The hail came from the stage, where Jolly Roger—the bar owner’s name was actually Roger Jolly, but he lived up to the nickname with his long dark hair, grizzled beard, and the patch-and-peg-leg routine he pulled out for special occasions—stood at the mic and did a tap-tap. “Is this thing on? Testing, testing. Are we ready fo
r some live music?”
The crowd buzz dimmed for a second; then applause burst out.
“Awesome.” Ashley turned in her chair. “I could dance.”
“I’d like to introduce tonight’s performers, who are guar-an-teed”—Jolly drew it out like the three-syllable word had a dozen—“to get your boots tapping and your booties shaking. Let’s put them together, folks—your hands, I mean, not your booties—for Chasen Tail!”
The door behind him opened up and a guy came out, giving a big wave to the crowd. “Howdy, folks!” In his mid-twenties, with handsome features and sandy hair that brushed the collar of his shirt, he looked like someone had taken one of the cowboys from the crowd and turned the volume up a couple of notches.
“Oh!” Danny said, “I’ve seen him before. I like him.”
“Meh.” Shelby shrugged. “If a guy’s going to pop the buttons on his shirt halfway through the show, his abs should be required to be seriously ripped. And his stage name sucks. I mean, really? Chasen Tail? Ew.”
“I like his music,” Danny clarified. “I agree that the name is dumb. And the shirt thing doesn’t do much for a girl who’s got a better set of muscles waiting for her back home.”
“Now, that’s just mean.” Ashley turned her back on the stage to complain across the table: “Some of us are living vicariously, you know.”
“I can already see this is going to be a killer crowd,” Chasen said behind her. “How about we give a round of applause to my boys?”
As the crowd whooped and hollered, Krista’s eyes went beyond Ashley, and lit. “That’s no boy. And speak of the devil. There’s my new head wrangler in his very fine flesh!” She waved. “Yoo-hoo, Tyler! Hey, Ty. Over here!”
Ashley froze, the name going through her like a bolt of hot lightning—searing and paralytic.
Wait.
What?
No. It couldn’t be.
Setting down the blinky glass with calm precision, she turned in her seat. Looked up at the stage. And stopped breathing as her brain sproinged back and forth between Oh, hell and Oh, my, with a bit of Wow thrown in.
Then back to Oh, hell.
A drummer and a guitarist had set up behind the lead singer. The drummer was a cutie—young, flushed, and nervous-looking, as if playing at the Rope Burn was the high point of his life to date. The guitarist was his exact opposite—thirtysomething, solid, and totally chilled out as he bent his head and strummed a couple of chords that should have gotten lost in the crowd noise, but, thanks to some acoustic quirk of the room, carried straight to Ashley.
She didn’t need to see the face beneath the shag of sun-streaked brown hair—she knew him by the mellow undertone and upper twang of the old Martin, and by the way his hands moved on the strings: slow and steady, but with an underlying strength that said here was a man that always hit the note he was going for.
Tyler Reed.
His head came up and his eyes locked on hers, as if she had said his name out loud. His gaze pierced her, brown eyes so dark they were almost black, putting a hot-cold-hot shiver in her belly.
Behind her, the others were talking about how he had come back to Mustang Ridge after spending the past few years touring with a country band, their voices sounding normal, as if the world hadn’t just shifted on its axis. As if it hadn’t shifted again when she got a good look at his face, with its high Viking cheekbones and the strong slash of a nose, bumped across the bridge, where it had been broken by what he had called “a short dive off a long bucking bull.”
Last fall, at Krista and Wyatt’s wedding. Where they had totally hooked up.
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Firelight at Mustang Ridge Page 29