by Cara McKenna
“Can you do that? I mean, legally?” Miah asked.
“This is a private business. I can blacklist any motherfucker I feel like, childhood friends included.”
He heaved a sigh. “It’s hard to guess if that’d be a wake-up call or just another excuse to go even deeper.”
“One way to find out. Though I’m hoping Vince might get some traction and save me the discomfort.”
The three of them fell silent at that, the topic fizzling under its own crushing weight. Since when had they all gotten to be old enough to have worries like these? At what point had they grown up and acquired real lives, lives they now had the power to fuck up?
In Alex’s case, with his alcoholism. Prison, in Vince’s, and Raina had banged hers up pretty bad in Vegas, to be sure. And who knew what the heck Casey was up to, wherever he was these days. Of the five of them, only Miah seemed immune to mistakes. Then again, of the five of them, he was the only one who’d had both his parents at his back through his whole childhood. Raina supposed there must be something to that, and it left her a touch humbled to realize this man sitting across from her would do just as fine a job as his mother and father had with a child of his own someday . . . and with a woman who would absolutely not be her.
Enjoy him while he’s yours, she told herself. And there was no denying that he felt like hers just now. As much as any other man she’d let herself get close to. Attached to. She could sense the very nearness of his body, an energy with nothing to do with heat.
In time, Miah got drawn into a pool game of his own by one of his employees, and Vince beckoned her over to his end of the bar after she settled a tab.
“Another?”
“Not quite yet. Just want a word with you, while Miah’s busy.”
“What about?”
“About you two.”
She smirked. “Ah. Unsolicited romantic advice. Charming. But hey, I’m game. Lay it on me.”
After a tight pause, he did. “Just be careful.”
She laughed. “Aww, Vince Grossier, worried about my little old heart? How precious. You think I’m going to get hurt?”
Vince shook his head. “No, but I think he might.”
She smiled dryly, annoyed. “Check you out, Mister Protective all of a sudden.”
“I know the both of you better than you know each other. And I know this isn’t going to end well.”
“Well, I’m just dying to peer into your crystal ball and see what it’s predicting, Vince. What’s the fallout?”
“Miah’s one loyal motherfucker,” he said slowly, thoughtfully. “Flings ain’t his style.”
“Who said it was a fling?” He was essentially right, of course, but she was curious to know what made him so sure.
“You and Miah?” he prompted, some persuasion of pity in his tone.
“What about us?”
“That doesn’t strike you as the tiniest bit doomed?”
She crossed her arms. “Sure, a little. Anybody could see that. So what?”
“Anybody? Including him?”
Now she was just angry. “Get to the fucking point, Vince.”
“He wants kids. You don’t. But if he wants you bad enough, one of two things’ll happen. He’ll either convince himself you’re gonna change your mind, or he’ll talk himself out of having kids to stay with you. And if he does, you better be in this for the long-fucking-haul. Because he won’t change his mind about that lightly.”
“I think it’s ridiculous that you’re even thinking this hard about any of it. We’ve been a thing for two days.”
“I’ve been his best friend for twenty-five years. I know him better than I do my own brother.”
“It’s too soon for either of us to be worrying about this crap, but fine—let’s get theoretical. We fall in love, it gets intense. But Miah would never not start a family just to keep me in his life. Plus as much as he wants kids, he needs them—it’s either make-with-the-heirs or pass the ranch into the hands of a random investor someday.” And it was impossible to imagine Three C not run by someone named Church. It was probably only their family’s ideals that kept the place from turning into a full-on industrial feedlot. “He wants kids the way I don’t want kids—deal-breaker level.”
“He know that’s how you feel?”
“Doesn’t everybody? Doesn’t anyone who’s ever met me?”
“You’re not half as open a book as you think you are.”
She huffed a sigh, half tempted to slap him. “What’s this really about, Vince? You’re the poster boy for thoughtless flings.”
“Just looking out for my friend.”
“If you’re jealous, come out and say so.”
He couldn’t, however, as a customer needed serving just then, followed by a few others. By the time she made it back to him, she’d cooled off some.
Vince seemed to have calmed as well. When he spoke, he sounded casual, a shrug in his voice. “Look. I’m not trying to ruin your fun, okay? I’m just saying, don’t let him go thinking there’s some chance at this turning into forever.”
“How terribly patronizing of you. You think he doesn’t know me as well as you do?”
“He doesn’t get you like I do.”
“I can handle it, all right? Can you just butt out, please?”
He sat up straight once more. “It’s amazing, the red flags people manage to ignore in the name of getting laid. And Miah’s worse than most; he’s a romantic. Just make damn sure he knows where you stand. Don’t just assume he does.”
“Fine.”
He stared at her for a long moment. “I know you, girl. No matter where your feet are planted, your eyes are always way off on the horizon. There was also a time when I didn’t think you’d be here still in your thirties,” he added thoughtfully. “You always had that in common with Casey.”
“Yeah, well, I tried that. Didn’t get very far.”
Vince smiled. “Never known you to quit so easy. Just whatever you do, be straight with my best friend. Let him know this thing’s got an expiration date.”
“This is so romantic, Vince. It’s a wonder you’re single. And anyway, I’m not promising him forever, just until it stops being fun and starts feeling like work.” And in time it always did, didn’t it? “I can handle my own sex life, thanks all the same for your two cents.”
“You’re welcome.” He drained his bottle and slid it over. “Another.”
And the conversation ended, mercifully, as Miah joined them once more.
The crowd kept Raina busy through the rest of the evening, and Vince and Miah got caught up in manly patter about prison and casino rumors and bikes and bygone adventures. Raina remembered quite a few of those escapades differently than these inflated recollections, but she let her friends enjoy their hyperbole. Men did so love to conflate.
At long last, it was time to clang the bell and fill final orders. A good night, all told, after a disappointing week. She had to wonder, if that supposed casino did somehow come to Fortuity, would it help or hurt her? Bring new business to town, or draw all her regulars away to glitzier locales? She wasn’t in the red yet, but every month the profits seemed to dwindle a bit more. She wished she could blame that sales dip on Vince’s absence, but things were getting too grim to joke about. Didn’t help that her dad had been months past due with half their suppliers.
Vince drained his glass and stood, slipping into his old bomber. “Guess this is farewell,” he told the both of them.
“Night,” Raina said, and Miah stood to hug him.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t,” Vince tossed over his shoulder.
“That leaves precisely nothing,” she shot back.
He waved a lazy hand and disappeared out the door and into the night.
She settled the register while the last few drinkers emptied their glasses, then Miah helped her tidy up.
“You’re getting good at this,” she said, watching him wipe down tables. “Maybe you’d like to trade your chaps for
a bar towel.”
“Wouldn’t hold my breath if I was you. Just happy to be of service.”
“I’ll be sure to compensate you for your effort, then,” she said, shooting him a smirk.
“Save it for the hot springs.”
She considered fighting that, but really, wherever he wanted her tonight, that was where she’d be. It wasn’t like her to be so eager to please a man, but when the man in question was as good as this one, and the sex as hot as it was, she couldn’t muster the effort to be a pain in the ass.
“You escorting me?” she asked, hitting the lights.
“My pleasure.”
“All right, then. Let’s hit the road before I remember to pack my bathing suit.”
She locked up and Miah led her to his truck. She gave the edges of the passenger seat an appreciative stroke of her palms, remembering how they’d defiled it only hours earlier.
He flipped the headlights on, illuminating gravel and asphalt and the weathered wooden shingles of the bar. “Buckle up.”
She did. “When’s the last time you went to the springs?”
“It’s been a while. Since March, maybe.”
“Alone?”
“Yeah.”
When had he broken up with that last girlfriend, she had to wonder? A few months at least, maybe the better half of a year. And he wasn’t the type to see anyone casually. When’s the last time you got laid in the springs? That was what she really wanted to know.
Ask him tomorrow and you’ll like the answer better. She smiled to herself.
“If I had a natural hot tub in my back yard, I’d be out there every goddamn night,” she said.
“‘Back yard’ is a bit of a stretch. It’s a twenty-minute drive at least, and not the easiest terrain. Though of course you’re welcome any time.”
She laughed. “I’d get lost trying to even find it and wind up devoured by a cougar. Wait. Have there been any cougars lately?”
“None since last fall.”
“Good. Unless the delicious human stew we’re about to cook up is likely to lure them out of hiding.”
He smiled by the light of the dash panel, the handsomest man she’d ever laid her eyes on.
“How come we didn’t hook up ages ago?” She knew it wasn’t simply the timing of past commitments.
“I dunno . . . I think maybe you just intimidated me when I was younger.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Really? That’s adorable, considering your job requires you to carry a rifle around with you.”
“Well, without jumping to any insulting conclusions, I’m willing to bet you’re more experienced than I am.”
“Aw, and that scared you?” In truth, sure, she’d likely slept with more people than him, but there was no doubting Miah got a gold star in the technique department. He was a serial monogamist, and those guys knew how to please a woman the way no man-whore ever could. Practice made perfect, and when you knew you’d be seeing someone next week or next month—let alone the next morning—you made a motherfucking effort. You mastered yourself some skills.
“You needn’t have worried, Church. Even without a bed to work with, you’re shaping up to be the best lay of my life.”
He kept his gaze on the dark road but swallowed deeply. Just knowing that comment had him worked up got Raina’s own pulse thumping.
“Well good,” he said at length.
“Far better than good.” She leaned over to palm his thigh, squeezing that hard muscle and feeling it tense in reply.
They were well out of reach of the streetlights now, his truck casting the only light apart from the moon and stars. The world was reduced to a strip of faded pavement, the flash of the odd road marker. Miah paused at a stop sign that no other person on earth would bother obeying, and turned them onto a deserted gravel access road, aimed north. Raina’s hand crept an inch higher, another inch, until her pinky found the crease of his hip and thigh.
“That’s awful distracting.”
“What is?”
A soft laugh warmed the dim cab. “Your hand.”
“What hand?” she asked, and cupped her palm between his legs. The truck gave the briefest little swerve, and she saw his fists tighten around the wheel as the headlights settled straight ahead along the road.
“Make me wreck and neither of us is getting laid.”
She gasped her horror and jerked her hand back, just to hear him laugh again.
“You’re terrible,” he said.
“I’m eager. Now, you know you’re not supposed to use condoms in a hot spring, right?”
“Says who?”
“I read it in some magazine, I think. The hot water or the minerals or something makes the latex brittle.”
“Damn. Figure out which magazine and maybe I’ll leave a copy lying around in the hands’ bunkhouse.”
“Funny how they never mention this stuff in middle school health class,” she said.
“Mrs. Fletcher always seemed more preoccupied with reminding us we’d be going to hell if we so much as held hands before marriage.”
“I forgot about her! Mrs. William Fletcher,” she said, mocking the woman’s prissy, nasal voice. “What woman under the age of three hundred still refers to herself by her husband’s full name?”
“She was only about forty, I bet.”
“I wonder what she’s doing now . . .”
“Praying for our souls, probably.”
Raina snorted. “She’ll have laryngitis if she bothered worrying about mine.”
Miah slowed the truck, finding a primitive path in the darkness and turning them off the relatively civilized gravel and onto pocked dirt.
Raina held onto the window strap and Miah’s headrest as the pickup bumped over rocks and ruts. “Bet you’ll score yourself a Mrs. Church someday,” she said carefully. Tonight wasn’t the time to be taking Vince’s stupid advice, wrecking the mood with a heart-to-heart to the tune of, So, you know we’re a lost cause, right? But it didn’t hurt to drop the odd hint. “Maybe not a Mrs. Jeremiah Church, but close.”
“Stands to reason, doesn’t it?”
“I’d never take a man’s last name. I mean, I wouldn’t get married to begin with, but I definitely wouldn’t just abandon my own name for his.”
A long pause. “You don’t think it’s romantic?”
“Ew, no. Just some throwback to when women went from being their father’s property to their husband’s.”
“I dunno, I think it’s nice. I’d be honored if someone loved me enough to want to have the same name as me. To join my family like that.” He weaved them around a thicket of encroaching brush. “Then again, I’m kind of possessive. Maybe some caveman part of me does want everyone to know, hey, this woman is mine.”
She eyed him, surprised, and a little intrigued, and a little put off. Put off by his wording, but intrigued at the notion that Miah considered himself possessive. He didn’t advertise that way, so she was curious in what intimate, private ways it might manifest itself. That wasn’t a quality she cared for in most men, in most contexts, but she wouldn’t mind feeling a taste of it in their sex. If he bothered mustering such territoriality over a fling, that was.
“Think we’re here,” Miah murmured, squinting into the darkness beyond the brightly lit grass.
“Should I be expecting a big spread again?”
“I didn’t sprinkle the bed with rose petals, but there’s some amenities in the back.”
The amenities, Raina found out when she was given a bundle to carry, were familiar ones—several blankets and last night’s whiskey bottle, plus an added pillow. Miah switched on the lantern and hefted an armload of firewood, then led the way through the dark badlands, picking a path between the rocks and brush. There were stunted trees growing nearby as well, a rare giveaway that water was near.
Raina heard the springs before she saw them—a soft burbling rush—and then the unmistakable, subtle smell of the water, a sharp and earthy scent she’d nearly forgotten. In a bre
ath she was twenty again, and goose bumps rose on her bare arms. As they drew closer, steam swirled in the lantern’s glow, and the air rose from fifty degrees to nearly room temperature. Miah set the lantern on the ground and its light vibrated across the pool like heat shimmering above a highway.
The minerals in the water had calcified the surrounding rock—or something like that, Raina couldn’t remember the science of it—exposing and smoothing this hard limestone seam in the otherwise arid, dusty terrain. The opening had been but a crack once, but untold years ago, someone, presumably a dead forebear of Miah’s, had carved it wider and longer, and fashioned primitive benches into the sides. These days it was big enough to fit six or eight, maybe even ten if you weren’t fussy about your personal space.
Tonight, however, it was just the two of them, turning an erstwhile teenage treat into something far more luxurious.
Raina spread the blankets near the lip of the pool while Miah made a teepee out of the kindling, using the old ring of stones fashioned for that purpose. Once the flames were licking, he switched off the lantern, sat on the edge of the blankets, and pulled off his boots.
Raina grabbed the whiskey and knelt beside him. “Hey.”
He turned, watching as she took a sip, then did the same when she passed him the bottle.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “For all this. I know I bitch about us always being outdoors, but you dress the badlands up real nice.”
He dipped his hat, and she smiled and plucked it from his head and set it aside. His hair was matted and she worked her fingers through it, studying his face, cast half in shadows.
He smiled at the attention. “What?”
“Sometimes I can’t get over how handsome you are.” Or that she got to call him hers, for however long the two of them lasted.
Miah laughed. “That whiskey’s working real quick, huh? Since when do you go around stroking a man’s ego?”
Or thanking one, for that matter. She shrugged. “Must be the whiskey, like you said.”
“My parents know, by the way.” He stood to strip his sweater. “About you and me.”
“Oh Lord.” She pulled off her boots and socks.
“Between you coming to find me, and me sneaking in at dawn, there really wasn’t much of a secret to keep. Plus it’s not so bad, them knowing. Is it?”